Something Old, Something New Perfume

INDISTINCT

Smell is our most primitive and least understood sense.

Perfume manipulates that sense, instantly reminding us

of good times past, and speaking of glamour

and sophistication to those who get close.

Ohhh! Doesn't disappoint.

Fragrance exploits our feelings so successfully,

it's become a multi-billion dollar global industry.

You know what it says. We all know what it says. But what does it REALLY say?

But with more brands making more scent than ever before,

perfumes that used to whisper now have to shout.

It is an idea of opening a door to a masterpiece.

Today, the marketing's as important as the smell,

and perfumers face a challenge.

Ladies, fragrance today? Try Versace?

Burberry... Burberry Sheer... Burberry... Burberry Sheer...

Can they convince a new generation that fragrance is liquid luxury?

Or has the romance already evaporated?

CHURCH BELLS RING

In springtime, Paris smells of new leaves, moped exhaust

and un-tipped cigarettes smoked defiantly in public places.

But not here.

The House of Guerlain is French perfumery personified.

Bonjour, Madame.

Guerlain sell grand perfumes made to ancient recipes,

issuing new ones when they see fit.

Which isn't often.

They rely on mothers with a sense of tradition

bringing their daughters to the town house.

Blanche is 12, ready for her first fragrance.

The ladies of the first floor salon don't do flirting or squirting.

They're here to gently shepherd.

-Bonjour.

-Bonjour, mademoiselle. Bonjour, madame.

-Bienvenue.

-Merci.

There's monumental perfume available,

dark and musky,

created before the telephone or the aeroplane.

But it can wait until Blanche is older.

She chooses a classic from 2006.

Violet and raspberry notes unmask a hint of orange blossom,

sitting on a base of iris and tonka bean.

It's called Insolence.

In the twilight, Blanche returns to her arrondissement,

probably unaware that in the big shop on the grand boulevard,

she was the most important customer of the day.

DOG BARKS

The Guerlain way is to get them young and keep them for life.

It's a philosophy that's served

Master perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain well.

I'm not able to live without perfume and without horses.

His family have made fragrances for 183 years.

There have been four generation of Guerlain working in the company.

That's my grandfather, who was my teacher for perfume.

Take a seat.

Where are my dogs? Ah.

The first fragrance I remember, it was in 1941, I think,

when the Germans arrived in Paris.

I was three years old. It was my birthday.

My nanny told my mother,

"You must all the same give a cake

"to your son for his birthday."

And it was a strawberry tart.

And I still have in the nose the smell of the strawberry tart.

Always, women have always been inspiration and that's what my grandfather taught me.

You create perfume for woman with whom you are in love.

You know, the most beautiful girl in the world,

when she goes to see her lover,

she if possible gets off her dress,

takes off her make-up.

What's left? The charm of her voice and her perfume.

A woman can be ugly in day time and wonderful at night time.

Guerlain fragrances make a powerful statement, quietly.

Frenchness in liquid form.

Here you have the letters of the different Presidents de la Republique.

Mr Sarkozy over there.

-Which perfume does he wear?

-A special one for him.

I know him quite well.

Mr Giscard d'Estaing.

Jean-Paul is the old guard.

Once upon a time, companies like Guerlain WERE French perfume.

Today, judged by sales alone,

these ancient houses have a tiny share

of the world fine fragrance market.

The big business is now done on the other side of the Atlantic.

In early May, the warmth of the sun makes Manhattan smell

of baked tarmac and spring flowers.

The hot subway air tastes of burning steel.

But most New Yorkers are in here, smelling something else,

on the day before Mothering Sunday.

It's a key date in the perfume calendar.

The fragrance department at Macy's store on West 34th Street

is the most important scent retail space in the western world.

Ladies, fragrance today? Try Versace?

We are just celebrating women all around the world here, in New York,

for Mother's Day.

-Sample Versace for ladies today?

-Rodriguez for ladies today?

We make everybody just beautiful all around.

Welcome to Chanel, ladies.

All the miracles happen right here!

Burberry? Burberry Sheer.

The big name brands that now dominate the industry

have made perfume a fashion item,

something to be changed regularly.

Finding new angles stretches the sales team to the limit.

It's very flowery, very summery.

Ed Hardy Fragrance is a beautiful scent, a tattoo-inspired scent.

You're experiencing strawberry, grapefruit, a vanilla pudding.

