Stereotypical "Feminine" Bottles, Packaging: Irritating? Offensive? Humiliating? - Page 2

Where is her body?





Oh here it is.

Isn't that what Estee Lauder proposed with Youth Dew: a woman purchases perfume for herself? That was quite a few decades ago!

I think the ads are interesting (even Jacob's) and tell us a lot about our world as it currently functions. The ads and bottles help identify what the juice is supposed to be - I find that a good thing.

No, I am not offended by frilly, girly, fluffy. There are times when all of these things are appropriate, even for a mature woman (or man!) - albeit probably in smaller doses than the targetted girls!

My favorite bottle - nearly took my breath away - wish I could post a photo like kumquat's - Nina Ricci Coeur Joie - it is glass in the shape of a heart outline with faint, delicately embossed / engraved flowers around the border both front and back. It comes in a *light pink* box outlined in gold. One of the most elegant, sublte, and feminine designs I have ever seen. That would be my favorite bottle.

The Guerlain bee bottle - glass and gold ourlines - are exquisite as well; not only the delicacy and intricacy of design, but the history.

PS Hillary looks awesome in pink!!

I think the Tom Ford ad is appropriate because it falls under the category of irritating, offensive and humiliating.

Then again, sex sells and this is really in-you-face sexuality. Personally, I would like to see a man in a similar state of nudity and the same pose. Does such an ad exist?

As much as we try to say colour carries no connotations, pink is still associated with women and girl. Just ask a man to wear a fuchsia business suit to a meeting because he likes the colour and see what he says. (That is, a man NOT a rock star or social maverick, but the everyman in corporate America or business.)

oops.

Prim, there are a few TF ads that feature lean, processed, airbrushed, hairless and nubile male nudes (who are ironically 'de-sexed' by way of their over-commodification) in a similar way.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this TF spoof by Annie Liebowitz as much as I did.

They say be careful what you wish for...

I do think there is such an ad, but I can't remember at the moment.

My favorite Pink & Girly

Oops

I secretly like these bottles in a guilty pleasure kind of way. I want a little army of them.

lt's the Marc Jacobs Bang ad. *Shudder* Why do they have to look so greeeeeasy?!

Love it! Thanks, Hillaire.

Only bottles I own and find a little girly are

It's pink alright.

Pretty!

I'm so with you on this... just why? They look utterly daft and it isn't confined to pink fluffy perfume marketing either. The other one is the vest pulled up at one side with one hand to show the pants with that pout.

If pink, girl fluff didn't sell anything, then they wouldn't do it any more.... it obviously works.....

It would certainly prevent me from even smelling them, but maybe most of the perfumes aren't that bad when liberated from the ghastly bottle.... I wonder what proportion of e-bay perfumes are the sad rejects of it.

Exactly; I just don't care for that sad-sad look. Not a fan of the slumped over slouching teen either. It seems odd when most people want to be taller than they are, these days. (Not to offend the height-challenged but it does help one look leaner, etc., when you stand up straight.) There is so much pressure on folks to achieve, it just seems odd that they would want to act stupid in this world. Young women; Please don't sell yourselves short. Don't play dumb. You will only attract men who want to take advantage of you. It's not a good thing.

I thought the Klingon Empire typically used disrupters and the phaser was more of a Federation weapon.
There was a LE L'Air du Temps, Philippe Starck designed bottle, that looked somewhat like a Klingon bat'leth...
The curve of the DK Signature bottle could (with a little imagination) be compared to the curve of a mek'leth, maybe?

Qapla'!

....*hides*

I am starting to get this creeping suspicion that maybe we are not only very fond of a good smelly whiff, but we might also be also ultimate nerds!

Live long and Prosper!

Might be ultimate nerds....... how dare you.... no mights about it......I am the ultimate Queen of nerds.

You should have seen the reaction when somebody held up Tiberius at the NOLA sample grab, and explained here were two other Star Trek related samples.
We don't talk much about Star Trek here, but we are all total nerds.
Or queen of Nerds.
My dreamrabbit though is the Q of Nerds!

