Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster (15 page)

Over on Rodeo Drive, Chanel offered free professional makeup sessions to regular and celebrity clients at the Frédéric Fekkai Salon and Harry Winston received customers and stylists in its jewel-box salon, with butlers serving martinis. In
2003
, Harry Winston provided more than $
40
million worth of diamonds for the Oscars, including a $
3
.
5
million necklace for Queen Latifah. Up the street, Caroline Gruosi-Scheufele, co-president of the Swiss jeweler Chopard, and her staff dispatched a heart-shaped diamond-studded pendant as a gift to Elizabeth Taylor, who would be the guest of honor at the post-Oscars Elton John AIDS Foundation benefit, which Chopard co-sponsored. Sir Elton and his partner, David Furnish, had Chopard diamond watches on their wrists at the gala, which the
Los Angeles Times
duly noted in its Oscar party wrap-up.

Swarovski, the one-hundred-year-old Austrian cut-crystal company, took over garden suite number
102
at the exclusive Raffles L’Ermitage in Beverly Hills, one of a dozen luxury brand salons at the hotel. Swarovski has provided crystals for the film industry since the Golden Age, when it helped create the sparkling ruby red shoes that Dorothy wore down the Yellow Brick Road in
The Wizard of Oz.
Today, Nadja Swarovski, the company’s vice president of international communications and the great-granddaughter the founder, has unabashedly pursued the Hollywood angle. In
2000
, she joined the luxury onslaught during Oscar week, booking the roomy fourteen-hundred-square-foot L’Ermitage garden suite, which goes for $
2
,
000
a night during Oscar week. She had the company ship hundreds of handbags to L.A. and sent her top staff to get those bags in the hands of movie stars.

“We have shifted from the supermodel to the celebrity,” Nadja told me over tea in the suite one morning. “Celebrities make it more realistic.”

The large plush beige-on-beige living room was filled with long tables cluttered with evening bags: clutches covered with shimmering silver, gold, or black crystals; little handbags made of dusty rose or bronze crystal beads; plain silk clutches that could be dressed up with
1940
s crystal brooches. “Americans have special needs,” François Ortarix, Swarovski’s international PR head, said as he showed me the collection. “Most want clutches, small, black, silver or gold. They don’t want to take any risk. At the Cannes Film Festival you see crazy things on the red carpet. Here, it’s traditional and conventional. There are so many critics reviewing what you wear, you aren’t allowed to make any mistakes on the Oscar red carpet. You have to be perfect, and in a way that people want you to be, not as you are.”

Over in the corner on the floor sat a pile of clutches, in gold, silver and black, ordered up by Jessica Paster. Swarovski sent Rachel Zoe a selection, but she dropped by without an appointment to see what else they had to offer and left with a few more. Nothing in the salon was for sale. “We are here to create a dream,” Ortarix told me. “We don’t want to put a price on it.”

T
HE POWER
and the money involved in dressing celebrities in luxury brands has brought out a frightening ruthlessness among stylists. Some have been known to hoard the best looks, or an entire collection, until the night before an event so that no one else can see them, much less use them. Some ask their celebrity clients to reimburse purchases of luxury goods that were actually gifts from the houses, or neglect to tell their clients about the gifts, then resell them and pocket the cash. One prominent stylist who dressed Pink, Mary J. Blige, and P. Diddy, was reportedly convicted of defrauding eight New York jewelers of more than $
1
.
5
million and sentenced to eighteen months to three years in prison. He allegedly sold the jewels to maintain his flamboyant lifestyle.

Stylists have a lot of leverage. Some have asked luxury brands for cash payments, mortgage payments, exotic vacations. “Seventy percent of them make it clear: ‘I think I could make it happen.’ And they are waiting for you to say, ‘If you make this happen I’ll take care of you, and I’ll hook the celebrity up,’” says Kelly Cutrone of People’s Revolution. “About
25
to
30
percent say, ‘Yes I can make this happen, but what’s in it for us? Money, clothes, trips, first-class travel, the Ritz in Paris? What’s the business of this?’” One stylist reportedly demanded that a designer pay for her liposuction. The designer did, and the stylist’s client was wearing the designer’s dress when she picked up her Best Actress Oscar. Harry Winston’s Carol Brodie remembers another story—“which I know is true,” she says—about a stylist who demanded that a designer furnish her home. The designer agreed, the actress wore the dress, and the world’s fashion press declared her the best-dressed star on the red carpet. “It’s their lethal poker hand: ‘I need a vacation and can I use your private villa and your private jet and can you pay for my liposuction?’” Cutrone says. “And you have to ante up.”