You want one?

By sundown they'll have sold gallons of scent to thousands of customers.

-Any florals that you ladies like?

-Burberry Sheer, Burberry Sport.

And that's just this one store.

Calvin Klein for ladies today?

Gardenia, lavender, lilac.

Euphoria for ladies?

Givenchy for ladies?

Would you like to try Burberry?

CACOPHONY OF VOICES SELLING

Five years ago, the New York Times saw the frenzy

and asked scent critic Chandler Burr to write a column.

There's way too much.

It's absurd. It's essentially an addiction. To get that high,

to get that thrill you had, you have to keep shooting up.

And you shoot up more and more and more frequently.

And you just throw things at the market, and nothing ever sticks.

Because it's just too much and people have been now trained to just go on to the next thing.

If you throw so much stuff at people, they have no time

to love anything, to become attached to anything.

And you're not making anything good enough for them to become attached to.

Chandler writes at home, inundated by a fragrant tsunami.

So this is...delivery. There's a lot of it.

This is Yves St Laurent...

Beaute.

And this is Bliss.

Yeah.

This is Love.

HE SIGHS

No.

No.

The Love is Juicy Fruit gum.

Urgh.

OK, this is sort of Lord Of The Rings.

It looks like something that... Liv Tyler ought to throw this at you.

Oooh! Doesn't disappoint.

Oh, my God.

This is, this is pot.

KNOCK ON DOOR Oh, hang on, one second.

Hey, how are you?

Another one. All right.

-Did you come by here yesterday?

-Yeah.

-All right, thank you.

-More?

-OK, yeah.

OK, so let's do this. 15 years ago, there would have been a lot less.

There were about 150 launches a year.

And in 2011, there's going to be, there will have been 1,200, I think.

So these are the...Fresh.

This is the Bliss.

This is the Marc Jacobs.

This is the Thierry Mugler. OK.

So I'm going to do it here. Oh, that's interesting.

This...

this is a fruit. This is a modern fruit.

Ah!

There's actually beautiful extract of natural saffron. Spectacular!

There's just so much of it,

and there's only so much of Chandler Burr to spray it on.

How to make new fragrances stand out from the crowd is the question

vexing perfume marketing executives.

Queen of them all is Veronique Gabai-Pinsky.

She's after the most elusive consumer group of all.

They are called by the industry Gen Y,

and a lot of people are trying to reach out to them.

18 to 27, something like that.

When you ask these people, how would you describe yourself?

The key adjective that comes from them is creative.

I think they make a very clear difference between what is

marketed and what is genuinely created.

Tommy Hilfiger wants a new scent and he wants Veronique to find a way

of making it a must-have for Generation Y.

We wanted to reconnect the younger generation with Tommy Hilfiger fashion brand.

The great challenge of our business is that nobody needs another fragrance.

So when you launch something to the market, good is simply not good enough.'

Hi, Jo.

Hilfiger's perfumes are made by the giant Estee Lauder group,

where Veronique oversees all designer fragrances.

She's got a big idea for Tommy.

A scent called Loud, containing liquid rock and roll.

The whole project is about mixing music and fragrance together.

And we said, "You know what,

"could we push the boundaries of collaboration between music and fragrance?"

Scent is invisible, so the packaging has a lot of work to do.

The most potent selling tool of all is the bottle.

Veronique has to win the hearts of a whole generation for Tommy.

She's reached out to the Picasso of bottle design.

Chad Lavigne is so hot that if he was a bottle himself you'd drop him.

Tommy was very clear that he wanted to see something on the shelf,

see something in the stores, that was a literal translation

of something from the music genre.

Chad's assembled a mood-board,

a collage of rock-and roll references for the drum and bass generation.

Rock star Boyd here brought in a lot of his LPs here.

The volume knobs on the amps cued into the caps.

The record boxes...

-Wrist bands, shopping bags. Gift sets.

-Stacks of records.

Everything relating back to music.

Normally when you walk into Bloomingdales department store

they have the piece of paper they spray for you.

This ones' a little ticket stub.

These pieces definitely go after a younger demographic.

The bottle itself is obviously inspired by an LP.

Within the glass mould we have the ridges in here.

It's distorted, it's pulsing, it's vibrating, it's moving.

And the cap itself we played off a lot of ideas off of the knobs of amps, guitars, all of that.

And then the girls' is just the bright magenta,

which again is so signature for Tommy now in his jeans line.

