Ogilvy Paris Helps Turn Trash Into Perfume

Forget Chanel No.5 – the must-have fragrance to spritz on your wrists for 2018 promises to be a rather more pungent affair. Inspired by the idea of finding beauty in unlikely places, renegade French perfumier Etat Libre d'Orange has created a luxury fragrance from, well, rubbish.

Having made its name with unusual and subversively titled scents – Philippine Houseboy, Putain des Palace (‘Palace Whore’), and Fat Electrician, to name a few – the brand’s latest composition is its most audacious yet. While most scents are crafted from fantastically expensive ingredients – rose petals picked at dawn, ambergris, musk and myrrh – Les Fleurs du Déchet (I am Trash) goes to the other extreme, transforming dead flowers and rotting fruit into a premium new product.

You might think the idea stinks, but it’s actually a clever way of repurposing waste generated by the perfume production process – and selling it back to the hipster crowd for a tidy profit. As the old saying goes, where there’s muck, there’s brass…

Ahead of the product’s release later this year, Ogilvy Paris has created a cool campaign film which captures, in time-lapse, plants and fruit slowly decomposing and new life emerging from the waste. Director Inès Dieleman frames the rotting pieces of fruit, decaying flowers and squirming worms in a way that’s reminiscent of still-life oil paintings, cleverly conveying the idea of something new emerging from the old. It’s about as far away, in fragrance ad terms, from  Johnny Depp’s bizarre buffalo-tinged hallucinations as you can get – which can only be a good thing.

To find out more about the olfactory inspiration behind the campaign and turning trash into luxury perfume, shots caught up with Ogilvy Paris' creative directors, Juana O Gorman and Beatrice Lassailly.

What was the brief for the project?

The client [Etat Libre d'Orange] approached us with the concept for the project, and then came the collaborative process. Together with the client, we [at Ogilvy] strategized and further developed the campaign and ended up changing the name of the fragrance and designing the label. On the other side, the client kept us in the loop on every step of the perfume production process, and we gave our input on the range of different essences they were thinking of using in the fragrance.

Are there any other beauty or fashion campaigns/brands whose resourcefulness was an inspiration?

As far as we know, there has never been a perfume ad featuring worms and decomposing waste. We could say, however, that since the very first day we knew where we wanted to go with the campaign. We wanted to strike the very difficult balance between beauty and disgust, which is the kind of reaction that only the boldest fashion designers dare to provoke. Alexander McQueen is probably the best example of that.

Tell us a bit about the process of creating the campaign. What was the most challenging aspect?

In the film, the time-lapse footage was shot for real over the course of two weeks, and everything used in the production of the fragrance is exactly what is seen in the film: what looks rotten was rotten, what looks like it was stinking actually stunk, and even the worms were actually alive. Additionally, everything decayed quickly because we used organic trash, since the waste the perfume will mainly reuse is organic waste. The most challenging aspect? Not throwing up during the shoot.

What does the final fragrance smell like?

The scent is being created and developed now so we don’t know much at this point, but that mystery is the most exciting part! But it won’t smell like trash, that’s for sure. 

Who do you think this fragrance might appeal to?

As with the other 40 fragrances of the brand, it will appeal to people that are unique and therefore don’t like smelling like everyone else. But what is certain is that it will definitely appeal to the brave!