Nerd..... nah.... you've just got me digging out my cupboard for hideous bottles.

Hihihihihhiiiiiii!

I knew I had a body for Anna Sui....

I don't mind frilly bottles. I do love certain bottles for their styling. And the only time I'm really irritated by a bottle if it fails to function well in its intended function which is to dish out, in appropriate quantities, good juice!!!!!

Shall I give examples?

L by Lolita Lempicka. What a cute bottle!! Nevermind that it took me nearly deconstructing the top to figure out where the spray nozzle was. It was fine, once the saleslady demonstrated for me how it's done. D'oh! She was probably worried I'd destroy her tester, and rightfully so, because I was about to wrench the spray nozzle off. (I thought that was a cap.)

Bulgari Omnia. I love the cute lopsided infinity symbol look. But this bottle has been the source of irritation and annoyance, and just plain wasted juice. For one, the rounded bottom means it doesn't stay put if you set it down at anything other than perfectly perpendicular, which is hard to judge accurately when you're in a hurry because there aren't many straight lines on this thing. Then there's the ridiculously placed spray nozzle, which is 3 quarters of the way up the second cylinder. I don't know why, but my tendency is to judge the stream to come out at the widest portion of the sphere. And it doesn't. So, whenever I spray, it shoots over my intended target. Wasted juice! And then, it never comes out as a spray. It *streammmms* out, like a peeing infant. Over my hand. More wasted juice. At least if it were a gentle spray, *some* of it would fall on the target. But no.

Havana by Aramis. Not the new bottles of the re-issue. The old bottles. Talk about stereotype. Here's a question for guys. Are they offended by phallic-looking bottles? I love the cool matte blue of the old bottles. I dislike intensely the boring lines of the new bottles. But I do admire them for fixing what I consider an impracticality in the design of the old bottles, which is that it is very top-heavy, and tips over a bit too easily for my comfort, if not placed exactly perpendicular to the counter.

Speaking of stereotyping, it would seem that some people are putt off by Anucci Man's golf-ball shaped bottle.



So, perhaps annoyance is not limited to frilly, girly bottles, eh?

See, I love a little frou-frou with my bottles. Perfume is an extravagance, and I like a playful and luxurious presentation. What I don't like is anything that seems to be infantile or aimed at small children -- although that's in the eye of the beholder, I guess. It's like John Waters said: "There's good bad taste, and bad bad taste." I don't really want maribou on my perfume, but I love cut glass, charms, ribbons, all that silly decorative stuff.

Love:



All the Lempicka bottles are delightful to me, except for the weird and ugly Si Lolita (but Si Lolita is IMO the best-smelling of the bunch, so I own it anyway)











I like that Avril Lavigne that was posted upthread, too. I'd much rather have a dresser full of this kind of thing than square or rectangular plain clear glass. Unfortunately, it seems like the more I like a scent, the more likely it is to come in a boring or butt-ugly bottle -- Parfums de Nicolai and Gucci Accent, I'm looking at YOU!

Lalique were there first with the booswams... and Avon with the dolly bottles

I never mind a bit of froufrou. I love cut glass and ribbons and Lalique!
i like the Dior baccarat bottles, I like the lovely designs of early last century (brought a really nice book with lots of perfume bottles last year)

But I do object to being approached as a brainless blonde bimbo.
Who only likes pink.

I mind the pink because it is so associated with baby girls. I'm not a baby, I'm a woman.

However, I'm a woman who would love to have the Katy Perry Purr bottle on my dresser -- kitty cat! Eeee! OK, perhaps I'm not a very MATURE woman. Why I love this, but hate the Harakuku Lovers bottles, is a mystery to me.

No, I'm not offended by girly/pink bottle design or advertising. If I did find anything offensive it would be the MJ and the Tom Ford ads. not because they're too sexual, but because they're tryingy way too hard to be edgy (and therefore aren't, at all). I bet Marc Jacobs marketing team were high fiving each other when the ad was banned in the UK.