We designed a resin sleeve that the bottle actually slides into.

A wink and a nod to a physical LP and how you take them out of the sleeves.

It's for the consumer to actively participate in the packaging.

When you come out with a brand or product that is so cool,

the world attacks it. They all buy it, every single one of them.

This one works great.

Paris, in mid-summer.

Jean-Paul Guerlain's promotional methods are rather more old school.

The master perfumer entices journalists

to the cool of his chateau.

He wants to "mention" his new cologne,

named after a hero of French literature,

suave gentleman rogue Arsene Lupin.

This one is important because I'm...

..I'm 73, maybe it will be the last launching I'll do.

What do you think of the big houses making the mass market fragrances now?

-I hate that!

-You hate it?

Well, I don't like marketing, I hate it.

Isn't this marketing, what you're doing today?

Well, it's not quite marketing I'm doing.

It's not panel test and things like that.

Panel testing or "focus grouping" are standard tools in the perfume industry,

but they are not for the likes of Guerlain.

At least, not yet.

Jean-Paul has chosen a successor. For four generations,

the master perfumer has been a Guerlain,

but when Jean-Paul's son decided not to be the fifth,

he had to look outside the family.

Thierry Wasser is the man who will be king.

Right now he's just a regent prince.

There are a lot of girls.

You need at least two roosters in the coop today.

Today is his day. His special day.

Wasser's task will not be easy.

He must keep Guerlain relevant to the 21st century whilst celebrating

the glories of the 19th.

'I am in a position which is absolutely unique

'because Jean-Paul has been taught by his grandfather.

'I have direct link of somebody who created his first fragrance

'in the 19th century.'

'People think it's a heavy burden not to be blood-related,

'but when you have a lovable person like Jean-Paul Guerlain,

'the task is easy.'

The ladies of the press -

and it's always the ladies who get invited to the big house -

depart for the helipad and Paris,

ready to file their copy.

HORSE WHINNIES

Few journalists are invited to the real inner sanctum.

Every Wednesday, Thierry Wasser travels from Paris to meet

Jean-Paul at the Guerlain factory.

The heir apparent has a constant reminder of the weight

of family history next to his office.

It's the lab of the greatest Guerlain of all,

creator of Mitsouko, L'Heure Bleue and Shalimar - Grandpa Jacques.

This is the organ that has been used by Jacques Guerlain.

They are what he used to play with.

And Mr Guerlain was coming here and was making his formula.

Some of them...

travelled through the time pretty good.

It's a cool place where I like to sit.

Here he comes. Here's the boss.

Look through the shade, he's coming.

He is a young man.

When he came to Guerlain, Thierry Wasser was a rising star.

He could have gone anywhere,

but Jean-Paul Guerlain offered something more than just a job.

'I lost my father when I was a child, and as an adult,

'I have been always growing at the shade of a mature man.

'And I used to say that since I find a dad at almost 50...'

..I got my childhood back.

And it is...

Well, what I'm telling you is very personal, actually, but to me,

be back in a loving, respecting, admiring relationship

is fascinating and make me younger, also.

It's very weird. But it's nevertheless how I feel.

The relationship is good for Jean-Paul too. He still has a role.

He still commands respect. The baton is being passed, but slowly.

'Thierry, I like him very much.

'He's very gifted and I think he will do a very good job.

'We get on very well together. That's the most important thing.'

In New York, Veronique Gabai-Pinsky and her team have laboured through the sweltering summer.

They have a bottle prototype for the new Tommy Hilfiger scent.

The next matter is the actual liquid, known in the trade as the juice.

Veronique has brought together a two-man dream team.

We've asked two perfumers, very young. They've never been involved in the industry for the last 20 years.

They are simply too young to have done that.

They're part of that generation

and they're both very interested in music.

Hot but cool, Aurelien Guichard made Play for Comme Des Garcons, and Unforgivable for Sean John.

You have to be a bit naive and innocent to try things that people tell you is not possible.

And maybe you'll create the best fragrance of your life.

Yann Vasnier wrote the formula for Marc Jacobs' Lola.

He and Guichard have just months to produce countless minute variations on a theme.

So just how do you create rock and roll as a smell?

Patchouli.

It was very much used in the past by hippies.

The rose is probably the most universal way to express femininity.

We thought that was rock and roll for us, when we worked the rose with the patchouli.

