Art direction in fragrance is under-estimated. A perfume is a message in a bottle. It’s not a smell. It’s an impression, an idea. Great fragrances are usually made by a perfumer, and an art director, who says, ‘I want it to be like this.’
— Luca Turin, talking about Amouage’s Christopher Chong, in Oman’s royal family scents global profit in luxury perfumes at CNN.
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A couple weeks ago I was looking at images of the flagship store in Muscat and was mesmerized. I’d love to visit any of their stores sometime.
Nice article. They really have done an amazing branding and marketing job (if you can measure success in milliliters of drool — sorry for the very bad simile).
They really have turned themselves around in a few short years.
Whatever they are doing (and I think it’s making good perfume), it’s working on me. I’ve only bought Lyric so far, but Dia and Epic are in my sights…
Working for me too!
Their plan has worked a little on me….okay, it’s worked a LOT on me.
~~Card carrying Amouage Ho
I think I’d really like Amourage but haven’t worked up the nerve to order samples. I’ve gathered Amourage adoration is a slippery slope in regards to one’s credit cards. xP
A very wise approach. I’ve reached the point where I am relieved when an Amouage scent doesn’t work for me: “Thank God, Jubilation 25 gives me a headache,” or “Yaay–Ubar smells like Deep Woods Off.”
Yep.
Resistance is futile! I tried and tried and tried to resist this line and then *someone* roped me in with a gateway sample of Epic Woman and the rest was history…. I’m now a full-blown Amouage ‘ho, too.
I have an original bottle of Gold–when it was just called Amouage–I think it was in the eighties. At the time I had never heard of the perfumer and really never really hear of them again until I started reading this blog. Now I have Lyric and Jubliation 25 and hope to also have Epic in the future. I do think their perfumes are heavenly, but just so pricey.
Oh, lucky you to have the original version! That was a gorgeous bottle too.
Christopher Chong attended the Spring ’09 Sniffa at Bergman’s (very stylish and younger than I expected) I really wanted to go up and talk to him and tell him how wonderful the fragrances were. He seemed friendly and open to conversation… but I got nervous and everything that came to my head sounded really lame and groupie-like. So I chickened out.
With all of these wonderful fragrances, it is obvious he is very talented. It will be interesting to watch what he creates in the future.
Yeah, he’s really done an amazing job.