Pink was my favourite colour when I was 5 and it's still my favourite colour now that I'm 30. Which is really neither here nor there re: this thread. Packaging doesn't offend me.

I wonder if any men are offended by male fragrance ads that generally seem to portray the perfect man as the overtly square jawed, perfectly stubbled, oiled uber alpha male, be it the mountain climbing sporty type or the suit wearing business mogul? In many ways I find men's advertising even more one-note than women's. For all the fluffy pink stuff marketed to teenage girls you have Axe marketed just as simply to the teenaged boys - who are all, apparently, sex crazed gorillas, and have nothing else in their heads other than getting laid (with the pink innocent floofy girls, I assume).

Why men don't complain about being targeted as the oiled muscular über-male perfection?
I would not complain either if I was being targeted as the super intelligent, well build, active, selfassured, modern, professional, strong, independent gorgeous über-woman.
On the contrary, I would consider it brilliant.
What I object to is the assumption that I am supposed to like to see myself as a pink, fluffy brained, sexually available, underage bimbo.

You try and start marketing stuff to men and picture them as useless, weak, no chin, baby-blue, brainless bozo's and see how many complaints you'll get from the men!

I'd like to think of the pink, fluffy stuff as escapism, but there does seem to be a trend to infantalize women much more so than men. It's certainly not new, though, as other posters have pointed out, in fact, the frilly aesthetic seemed to be in vogue in the '50s to early '60s when it very much matched the ideal of women in society ( soft, domesticated creatures ). The latest iteration just sells it with more flesh.

If anything, I'm less troubled by pornographic ads, as they rely on men being very visually-focused sexually. Where there's a market for it, men are just as objectified as women, there are just more straight men in the world. If flashing men's body bits worked on women we'd be seeing it in ads.

Comparing the current style of ads, the message seems to be that men are men, and women are girls. I have to ask why that sells if things are truly more equal than ever.

It's interesting to me that being a part of this website (Basenotes) has allowed me to smell fragrances blindly. Not seeing the bottle on some of my favorite fragrances has allowed me to judge a fragrance based on its smell alone (okay, with maybe a hint from its name). The Blind Sniff Game was a real eye-opener as well. I really enjoyed reading the impressions from the Blind Sniff of Old Spice. It was really revelatory.

I appreciate that so many people here on Basenotes judge a scent fairly objectively, but subjectively at the same time. How is that possible? I dunno, but I really appreciate how many reviews here are generally informative and sexless. Example: Reviews for Anucci man. . . you won't see people raving about the bottle. It's about the smell. Why does one enjoy it? Why does one hate it?

Rather than, "It's the best smell I ever smelled on a man!" Or, "I just love that Antonio Banderas wears this! I want to have his babies." Or something like that.

I do love a good frilly bottle. I love that Lalique bottle posted above. Wow! They just don't make 'em like that anymore, do they? It consider that a work of art.

That's not a bottle, its a brooch. Lalique made gorgeous jewelry, a lot is on display at the Gulbenkian in Lisbon. (Ive been there!)

there are good frilly bottles:

I think it's interesting that as the designs get more and more desperate in their frantic loud colors that emulate baby toys, so too do the fragrances get cheaper and louder. Just my opinion. I just think the new mainstream stuff is pretty awful.

Oops. My mistake for misleading. I was meaning the boob thing.

Oh, well, it's still a lovely brooch, even with the boob thing.

It would be highly unwieldy as a bottle though, wouldn't it? Someone posted a picture of the Betsy Johnson bottle up higher in the thread, and I actually did buy that a few years ago. The plastic top was pretty, but it was cheap plastic, and very unwieldy to grasp when opening the bottle. I was worried the plastic would snap. As Swarovski crystals embedded in platinum, now that would have been unwieldy, but awfully pretty too!

I think there's still some good stuff coming out of the mainstream -- the new Bottega Veneta, Estee Lauder Sensual and the Private Collection series, and even Prada Candy, with the PINK top, smell pretty great! It's not all Lollipop Bling.

