'Boxing avant-garde': a bonkers men's focus group on the Bright Earth Parfums Eau de Earth edp packaging

In my recent review of Bright Earth Parfums Eau de Earth edp, I explained that I was disappointed by the look of the box, whose electric blue colour and bold graphics was to my mind a 'striking match' for a packet of cigarettes, and also reminded me to a lesser extent of a pack of playing cards or a boy's toy or game. It certainly didn't compute in my mind as packaging for a women's fragrance - let alone one that was supposed to exert an aphrodisiac effect on its wearers, as Undina reminded me in her comment:

"WARNING: possible side effects, aphrodisiac and 'parfum d'amour'!"

For the record, the sales copy on the Etsy site where the perfume is currently sold appears to have been toned down, and now reads:

"A subtle explosion of pleasure through the senses
Mysterious and Enchanting, EAU de EARTH
reimagining the power of Nature! and women!"

So no more references to "love elixir" or "taking you where no woman has gone before". Well, I am glad about that, but am still wrestling with the non-perfume-y connotations of the box.
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In the comments to my previous post, a couple of (female) readers remarked that the Eau de Earth box looked like condom packaging, which I must say had not occurred to me, though I can see the resemblance now it has been brought to my attention.

I raised the issue of the masculine leaning packaging with Nicolas, the owner of Bright Earth Parfums and nose behind Eau de Earth. He said that it was too late to change the box now, and encouraged people to view its design with fresh eyes - his sister had described it as 'avant-garde'.

A classically stylish box for a scent called Avant-Garde! ~ Source: eBay

"How about you look at the box with your imagination turned around, you wake up and you say to your self, hum that box is indeed interesting, no more smoking playing video game, it is an unusual view, very home it is!!!"

I am afraid I remained unconvinced that people would be able to make this imaginative leap, and to gather further feedback I decided to host a mini-focus group amongst my 'civilian' friends on Facebook. I initially invited just men to take part, but a number of women piled in once the discussion had got underway:

"Okay, so this is for men only, and only for men who have NOT read my blog post about this perfume. Which I am confident will be most of you. You don't have to be particularly keen on cologne or anything, just an occasional user is fine. I am undertaking some genuine market research for the company behind this packaging, and the question is quite simply: 'If you saw this box, what would you think was in it?' Please assume you can't read the lettering, but can only make out the image / general design of it."

Well, I say that I asked people to pretend they couldn't read the lettering - one respondent helpfully went that bit further in terms of scientific rigour:

"Took the image, blurred the writing, printed a copy, and showed it to the four guys round to play a wargame today. So the sample is geeks aged 49 to 64."

Hmm, it may be that the demographic bias towards gaming geeks slightly offsets the conscientious anonymising of the box. I am still impressed by his attention to detail though. ;)

Respondent's chosen image ~ Source: brandingmagazine.com

Right...I have since gone back and analysed the results - multiple answers were allowed - but from the men only. Views were either expressed directly on my Facebook wall, or in some cases were relayed by their womenfolk.

Condoms - 7
Cigarette packet (several specific mentions of menthol, although I note that many brands of menthol cigarette opt for shamrock green packaging) - 5
DVD (either sci-fi or scientific) - 4
Lavatory cleaner / disinfectant - 2
Electronic device (GPS, mobile phone) - 2
Others - 7 (one mention each for: air freshener / 'air and coal' / razor blades / cold patches / game / sci-fi card game / enormous chunks of elephant poo in space - WTF??!!)

Here are a few comments, to give you a flavour of the lively discussion that unfolded:

"It does look like a bad johnny packet...or some shocking fags, maybe imported from Russia to impress the vulnerable."

"...rubber johnnies...or if not them, definitely something very cheap and subpar. Sorry to your client but that is one ugly piece of packaging."

Source: Amazon

A couple of wags jumped in with additional concerns I hadn't anticipated:

"I would be worried if a packet of condoms had the word 'spray' on it."

"It's rather concerning that there is the potential to mix up razor blade and condom packets."
"Both are found in chemists..."
"Hmm, enormous potential for confusion."

Source: thegrocer.co.uk

Then the other weekend, I was visiting a friend who is a smoker, and noticed a packet of Pall Mall cigarettes on a table, and was instantly reminded of this exercise. Ironically, he didn't even think of cigarettes himself when I asked for his take on the box - his comment was:

"Mmm...something electronic...? GPS...?"

And of course no poll-type post would be complete without an Undina-style graphic. Not up to her standard of rich functionality, perhaps, but my best effort.

An earthy yet unworldy scent: Bright Earth Parfums Eau de Earth review, and another milestone giveaway!