As their juice develops, the perfumers constantly compare it to the latest releases.

Veronique writes ten commandments for all her perfumes.

Number one - thou shalt smell fantastic.

First time that you access a fragrance, you're going to do it

because of the idea, the advertising campaign, the bottle design.

And then, you know, what's happening is the second time, the third time,

the fourth time and hopefully the tenth time you're going to buy the bottle is because of what's inside.

Quite frankly, a fragrance cannot exist if you don't have

the amazing quality in the bottle.

There are still several versions of the scent.

Wendy Patel monitors the market for Veronique's team, watching for shifts in the public's tastes.

Maybe we could try to bring the patchouli up just a little bit more,

so that you kind of get it, more so with the rose.

Patchouli, a soft-leaved relative of mint from South-East Asia, is the summer's must-have ingredient.

It kind of gives it a sexiness, you know.

-Mm-hm.

-It's...

-OK.

Like, we're fun, we're fruity, we're juicy, we're...

It can just have a thread of that, a little bit more.

The process involves infinite minute changes to the formulation,

getting them assessed, going back to the lab.

The clock is ticking.

The juice has to be ready for the pre-Christmas publicity drive.

The stakes are high.

Hilfiger is famed for two big sellers, both well respected by the perfume trade.

Loud has a lot to live up to.

Manhattan is in the midst of a heat wave

when the day arrives for the client to smell what Veronique and her team hope will be the winning formula.

It's a big day because we're meeting Tommy.

This is the juice. This is the soul and the core and the DNA of the project.

So really we're at the very end of the process.

Tommy Hilfiger arrives 15 minutes late and is due somewhere else in half an hour.

Hello. Hi.

Hi. How is everybody?

Good to see you again.

-Nice to see you again.

-Nice to meet you.

-Nice to see you.

-Nice to see you.

-Do you want to sit down and go?

-Yeah. Over here?

We didn't want to go through traditional market research for this project.

We wanted to keep the creative process very creative.

-...Mm-hm.

-Really, the juices have been

universally appreciated. In a way, that's very interesting for us

because it's not like, "I like it."

It was immediately, "I love it.

"What is it? I want it." So it's interesting.

-Is this the way the bottle's going to look?

-Yes.

Because when it's filled with fluid it's going to look a bit different.

-These are stem models. They're not production.

-This is plastic, still.

-Acrylic.

It's that fine balance of it pulsing but legibility, you know?

What is it really saying?

I mean, you know what it says, we all know what it says, but what does it really say?

If it's OU,

-it's not going to resonate and connect back to the advertising.

-Yeah, yeah.

We'll make sure it's there. I think that we can achieve that.

Your eye will get into the L and the D more.

The box turned out to be really cool.

So it really gives you the feeling of a real...

CD case?

Yeah. And what we'll have

inside here, that will open, flip out,

so the consumer can slide out the bottle.

It's a bit pink.

Yeah, I agree.

We want to put a little more of a blush colour into it, a little more of a skin colour to tone down...

-Yeah, I think so.

-..the pink.

Get it a little more rock and roll.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

What I like also is the tagline,

which is "scent and sound mixed by Tommy Hilfiger".

Mixing fragrance and music together, you know, we've mixed them together, you know?

You're going to have to tear the duct tape to smell the fragrance. That's an innovation.

At the same time, we will give a little bit of education to our consumer on the fragrance itself.

Explain how it was created by mixing sound and scent together.

So this is where we are.

It's always about this rock and roll rose.

It's this overdose of rose.

Here it's an overdose of patchouli, with a teeny bit of rose that runs through, just to give it some...

Some extra.

Yes, some sensibility.

-It's good.

-Yeah, it's good.

-Beautiful.

-Yes, it's good.

-It's fantastic.

-I love it.

Oh...that's incredible.

It's great.

It's very good.

The men's is fantastic.

Spot on.

-It's really saying, "Touch us."

-It's great.

-Bye-bye.

-Thank you.

See you soon, ciao.

Tommy Hilfiger has left the building.

The green light is lit.

Loud is off and running.

In a Swiss plant, the production line begins initial bottling.

They'll go onto shelves beside dozens of other new releases.

For this Tommy, the war has just begun.

Today, many perfumers are being forced to use fewer, cheaper ingredients to maintain profits.

That doesn't happen at Guerlain.