Says Zoe, “I have never taken a bribe or been paid to use a brand on the red carpet. But I’ve been offered trips all over the world, gifts, cash, anything and everything.”

And some stylists have been known simply to be caustic. For the Golden Globes in
2000
, Jessica Paster wanted to dress her big client Hilary Swank in a gown by Randolph Duke. The publicist for Randolph Duke at the time remembers, “Jessica had heard we were dressing Charlize Theron in the same dress as Hilary, which was not true. At five a.m., I got this phone call. ‘I will not be fooled!’ Screeching. The most insane sound I had ever heard. I held the phone from my ear, and she said, ‘I will ruin you! You will never work with any of my clients again!!!’ So they dropped that dress and put Hilary in Versace.”

When I asked Rachel Zoe about such bad behavior, she sighed. “Stylists in general are really vindictive and greedy,” she said, “and I get really frustrated with this petty high school bullshit that goes on.”

Traditionally, none of that effort or graft guaranteed that the star would actually wear what the brand had sent via the stylist to the celebrity. Luxury brands’ Hollywood point-people would get confirmation the afternoon of the event, then see the celebrity show up with something else on that evening. “For the Golden Globes [in
2005
] I sent over a collection of watches, cufflinks, and studs chosen by an A-A-A-list star,” says Harry Winston’s Carol Brodie. “And I loaned to his girlfriend and his manager and his manager’s wife, which I never do, but I knew he was going to be the most visible person on the carpet. And I looked at the wires the next day, and he wasn’t wearing it. I called the stylist and said, ‘What was that about? Why did you waste my time?’ And the stylist told me, ‘He was all set to wear it, but he got a tray full of watches in front of him and every single one was free for him if he wore it.’”

Eventually, flacks started getting confirmation from the celebrity’s publicist in the limo on the way to the event. And sometimes even that didn’t mean anything. “One year I had Chloe Sevigny sorted out with Bulgari and had her going in the car with it on,” remembers Cutrone, who at the time worked for Bulgari in Beverly Hills. “And when she got out of the car, she was wearing a cross by Asprey-Girard.” Finally, brands started drawing up contracts stipulating that the star would wear their wares at a particular event, on press tours, or for a year. One group did even better: a few years ago, it quietly signed a contract with a top stylist stipulating that she would dress her clients exclusively in that group’s clothes. Sure enough, her A-list stars began to wear clothes from that group’s brands almost exclusively to premieres and gala events—one actress even wore the group’s clothes to her wedding. The stylist made out, too, getting paid on both ends.

Then, a few years ago, the power quietly shifted away from the stylists and to the celebrities. It started, says Cutrone, with the celebrities asking if they could keep the clothes, shoes, jewelry, and so on: “[Then] it was, ‘What else are you going to give me?’ Then, ‘Give me a $
10
,
000
gift certificate.’ And then it was, ‘I want bank’—$
100
,
000
, $
200
,
000
, even $
250
,
000
. And the queens of the bank game are the nominees and presenters at the Oscars.”

Celebrity agents at William Morris, CAA, ICM, and others negotiate the contracts, and the luxury brands state their requirements. A brooch must be visible in an above-the-waist shot. Earrings have to be visible, so hair has to be up. The celebrity must say the brand’s name two to four times on a national television channel. When asked to talk about his or her look, the celebrity must refer to the brand in an audible and clear manner. “I thought it was amazing to put their star’s name on an e-mail,” says Armani’s Wanda McDaniel, of agents shopping their clients for luxury brand deals. “But [the agents] are clear that it is an interesting component for a star’s career. It’s part of the star’s branding.”

Without much coercing, I heard several stories of actors or actresses getting paid to wear luxury brand goods to the Oscars and Golden Globes. The most famous was when Charlize Theron and Hilary Swank reportedly decided at the last minute to replace the loaned Harry Winston jewels they were to wear to the Golden Globes in
2005
with dangling earrings and six-figure checks from Chopard, but said nothing publicly about it. Other celebrities and Hollywood insiders have revealed that Chopard regularly offered “a boatload of money,” as one put it, to wear Chopard jewels. Chopard’s U.S. spokeswoman Stephanie Labeille told the
Los Angeles Times
that the house did not have formal contracts with the stars but that the company had used money as an incentive in the past. However, Chopard seems to be having a hard time with its official position regarding celebrity remuneration: two days after the
Los Angeles Times
piece, in a conversation with me, Labeille denied that the company paid stars to wear its jewelry.