Now that I have been blogging for a while, I find myself at the receiving end of more and more emails from brands and PR companies - and sometimes directly from perfumers - notifying me of this or that launch, or special offer, or what have you. I am genuinely excited to receive news from some of my favourite brands, while tuning out to some of the others, to be honest. These emails often comprise a press release about the fragrance in tastefully lyrical 'PR-esque prose', and usually sign off by asking me to get in touch if I have any queries or would like any further information. I never have any queries or want any further information. Oh, and there may additionally be a pdf containing some high resolution pack shots that they are probably hoping I will use on the blog, but I mostly prefer to use my own, which is more in keeping with my Bonkers 'house style'.

So last month I was quite taken aback - in a good way - to receive a very personal, direct approach from the owner of Bright Earth Parfums - a 'down to earth' approach, if you will. The gentleman in question, Nicolas Fromanger, is a French national living in New York. I was immediately drawn to his surname, which is just a surplus consonant away from Fromager, or 'cheese-maker', a subject close to my heart, having worked for a dairy company and in a specialist cheese shop. I even wrote my postgraduate thesis on cheese. But I digress...Monsieur Fromanger is crucially NOT a cheesemaker, though 'manger' means eat at least. I spy the makings of a fine pun in there.

Here is the introductory email which caught my attention:

"i am French based in NYC, made a perfume 'Eau de Earth', all natural flowers scent, eau de parfum, 1 oz, built like a classic, i would like to send you a bottle, enclosed please find some photos
i just started a small ecommerce, you can find the fragrance at https://www.etsy.com/shop/brightearthparfums
please let me know where to send a bottle
you are a woman, it was made for you too!!!"

'Do I look small next to these lilies?'

Various things intrigued me about this opening gambit: the reference to the scent comprising just 'natural flowers', the blithe disregard for upper case letters, the fact that Monsieur Fromanger (hereinafter known as Nicolas, as we got quite pally, by and by) was selling perfume on Etsy, which I associate primarily with a myriad of handicrafts - it is where I found ex-Mr Bonkers a zombie sock monkey, for example! - and last but not least, the fact that he assumed that the perfume would be to my liking because I am a woman. With the email Nicolas had sent two photographs of the bottle and its box, posing alongside two different types of lily. A clue to the notes, as I later learnt...It was very much the sort of homemade photo I just said I like to use on Bonkers!, but it is unusual for the perfume brand itself to eschew the glossy hi-res shots of a typical press pack. One photo landed in my inbox on its side, while the other was upside down ;) - and the lilies did rather dominate in one picture, but still. If anything, I liked Bright Earth Parfums all the more for these minor malfunctions.

So yes, this refreshingly unslick introduction to the brand worked like a charm, and I accepted Nicolas' kind offer of a bottle, which duly arrived. Even the packaging was splendidly basic, much as I would expect to receive a used bottle I had bought on eBay or scored in a swap. There wasn't even a note inside, or a comps slip.

The box, sadly, was a disappointment. I had been enjoying the lack of obvious commercialism up to this point, but found I couldn't embrace the dark blue box, with its graphic of the earth seen from space - or specifically the sea seen from space - the photo was given to Nicolas by NASA, no less. The bold graphics put me more in mind of a cigarette packet, or a packet of playing cards - or the box containing a boy's toy or game, maybe. It just didn't compute for me as the container of a perfume bottle...

Source: pics-land.ru

Luckily, the bottle itself did look perfectly like a perfume bottle, and I rather liked its circular shape, doubtless to denote the earth again, with the swirly white overlay evoking cloud cover seen from space - or, for that matter, the spray from the sea - for the scent itself definitely has a feeling of rain or droplets of water of some kind to it, without being remotely 'aquatic', if that makes sense.

Which leads me neatly on to my experience of Eau de Earth, into which name I feel an urge to insert an apostrophe, by analogy with Eau d'Hadrien, Eau d'Italie. Eau d'Orange Verte, Eau d'Hermes or Eau d'Eden. So that was another quirky aspect to the perfume, come to think of it.

I have given Eau de Earth at least half a dozen wearings now: the first time I sprayed it I was vividly reminded of Bourjois Soir de Paris, on account of a big, sweet, heady, rather vague floral bouquet, that was decidedly retro in style. I thought I smelt violets and also picked up on a powdery cachou note. I have no sample of Soir de Paris to hand anymore, but I remember it as being a bit 'too much', almost headache-inducing, whereas Eau de Earth is way more restrained than that comparison might suggest, being tempered by what I can best describe as a 'rained on' quality, coupled with a sort of flinty, mineral aspect.

My mini of Soir de Paris, sadly no longer extant

I wrote back to Nicolas with my initial impressions, as he had expressly asked me to do. I also quizzed him about the note list (see, I do have queries after all!), which he was reluctant to divulge for fear of "copycats", though over the course of several more email exchanges he did reveal quite a lot about the composition of Eau de Earth, including the fact that it took him a full year to finetune. The main flowers are jasmine and lilies, plus some citrus, while the base is "a classic built like Guerlain, and in between the top notes, the medium and the base, I assembled a few so to hold those 3 basic levels together, and one of the hard part was to recreate the mist or spray smell of the sea, that instant pure freshness that you encounter as soon as you reach or are near the sea!!!"