Shalimar, the jewel in the company crown,

is still made to the recipe written 90 years ago by Jacques Guerlain.

One of the ingredients is iris oil, notoriously difficult to extract.

In this butter form it costs £13,000 a kilo.

Precision is essential because a drop or a drip either way and this isn't Shalimar.

This is an old-world perfume, long on ingredients, many of them taken from nature.

Every Guerlain fragrance contains a secret chemical mix known as the Guerlinade.

It's been the DNA of their fragrances since the start.

Here I have a key,

which goes to the most...

ancient one that we have found.

Oof, oof!

I'm going to bet that this is the Pierre-Francois-Pascal book, this one.

He opened his store in 1828.

This book has suffered a bit,

because you know that our factory has been bombed in '44?

Well, shit happen.

Those books are alive.

This is the original from Jacques.

Candide Effluve, we did a re-edition.

Vol De Nuit, extrait.

The books are very emotionally linked to Jean-Paul

because it's the handwriting of his grandfather

or his great-great-grandfather.

His mom's writing on several books.

His family is here.

It's like all those ghosts

are kept in those pages and maybe when you open one

some of those ghosts might pop out. Who knows?

He respects the history but Thierry is about to make his own mark.

He's going to tinker with Shalimar.

It is an idea of...

..opening a door to a masterpiece.

That's something I'm keen and interested in.

We'll see if it works or not.

But of course,

you'll have to think about what Jean-Paul is going to think

about you playing with the family jewels!

There have been a few light, summer editions of Shalimar,

but the big seller is still the heavyweight original.

Wasser wants to make a version for a younger market.

It'll be pink.

This is a pivotal moment in the company's history.

It's an emotionally dangerous thing,

but I change with this book

on my heart

and keeping in mind that

you can't betray the book.

Wasser must change more than the scents.

New markets are opening up east and west, and on his watch

the house will have to compete or risk becoming a museum piece.

Times have changed, too.

The world gets wider and it's a big village, it's called globalisation.

It sounds like a bad word to a lot of people who

love Guerlain because Guerlain is Franco-French and very artisanal.

I think we have to look around us, so my signature

is going to be indeed different than what has been done before.

Across the Channel in the London offices of

the Estee Lauder Companies Inc, they're in a party mood.

Loud is going to launch first in the UK.

The press have been invited and they'll expect to see some rock and roll patchouli.

Marketing manager Trudi Collister can't find any.

Our florist said absolutely not.

They just couldn't get it.

'It has to happen.

'The patchouli has to happen. Veronique cannot show up at an event

'where we're talking about patchouli in a fragrance and it's not there.

'I don't care what fragrance houses have to do.

'But that is a massive, massive issue.'

They came back this morning to say, "We just can't get it from anywhere."

'This is where we have to be a little bit more resourceful

'in terms of reaching out to a multitude of other people to track this down.

'We have now only got three or four days, so now I think we're in big trouble. Something has to be there.

'Please, can you source nurseries?'

Yeah, we can look into that.

-'OK, great.'

-Oh, it's fine.

SHE LAUGHS

-'The calm before the storm.'

-Yes!

We'll get straight onto this patchouli issue.

-'Thank you so much. Bye.'

-OK, look forward to seeing you on Wednesday and Thursday.

-Bye.

-'Looking forward to seeing you too, guys.

-Bye.'

-'So long, bye.'

-Bye.

-Bye.

This patchouli business is a bit of a...

Yes, it's an issue, but we'll resolve it.

-I'm sure we'll find something.

-We'll get on the internet.

Make a few calls.

What happens if it is unobtainable?

-It won't be.

-It won't be.

You find different...solutions.

You make it work, you make it work.

The publicity team have a secret weapon ready for the journalists.

And action!

MUSIC PLAYS

It's a commercial-cum-video mission statement featuring indie band The Ting Tings as brand ambassadors.

You can almost smell the perfume.

# We're not the same. #

The launch takes place in a boutique hotel in London's exciting West End.

Trudi and her team are in a roof-top penthouse

filled with Pacific Rim finger food and a rare herbal substance.

Believe it or not,

this is an authentic patchouli plant,

which seems...vaguely odourless at this point.

We're going to make it look pretty, because that's what we do.

It doesn't look extraordinary but it will be extraordinary when we present it.

At the end of the day, it's important to show people the true raw ingredients

and we had all hands on deck and we reached out to the right people and we were able to get it.