Another lemming goes over the cliff.
A perfectly good scent makes a sweeter clone of itself, why?

I agree.

I don't know what it smells like, but I think that is a very pretty bottle.

I agree with you Thalia. I have the Prada Candy and I love the bottle. I also think the Jaipur Bracelet bottle is cute.

I admit to sometime fragrant elitism regarding bottles and an inverse snobbery. Something along the lines of Celeb frags = cheap pink bilge. Fancy frilly fluffy frou-frou packaging = non descript dull generic fruity floral. The more f's the worse the juice! Then I tried JLo Glow which is excellent IMHO. Which may be the exception which proves the rule.

Equally I'm as guilty of Niche = good and high end designer = good. One scent Champs Elyses = eeeewww.....

Marketing now thats a whole new treatise! Being a short, well endowed, natural blonde working in a stereotypically fluffy female profession I would pay good money to spend time in a cubicle with the equipment of my trade with the marketing execs who continue to push compliant female images. I'd take the pix after... Maybe the perfect image for Secretions Magnifique?

The ad campaign for Miss Boucheron was downright odd. A pink spin on the famous classic Boucheron--with pink pepper as one of the main notes.

http://www.nstperfume.com/2007/05/24...grance-review/

Honestly, I've never thought of this stuff as smth offensive and humiliating. Yes, some of the designs are silly and bad taste, but offensive? No, I can't be offended or humiliated by a perfume bottle.)))

In my opinion your post speaks more about yourself than your issue with perfume bottles.

It seems your issue is with one perfume and have generalized an entire genre based on your personal distaste.

Femininity is not limited to pink and girly, though pink and girly appeals to a younger demographic.


While I am no fragrance history buff, I assume there is far more selection today than in the past. Just because one genre of fragrance does not agree with you, does not mean women have lost "aesthetic sensibility".

I'm genuinely curious, why do you even find this aesthetic offensive?

Here's some very basic information about this masterpiece: http://www.nga.gov/education/tchan_5_04.htm
As to 'boob thing' it might be interesting to read about symbolism of female breasts in art.


Back on topic. Surely not all 'stereotypical feminine bottles' are tasteless. Check out Houbigant creations - absolutely feminine and absolutely gorgeous!

I find the Penhaligon's designs beautifully feminine

What I did take almost as a personal offence, was this


I mean, Montale, come on!

The above post made me smile

This has to be the worst bottle I think. Its just so... well heres the picture.



The flower is made out of the worst plastic ever, its just so tacky in person.

Hmmm, perhaps as a woman this is why I prefer unisex perfumes, nearly all the perfume bottles I own are not pink or flower like at all.

The pictures in this thread are indeed very humiliating.

The only really decent and worthy ad through the history of feminine perfume advisery is the VOL DE NUIT by Guerlain

http://http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_07Z..._de_Nuit_2.jpg


Actually all perfumes should come with a backstory like that of Vol de Nuit; "Jacques Guerlain created Vol de Nuit, night flight, in 1933 as an homage to the brave aviators of the 1920s. The French company Aéropostale was one of the first operations to fly the mail from continent to continent. The chief pilot of Aéropostale's operations was Antoine de St. Exupéry. After serving as a French combat pilot during World War I, he wrote several books, among them Wind, Sand and Stars, Night Flight and The Little Prince. He disappeared during World War II while flying a reconnaissance mission in 1944. Vol de Nuit was named after a novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The bottle is emblazoned with the shape of French Air Force wings and has a dark amber color." (taken from boisdejasmin)

That's a whole lot more romantic and epic than that of the concept of identifying, as a grown woman, with some generic smooth girl in a generic position and with nothing particular to tell any of us.

Or perhaps I'm the only woman who wear perfumes to bring out my flair of french heroicism..

I think they're terrible. They discourage men from buying the scents.

Real men buy pink bottles with ribbons, no problem

Ladies, would you really like bottles like this?