“If you are a contractor, and you hire one company over another because they paid you, it’s called bribery—that’s illegal in the United States,” says Carol Brodie. “So if you are a celebrity and somebody is paying you to wear their goods and you choose it because they are bribing you, is that illegal? It’s a tough ethical question. I think it’s all fine as long as you don’t deceive the public and fess up that you are under contract with the company to wear their goods. I think in a few years each brand will have a face associated with it, something where some money has been exchanged to use the likeness of a celebrity, and the stars will wear the brand from shoes to hats. Celebrity dressing will purely be product placement, openly and outwardly.”

N
ESTLED IN THE HILLS
near the town of Grasse, in the south of France, is a peaceful valley divided by a single winding country road. Along one side runs a small gentle river called the Saigne. Along the other are flat fields of rose and jasmine bushes. The farm, known as Le Petit Campadieu (The Little Camp of God), is run by Joseph Mul, a fifth-generation farmer in Grasse. Mul tends to one hundred hectares of flowers, five hectares of which are Centifolia roses and another five jasmine. Mul and his family have farmed this land exclusively for Chanel since
1986
. Each May, he harvests fifty tons of Centifolia roses, and each September, twenty-five tons of jasmine. In the hills surrounding the valley there are several hectares of mimosa, which he distills for other perfume companies. Le Petit Campadieu is one of the last major flower farms in Grasse.

Monsieur Mul is a jolly French
paysan
, the sort that Doisneau photographed back in the
1950
s, with a round, red-cheeked face, twinkling clear gray eyes, and a broad, deep smile. He dresses usually in a polo shirt, work trousers cinched up under his belly, worn dark brown sneakers, and atop his slightly balding pate, a classic
casquette
. He shakes your hand firmly, his thick fingers as rough as old cracked leather. When he talks, it’s in that distinct southern twang known as an
accent du Midi. Pain
(bread), normally pronounced
pahn
, comes out
payng
. Same with
vin
(wine):
vehn
is
veyng
.

The Mul family started out in the region in the nineteenth century growing hay. At the time, Grasse was a center for production of leather gloves. Leather back then had a vile smell, so tanneries treated it with animal fat infused with flowers. The demand for flowers increased in the region, and the Muls replaced their hay with roses and jasmine. From there, the Grasse perfume industry grew. The belle epoque for flowers in Grasse, Mul explained as he drove me in his navy Jeep Grand Cherokee to the rose fields on a dewy May morning, was from
1920
to
1950
. “That was the generation that flourished,” he says. “It was really a boom.” But in the
1950
s, labor prices began to rise in France, and the flower business, which relies on manual labor, first moved to southern Italy and Morocco, then later to Egypt. Now flowers are grown in such cheap labor markets as Turkey, India, China, and since the fall of the Berlin wall, the Balkans.

For the perfume Coco, Chanel uses another sweet, soft-smelling rose called Damascena, which is cultivated in Turkey and Bulgaria. Bulgaria’s Damascena roses sell for $
1
a kilo, six times less than Grasse’s Centifolia. To comprehend what all this international sourcing has done to the French flower industry, consider this: In the
1920
s, Grasse produced thirty tons of jasmine absolute, the rich oil that is extracted from the flower. Today, it produces about sixty-five pounds. Grasse has become like the haute couture ateliers in Paris: a boutique business kept alive by the generosity of those who understand, appreciate, and can afford the best that money can buy.

Chanel is Grasse’s most important patron. It purchases all of Joseph Mul’s jasmine and
40
percent of his roses. The remaining
60
percent is sold to laboratories that create perfumes, primarily International Flavors & Fragrances. The Centifolia annual production is small:
150
kilos of concrete, the waxy substance that contains the flower’s absolute. Centifolia concrete from Grasse sells for three times more than Moroccan rose concrete. Chanel is “one of the only old perfumes that hasn’t changed,” Mul said. “As long as No.
5
exists, we’ll be here.”