There was not an option to not find it.

This is the long-lead press launch, for magazines that need to know

about overnight sensations months in advance.

Trudi briefs her team about what young people are like.

Music to the youth generation is really, really important.

You'll always see that they're plugged into their iPod or mobile phone, listening to music.

Everything about them is music.

-<

-I'm Trudi...

# I'd like to build the world a home

# And furnish it with love

# Grow apple trees... #

Also on the roof, more brand ambassadors.

Model and it-girl Daisy Lowe is rock-and-roll aristocracy.

Her young old friend Josh Beech is a model and part-time punk musician.

# I'd like to see the world for once

# All standing hand-in-hand

# And hear them echo through the hills

# For peace throughout the land... #

What role does music play in your life?

I sing, but to myself.

I've always got music on and I couldn't go anywhere without my iPod.

Music is everything to us and the fragrance is called Loud.

Veronique has flown in to ensure everyone is on the same conceptual platform.

You tend to have preconceptions of what

younger people would be like or would like.

In fact, you realise if you let really them tell you

what they like with their own words, or in that case with their own nose,

they went for the most beautiful ingredients in perfumery.

To be honest, we didn't know what the end game would be but we knew what we wanted the journey to be.

The last collaborators, and certainly not the least, were the band that we worked with called The Ting Tings.

And that's where I think

there's a genuine authenticity in the project.

Somebody asks you, "At the end of the day you want to sell fragrance, right?"

And yes, at the end of the day, of course that's what we're about.

But try to do it in a way that's genuine and different.

Brilliant. Thank you so much.

-I'll speak to you soon.

-Take care. Bye-bye.

-Thank you.

-Thank you.

They're loving it.

And then I'm loving it.

Positive press is vital, because a mid-market fragrance is at risk from the moment it's born.

If the next big thing doesn't fly off the shelves,

it'll get pushed out of the spotlight and into the bargain bin.

We can buy some nice frozen pizza.

We can buy eyeliner.

Oh, ice cream.

Scent critic Chandler Burr has killed a few perfumes in his time

and knows where the bodies are buried.

And here's the perfume.

Wow, look at this.

Every single perfume here, virtually, has started out

in a higher level, in a more prestigious point of sale.

Frequently they will have a year's run.

If they go down for a bit one year and down another one, then they roll them out here.

If I'm a designer, am I upset that these are here?

Am I pleased to see them here?

You're pleased to see them here because you're making a lot of money.

Now, if you're Chanel and you're here, you call your lawyer.

This is Calvin Klein, OK?

Do you want to be wearing a 3,000 suit from a brand that has a product

that is being sold in essentially a grocery store? That's a question.

Does the money that you make selling this

outweigh the slight fall in the lustre of Calvin Klein as a brand?

It probably does, frankly. Calvin Klein will allow stuff

to be sold here, where it would never allow its clothing to be...

because fragrance is the single best way of monetising celebrity and brand ever created.

And because if you can sell it here but you can sell it at a price that is

something that people who live in the suburbs near here, people with normal jobs driving normal cars, can buy.

And they can buy a piece of Calvin Klein.

It's September and Thierry Wasser is in the fast lane.

He's happy with his new pink Shalimar and has submitted samples to Jean-Paul Guerlain.

'I asked from a perfumer to another perfumer an advice.

'He didn't say anything. He didn't even make a face.

'Jean-Paul didn't sign me a letter saying it's good.

'I don't have a stamp of approval.

'Because he didn't throw the smelling strip to my face or on the floor,

'I guess it was not that bad.'

Without a definite steer, he's about to do something almost unheard of for a Guerlain perfumer.

He's going to ask the marketing department what they think.

Marguerite Ranjard is in charge.

Ranjard lends an ear and a nose.

She's not about to tell the perfumer what he should make next.

Paris, New York...

..Oxford Street.

After months of concept and design, the real test for Tommy Hilfiger's Loud is the high-street shopper.

OK, good morning, everybody.

-ALL:

-Good morning.

-Are we Loud?

-ALL:

-Yes, we're Loud.

-OK. So, just over to Jackie.

Thank you, Debbie.

Hello and welcome to our world of Loud and proud in Debenhams London.

It's very exciting for us and I hope you will all join with me to make today a great success.

We have got some incentives, and that is going to be a £5 gift card for Debenhams.

It's for the first person to hit their stretch target.

