Burberry

mock perfume

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Hunkering down in deep snow and sustained lows of -30C (and highs of -15C) accompanied by a painful and persistent cough, I can’t say January has launched the most auspicious start to a new year.

And while I attempt to breathe and sleep through coughing fits, overdosing on more crap streaming films and tv and reading books (at least that’s one joy/goal I can still pursue), I am preoccupied by a burning hatred for perfume ads. The fact that I am taking the time to record my thoughts on the subject speaks both to how deeply annoying I find these ads and to just how incapacitated I am by illness right now.

I don’t generally consume regular television so don’t see that many ads but in Glasgow I tend to watch a lot more linear tv with advertising than I see when traveling. And my god – there is a lot of dismal advertising. But nothing seems more wasteful, indulgent, ridiculous, tedious and overwrought than those for perfume. And for some reason it almost reaches the level of making me angry. In a world where there are countless and unimaginable real problems, over-the-top, insipid ads capture the screen and glossy pages, covered with actors taking home bloated paychecks to hawk fragrances most people don’t want, can’t afford and can’t wear anywhere thanks to the superabundance of allergic/hypersensitive reactions to smell.

I find myself categorizing these ads, angrier at some than others. From the overindulgence of the Natalie Portman Miss Dior ads to the long-running and increasingly out-of-touch and incomprehensible Johnny Depp Dior Sauvage ads, to the more recent ludicrous spectacle of Emma Mackey peddling Burberry Goddess to the frivolous and annoying “Quando Quando Quando” nonsense of Emilia Clarke shilling Dolce & Gabbana’s The Only One. All of these bother me in a way that I cannot explain.

The only ad that doesn’t inflame a sense of injustice and fury is the very brief and basic Bleu de Chanel ad featuring Timothée Chalamet and a soundtrack of “Nights in White Satin”. And this is because it does not seem overdone, although when you dig into the backstory of the brand partnership, you discover that Chalamet is raking in USD 35 million to promote this fragrance. There’s also another 60-second ad directed by Martin Scorsese.

It’s fucking perfume, people. I don’t have the energy to explore why this kind of advertising is absurd and frankly, much like athletes’ distorted, fat salaries, a travesty.

Observations

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Is there anything more dismal than frequent emails from frequent flyer clubs where you will never have any kind of status?

Probably.

Hardened
…Like letting memory wander aimlessly back to revive details such as the wiry, coarse, invisible hair that thickly covered K’s sinewy, hard arms, attached to an explosive, compact, bony, muscular body. Somehow this improbable package provided unfathomable pleasure when hidden away in a dark room somewhere, even if K’s hip bones protruded to penetrate almost painfully deep into the soft flesh of the thick, pillow-like thighs of the other, which made her resolve never to become hard like this herself.

Retail therapy
…Like reflecting on the fact that the most successful department store, at least in the Seattle area, has boomed using boozed-up retail – killing it by bolstering your consumer confidence with some bubbly while brainwashing you to buy more Burberry. (Apparently there is a bar in the Burberry section.)

Reading aloud
…Like spending untold hours reading books I’d never read myself but following through because I promised I would, even if the promise is almost a decade old.

It’s been one of the things I sometimes do – reading books aloud and recording them (these days making MP3 files) – for a big part of my life. Either for my grandmother, who lost her sight late in life and therefore also lost her life’s greatest passion, reading, or for dyslexic friends, who could understand their reading better by hearing it. It’s time consuming, sure, a labor of great love actually, but also a labor of learning for me.

Today I told someone I was reading what amounts to an (amateur!) audiobook, and he exclaimed, “It’s a job! Like a real job. But one that Jeremy Irons does!”

Photo (c) 2013 Vassilis.