A $100 MILLION PAYDAY IS SEEN FOR FIRST YSL SCENT UNDER GUCCI
Byline: Jennifer Weil
PARIS — Yves Saint Laurent caused an international sensation in 1971 when he posed nude for the launch of his first men’s fragrance, Pour Homme. Tom Ford continues the theme with his hotly anticipated first women’s scent for the house, called Nu (French for “nude”).
The scent hits stores in mid-October, backed by advertising images by Mario Sorrenti showing intermingled limbs of a man and a woman.
“The name is Nu,” Ford announced at a news conference here Monday. “It is not only about nude as in the skin, but nude [as] to be bare, stripped away; it can even become the essence of something.
“For me, [fragrance] is something you wear, something close to the skin. It touches the body. People should not smell it if they are not close to you.”
It is part of Gucci’s strategy to build up the YSL beauty business, which counts Opium as its bestseller. Although the company refused to talk numbers, industry sources estimate Nu could ring up $100 million globally in retail sales in its first year.
Ford described Nu’s ad as “quite abstract. [The YSL woman is] a mysterious woman,” he added, saying she’s not unlike Catherine Deneuve’s character in the film “Belle du Jour,” in which she appears to be a housewife but is really a prostitute.
“She is not ‘what you see is what you get,’ ” he said. “The Saint Laurent woman may not be openly sexy on the outside, but believe me, she is very sexy.”
He said she’s also educated, urban and very contemporary. “Remember, YSL put women in pants,” he said. “Advertising for me should always be something arresting. Every fragrance ad now is about a face. I didn’t want a face. Nu is about skin, a body, in a chic, tasteful way.”
Nu is the first YSL scent developed under Ford’s creative direction at Gucci Group NV, owner of YSL Parfums — alongside other YSL Beaute brands — since December 1999.
For Ford, the scent is intended to embody the new YSL. “[Nu] is not so much [about breaking off with the past], but about taking the spirit of a great brand and creating something new with it,” he told WWD.
“Its packaging is very simple outside, very modern, a beautiful cobalt blue,” Ford continued. “The blue for me is very Saint Laurent.”
The fragrance’s juice also contains contrasting notes. Developed by Firmenich’s Jacques Cavallier, it includes wild orchid, sparkling bergamot, vetiver, incense absolute and black pepper.
“As you enter the fragrance, you get spicy, wild orchid, absolute of five types of incense and precious woods,” explained Chantal Roos, chief executive of YSL Beaute. “On the skin, it is very, very sexy.”
“It is quite complex, with layering,” added Ford. “It is not a flat, one-dimensional fragrance.”
Nu will have a tight distribution network and will be launched in most countries on Oct. 13. In the U.S., for instance, it will sell exclusively at Saks Fifth Avenue for two weeks, then roll out to some 25 percent of the brand’s distribution network there. In the U.K., it will launch first at Harrods.
Nu will retail in the U.S. for $95 for a 3.4-oz. eau de parfum spray, $70 for a 1.7-oz. edp spray and $55 for a 1-oz. edp spray. Ancillaries will include a 7-oz. body cream for $70, a 5.2-oz. soap — which is black but creates a white lather — for $25, and 5.2-oz. soap refills, two of which go for $25.
The fragrance’s launch was celebrated Monday night at a wild party with about 600 people at the Palais Brongniart, also known as La Bourse, the former home of the Paris Stock Exchange. The center of attention was a huge Plexiglas cylinder, about 40 feet in diameter, in which about 40 models — men and women, all topless, and all wearing skin-tone thongs — were gyrating to the music. Fragrance spritzers dashed about, and the dance floor was packed. The deejay was Mark Ronson and Charlize Theron was among the throng.