-ALL:

-Woo!

Be passionate about what you do. We are committed to working together.

Group hug! THEY CHEER

This is a big one for us. This is bigger than any fragrance launch

we've done recently, so they're very excited. They're hyped up.

You can never predict full success in this business.

You can't.

The first reaction of your sales force is an excellent indicator.

There's no customers around.

Where are they?

Morning, madame, a new fragrance...

Patchouli, rose, lychee.

Would you like to try it, madam? Loud?

-Are you Loud or are you proud?

-What?

Our new one from Tommy Hilfiger. Would you like to try, sir?

Just launched today.

It's quite light, isn't it? I like it.

It's really pretty. Very floral, very feminine.

If you'd like her, a small one, if you love her, a big one!

Suppose she doesn't like it?

She will love it. I know she'll like it.

I'm not sure if rock and roll would be the words I'd use to describe it.

It actually is reactivated.

-The ingredients are reactivated by perspiration.

-Come out again? That's a really good idea.

Tobacco in that one, to give it the masculine edge.

-That's really nice.

-Gorgeous.

Again, the same thing, the same technology.

When he's in the club, DJ-ing, that type of thing as well.

-That's lovely.

-They have got that rock and rolly kind of...

-Definitely wear it on a night out.

-Definitely.

It's very comfortable to hold.

-It sounds very sexy as well, Loud.

-It doesn't smell gay.

It doesn't smell gay. I'm not saying gays can't wear it but...

British perfume fans have been Tommy Hilfiger's guinea pigs.

Trudi Collister has the first sales figures.

So how does it look?

It's looking good. It's looking good.

Our early indications, given that we've only had

two weekends of trading, so theoretically about 10 days,

we're really, really happy.

I did hear earlier on today that in the North East, in Newcastle,

we went to a sold-out position over the weekend.

Obviously it's running up to Christmas.

Looking at this, I can actually see several of the Christmas gift sets have been sold already.

What would you have said if it had gone badly?

We didn't expect it to go badly so that hasn't happened.

When we saw it for the first time, we knew this was going to work for us.

Is it millions or hundreds of thousands?

We couldn't comment.

Right.

But...so it's probably not either of those, then?

The real battleground is Christmas.

The industry does 60% of its business in the last quarter of the year.

All over the western world, perfumers, chemical manufacturers,

growers, brand managers and distributors hold their collective breath

to see who buys what.

A mid-market scent launching in Europe and selling 20 million worth

in its first year would get industry insiders talking.

Even before Loud launched in Europe, experts were estimating sales of 45 million.

Whether they guessed right is a closely-guarded secret.

In Paris, at Maison Guerlain, Christmas is a fragrant bonanza,

but that doesn't lift a terrible gloom.

Two months earlier, Jean-Paul Guerlain had gone on live television

to talk about his career and brought it to an abrupt end with a racist comment.

NO SOUND

Guerlain issued apologies but it was too late.

Demonstrators gathered on the Champs-Elysees.

There were placards calling for boycotts.

Jean-Paul's contract was terminated.

His reign was over in chaos.

I can't accept what has been said.

It is crass.

It is from another time.

It hurts my feelings a lot.

Deeply. I can't tell you...

why this enormity came out of his mouth. But...

..it's just very, very disturbing and sad for me.

Thierry Wasser is now the king on the Guerlain throne.

On me cherche partout, non?

I admire his career.

I love his fragrances.

My first fragrance was Habit Rouge that he made.

He's my hero.

Of course.

This man is an old lion and, um...

..you just deal with old lions, I guess.

It's not easy.

It's not the best way to leave your professional career.

And it is painful for me, too.

I told you, we had,

or we have, a sensitive relationship and this has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Are you still going to have to deal with your adopted dad sometimes?

Well, around food, yes.

I'll see him in private.

-And that's it.

-What about around perfume?

No.

You're in charge now?

Mm-hm.

Yes.

Next time we meet the people who actually invent perfumes...

HE BLOWS NOSE

..creative geniuses with a language all their own.

I can give in this perfume a kind of cold note,

quite cold, and smooth.

We'll be dealing with big concepts.

A lot of the great classic French perfumes hint

at how women really smell.

And meeting the few with the right stuff to make it to Nose School.

-I was hired.

-He doesn't know anything about chemistry.

HE CLEARS THROAT

I'm sorry.

I think he's got a lot of talent.

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