So I was right about the 'watery' aspect...

Nicolas then suggested I spray Eau de Earth on a piece of paper or card, leaving it in a room where I would walk past it often, to see how it attracted my attention and whether I spotted anything new or different about the scent when appreciated on a different medium to skin, and in a more ambient way. So I wrote back, accepting this challenge:

"I will try that wafting trick to see what happens. Your spray smell of the sea could be what I mean by the 'flinty' / 'mineral' aspect."

Well, I had a good go at this, leaving a folded sheet of paper liberally spritzed with Eau de Earth on the edge of the dining room table, and wedging another piece of paper in a drawer in one of the bedrooms, but I can't truthfully say I noticed anything very much - I really had to lean in to catch a whiff, and it was broadly the same as on skin. And this despite Nicolas' assurance that:

"It is an aerial perfume, it has the ability to spread himself thin into the air and expand to reach for attention and capture it!!!"

Well, I cannot confirm the aerial aspect, but the watery one for sure, and both perfume and creator had certainly captured my attention!

On the next wearing, I was hit right between the nostrils - would that be the septum, maybe? - by a resemblance to Guerlain Apres L'Ondee. There was the same olde worlde, wistful, powdery yet watery feel to it. I was still getting (as it turned out) phantom violet, though wondered if it might be iris. Anyway, the Apres L'Ondee analogy really stuck in my brain, and now that I have worn the two scents side by side about four times, I am more than ever convinced of the resemblance. Eau de Earth is more of a 'regular floral' and less offbeat and anisic than Apres L'Ondee, but the distinction between them is much more blurred when it comes to the perfumes' respective drydowns, and they both have a spookily similar 'atmosphere'. I immediately emailed Nicolas with this latest impression.

It seems my nose was on the money this time, for Nicolas wrote back and said that Apres L'Ondee was "one of the perfumes I deconstructed in order to put together later different parts of different perfumes for a new one!" He asked if I could spot Chanel No 19 for the green accord or Hermes (unspecified) for the citrus combination. I now think the No 19 connection might explain the bee in my bonnet about a violet/iris facet. But Eau de Earth isn't terribly citrusy on me at any point. And I was not able to pick out any Herbes de Provence or cistus, although they are all in there too apparently.

Anyway, so far, so very interesting, especially given the fact that the perfume contains no aromachemicals, only the flowers themselves and alcohol. As for how exactly the flowers have been processed, I don't know enough about it to speculate, though assume some combination of essential oils, absolutes, concretes, tinctures etc.

Source: parfumo.net

In one of his later emails, Nicolas reveals more about the idea for Eau de Earth - it was inspired by a chance find in a bazaar in Egypt of a little bottle of perfume which was "very much the smell of the Earth after it rained...that scent could remind you of Apres L'Ondee, because it is one of the closest perfumes that gives you that rainy feeling..."

Importantly, however, Nicolas is trying to break away from the melancholy vibe of Apres L'Ondee:

"it is ephemeral, like catching a glimpse of something that you long for! let say a pang, but with joy! and that is what the Earth is for me!!!"

I will be honest, for me - because of the major similarity with Apres L'Ondee that I just can't get out of my head now - Eau de Earth is more melancholic than not, but that is no bad thing in my book. A 30ml bottle of an all-natural perfume that smells like a Guerlain classic and is selling on Etsy for just £18.27! That sounds like a bargain to me.

The perfume is only available in the USA at this time, though the brand would like to find outlets in Europe.

NOT the Bright Earth bottle ~ Source: polyvore

Oh, and I note that Bright Earth Parfums is going for a more 'earthy' (as in 'raunchy'!) positioning on Etsy, describing it as a LOVE ELIXIR (I see we have abandoned the lower case now!), that is "mysterious and enchanting" and liable to "take you where no women has been before!"

So the packaging and Etsy copy - which is its only sales presence at the moment I gather - are a bit cheap and cheerful / cheesy to my mind, but if you can see past that the perfume itself is quite lovely, in that wistful, attenuated, mournful kind of way.

Finally, I thought that Eau de Earth might be a good - and very rare ;) - scent to feature as a giveaway to mark Bonkers reaching one million page views. I am really busy with work at the moment, so will leave the draw open till midnight GMT on 22nd May. If you would like to be entered in the draw to receive a decant of this (men may also apply!), just leave a comment, explaining why you like the sound of Eau de Earth. I don't wish to overplay the Apres L'Ondee similarity either - for as the scent does draw on elements from a range of other classics, you may well get something else again. NB I don't mind posting to the USA and Canada, using the standard wily ruses to fox the customs officials, but obviously I can't guarantee the perfume's safe passage.