Marry Me! Lanvin

The big window shop shows a young woman (It's a window dummy, ok?), sitting on a chair in a dress which rather shows a lot of her body, sexy shoes aside, some jewellery on a small table next to her, she is rather laying in the chair than sitting and she looks something between a prostitute and a bride to be.

And in front of all this a huge bottle of Marry Me! of Lanvin.

Well, just a matter of taste. It goes with these albums of also brides to be, they go to a professional photographer before their wedding and let themselves taken shots in sexy underwear. sexy positions. It seems to be very successful, the future brides explain they want to keep something about themselves before they marry. Like once they marry the sexiness will disappear and they will miss it. Might be. Or the ingénue beauty of a unmarried woman has to be immortalized.
Sinister.

I involuntary  kept the image of Marry Me! Lanvin for few weeks now. It popped in front of me in all perfume shops on a big place and somehow I always refused to think at all about it, just avoid it as you avoid an embarrassing relative.

But the grotesque and hilarity was to overwhelm me. No, it's too much. How the hell a perfume of Lanvin could be called Marry Me! and who the hell would want to buy a perfume named Marry Me!? That was the first thought.
Then, thinking it over, I realized that's nothing wrong with it, it just stands for our times. Octavian Coifan at 1000fragrances makes a short remark about how marriage is not important anymore nowadays. Is it not? It was not 20 years ago but we are in a big recession, the conservationist and purist feelings are stronger and stranger. The gothic girls, the alternative and the hippie ones all want to marry. All the famous public figures are married or to be married and have children and be good people. Sexual freedom is an old story, 20 years of fear of AIDS taught us to rather maintain same partner and infidelity makes big titles in newspaper. Yes, the girls want to marry and have a white gown (for so long I keep being fascinated by so many wedding shops, all these terrible white dresses but it seems to exist a big market). And feminism is old fashioned and a bit embarrassing. Yes, with all the information freedom, between twitter and last Ipods, we grew more and more in some comeback of traditionalist moral, there is too little to fight for anymore and we are in a plain era of putting limits to our own freedom. Sadly, end and beginning of centuries are often like that.

What else can I say, I'm sure Lanvin had a good market report when it launched this new smell and they knew what they do. They knew there will be a big public for it. It's just normal in a perfume world where Donna Karan went from Black Cashmere and Chaos to Be Delicious, Love from NY and Pure DKNY, a world where Pink Princess of Vera Wang is so well sold.

Pilled up to all this absurdity is the history of Lanvin house. Somehow Octavian Coifan chooses to forget about it. A perfume Marry Me! stays in a Lanvin tradition of perfumes named
- My Sin (1925)
- L'âme perdue (The lost soul) (1928),
- Le sillon (forrow, groove, line),
- J'en raffole (I'm crazy about it),
- Rumeur (1934),
- Pretexte (1938)
- and Scandal (1934)!!!

I didn't and I shall not smell this fragrance. From the light pink (yes, pink) juice a take it is a flowery fruity fragrance able to offer the air of purity which transcends the time and space in order to give to somebody the feeling of wanting a woman so much for the rest of the life. Horrible! And it is even more awful since this is the story.

I would have worn with pleasure a perfume Marry Me! if it was a harsh leather, or a strong cumin or lily of the valley soacked in incense. Bit of contrast to save such a pathetic name would have been the story of the century. But as it is, I imagine it will make good cash for Lanvin and no history. It is the niche's perfumery burden to make fragrances with names like Vamp a NY, which I would buy anytime with closed eyes, only for the comforting feeling of owning something named properly.