Emmanuel Ungaro's Diva Dresses in Gold & Silver for the Holidays 2010 + An Aside on Perfume Authorship {Fragrance News - New Flacon}

A Limited-Edition of one of the most representative perfumes of the 80s, Diva, has been introduced to fête the Holidays 2010. Originally launched in 1983 and manufactured by Chanel, it has been officially attributed to perfumer Jacques Polge for the longest of time although more recently his colleague François Demachy has started calling it his own in public...

...since he has become the olfactive director at LVMH and Dior Parfums in particular.

Authorship in perfumery is a tricky if not tabu topic and often a partial view of reality or even a diguisement of the complexity of the situation is conducted for PR reasons...

In reality, it would be technically correct to proceed as in the movie industry with a rolling-out of due credits at the end of the movie as I have evoked very early on The Scented Salamander when most people preferred to focus on the figure of the (single) perfumer.

We asked for instance Thierry Mugler artistic director Pierre Aulas how many people the house estimated had worked on Womanity and his answer was: around 50 (we are sure this number could go up.)

It is true though that he or she the perfumer has been overshadowed by the brands for far too long as well. But perfume packaging has only limited space. It would be costlier. It is simply not in the mores of the fragrance industry currently to think of promoting team work in the open. It also gives more leverage to the companies not to have mega stars to cuddle and woo and power is on the side of money.

But back to Diva 2010. The notes on the Ungaro site are head: mandarin, tuberose; heart: ylang ylang, Turkish rose, narcissus; sandalwood, Florentine iris, vanilla. We observe that civet is not mentioned. If they are continuing to use it as a synthetic substitute, they are not attracting attention to the potentially controversial note.

Price: 96,45€ for 100 ml of Eau de Parfum

Via Beaute-addict.com