Laudamiel's Gambit
Fuck the Fluff and Augment Reality!
I got a strange email last week from Christophe Laudamiel including, as an attachment, a cease-and-desist letter from a New York IP Law firm on behalf of Parfums Francis Kurkdjian and Guerlain, both LVMH properties. The letter asks Laudamiel to stop selling two perfume sets called Fuck the Fluff and Augmented Reality. It took me a while to understand what the fuss was about.
Laudamiel had taken it upon himself to improve Baccarat Rouge 540 and Shalimar by adding materials of his own, and was selling the improved version of each in a boxed set, next to a very small sample of the original regularly bought in a store. LVMH was miffed about the small sample and had some legal recourse against anyone selling their stuff under another label.
My first reaction was “what quixotic nonsense is CL up to now?” Laudamiel is 1- a genius, 2- the poster boy for ADHD and 3- a tireless campaigner for honesty in perfumery, i.e. putting a stop to the endless lies about materials and the endless plagiarism of successful compositions. As far as I can gauge it, his popularity in the perfumery world’s ruling class is roughly that of a Soviet Politburo member in 1975 fond of telling his Party Comrades that Lenin was a monster.
Laudamiel’s reply to the expensive lawyers was, sensibly, to abide by the request and stop selling the two sets immediately, no doubt incurring some financial loss. He sent me both sets by courier. Having smelled them, I now see I could not have been more wrong in thinking that this was just a punk move on his part. It is that too, thank God, but I think Laudamiel’s genius has turned up something big.
For paid subscribers: reviews of Fuck the Fluff and Augmented Reality.
