The current moment stripped naked and turned to a show

A PRODUCT – PER KILO OR FOR A DIME?

Fugazzi Market

People of yesterday were drawn to perfume because it was not a mere representation or factual recreation of the scents they got from their surroundings.

The perfume was also perceived as an intellectual, artistic, and artisanal recreation of a unique idea. Thus, unlike apples and figs, it was not sold to users per kilo. It was presented in smaller packaging exclusively and by no means exchanged for a dime.

The part of the market where the perfume was sold was not a market.

Fugazzi did a fantastic job stripping the current moment naked and turning it into a show.

After smelling the perfumes, which were also represented by real fruits, visitors were offered coins, and they could choose and pick the sample from the vending machine.

The Fugazzi stand was one of the most crowded during the first three days of Esxence. It was almost impossible to pass by the long line of people waiting in front of the vending machine.

I can only imagine how it looked on Day 4, which was open to the general public. Or maybe the line between business visitors and the general public has become as blurred as the difference between a fruit market and a perfumery.

I was actually tempted to cut through the crowd and replace the given coin with an apple (the green ones looked very tempting). But, in these circumstances, asking for an apple on a fruit market show would be very odd, wouldn’t it?

THE DUPE SHOW

Double Dragon

Another Italian brand that has also stripped the current moment naked and turned it into a show was Double Dragon from RTW group:

The word “dupe” is frequently used because dupes are evidently and openly everywhere.

Still, in the global perfume community, when speaking about an eminent brand, the word “fuckin’” is less controversial (and risky) than the word “dupe.”

While the first word is (still a bit) controversial (or just not well-mannered) but potentially beneficial, “dupe” is clearly pejorative, so it is often spoken below the voice. It is also damaging for the business based on exclusiveness, thus it is rarely written or published.

Double Dragon did precisely the opposite – their stand was screaming “Dupe show!”.

The stand was not big, but I noticed it from a distance:

Remember those shops that offer the service of applying whatever prints on T-shirts? Looking at the stand, my first association was the unmistakable guerrilla message: “We don’t care for exclusives!”

I really liked the two young people who presented the brand. They looked like my grunge-obsessed friends and me during high school in the 1990s. They were also radically different-looking compared to the kids of probably the same age, who flooded Esxence 2025 as content creators and fragrance lovers.

“For this fair, we invented a game by copying all the most copied accords and mixing them into the two total dupes. The game is called Dupe Show, because on our stand the Esxence visitors can vote on which dupe they like more.”

I smelled the two dupes of the dupes: what a punch to my nose and what a slap to, well, so many….

The brand’s collection, which was presented outside the Dupe Show, did not include a gourmand. Still remembering the smell of the last perfume inspired by green apple, I smelled Teen Spirit, named after the popular deodorant Kurt Cobain used and infused into Nirvana’s hit.

When I heard the question, “Do you know who Kurt Cobain was?” I instantly remembered the profound feeling of loss I felt in 1994.

But let’s not be fooled:

Double Dragon’s screaming “Dupe Show!” at the collective face of Esxence 2025 was the same kind of marketing I saw elsewhere.

The difference was mainly related to the targeted group of buyers.

The change of name that made My Sin (1925, exhibited on L’Osmotheque’s stand) a success shows that controversial marketing is anything but new:

This wolf changed hair many times, but its nature remained unchanged. It always derives from the hunger to stand out on the market.

Now, it is also fed on the reasoning that young buyers buy the familiar, that their willingness to stand out in a crowd has been gradually reduced to pure lazy loudness, and that they are developing progressively shorter attention spans.

Those changes in young buyers’ behaviour and habits did not initially originate within the perfume business itself.

Nevertheless, once they became apparent as a general trend, they became treated as business assets and, logically, but sadly, further carefully groomed by the businesses that deal with large numbers.

Now this profile of buyers entered the territory where art perfumery thrived.

So, hit them hard, and hit them loud!

Give them a dupe of the dupe in stronger and stronger concentration and bigger and bigger controversy or show!

Who fuckin’ cares, right?