We arrive at the fields at about ten in the morning, the moment when the rose blossoms open. It is warm, with a soft refreshing wind. “Sea breezes,” Mul tells me as we walk down the rows of bushes. The variety of Centifolia that Mul grows is known as the
rose de mai,
or May rose, because it blooms only once a year, for about five weeks in May and early June. The aroma is overwhelming and very particular: the Centifolia is a fragrant rose, but not like the sweet pleasing ones in your garden. It is a far more voluptuous and serious scent, with an acrid edge to it. About forty workers, most dark-skinned and many speaking Arabic, move down the rows, quickly snapping the roses’ heads off and slipping them gently in pouches slung over their torsos. When the pouches are full, they are emptied into big burlap sacks, which are loaded onto a flatbed trailer pulled by a tractor to the extraction factory, a one-hundred-by-fifty-foot, two-story warehouse-like building at the edge of the fields. For most of the twentieth century, the Mul family only farmed flowers and sent them elsewhere in Grasse for extraction. In
1986
, when Joseph Mul secured the Chanel contract, he built an extracting plant on his farm “because,” says he frankly, “Grasse was dying out.”

The roses are brought into the plant, weighed into fifty-kilo—about
120
-pound—batches, and dumped into one of Mul’s four vats, called extractors. There are five levels of fifty kilos each in the extractor, each separated by a giant disklike grille so that the flowers aren’t crushed. The vat is filled with a volatile chemical called hexane, which dissolves the molecules in the flowers and extracts their principal fragrance. When the process is complete, the five layers of brown, spent roses are pulled out—it looks like a giant hazelnut layer cake without icing—and discarded in a regulated compost receptacle. The syrupy liquid that remains is cooked in a still until the solvent evaporates and is captured for reuse, leaving approximately six hundred grams of concrete, a waxy burnt orange substance that smells like pungent rose candles. Concrete is stored in tin canisters and has a shelf life of about two years.

When perfumers are ready to make their perfume, they mix the concrete with alcohol—which, at Chanel, is made from beets—and chilled at–
15
degrees Celsius (
5
degrees Fahrenheit). The fat rises to the top, leaving the absolute in the alcohol. The potion is reheated at
40
degrees Celsius (
104
degrees Fahrenheit), the alcohol evaporates, and what remains is the absolute. It takes four hundred kilos of roses to make one kilo of concrete, which itself is made up of four hundred grams of wax and six hundred grams of absolute.

Another method used to capture scent from flowers is hydrodistillation to extract essential oil. Flowers are heated with steam at
100
degrees Celsius (
212
degrees Fahrenheit) until their sacs of scented oil burst. The steam carries the oil into a chilled condenser, where the steam turns back into water. The essential oil is then separated from the water and bottled. Sometimes, the fragrant water is bottled, too. Rosewater, for example, has long been known for its healing properties, and is used as a refreshing wash or antiseptic. As Chanel uses only Centifolia absolute for its perfume, the Muls do very little hydrodistillation—only enough to provide friends and visitors bottles of rosewater each May. Essence and absolute have different attributes and therefore different uses in perfume creation. Absolute is “more rich,” Jean-Claude Ellena, the perfume creator—or “nose”—for Hermès, explained to me. “Essence is more exciting, vibrant and alive.”

T
HE
P
ERFUME
I
NDUSTRY
does $
15
billion a year in sales. Some perfumes are the old stalwarts we all know: Chanel No.
5
, Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium, Diorissimo, Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps. But the majority are new. About two hundred new perfumes are launched each year—double the number from a decade ago. The reason is simple: perfume is luxury’s most accessible and powerful product. It’s easy to sell, and it crosses borders, cultures, and target audiences with ease. For example,
30
to
35
percent of all successful male-targeted perfumes are worn by women. Perfume serves as an introduction to, as well as a flag-bearer for, a brand—and it reaps great profits. “[Dior’s perfume division’s] relationship with Dior Couture is extremely important,” Parfums Christian Dior’s chief financial officer, Jacques Mantz, explained. “All the communication and what happens around the couture brand helps our [perfume] division, and the broad presence of the perfumes in selective retailers around the world supports the Dior couture brand.” In other words, perfume allows you, as the tycoons like to say, to buy into the dream.

At the same time, perfume has a mystical, magical quality. It catches your attention, enchants you. It complements and enhances your personality. It stirs emotion, within you and others around you. “Perfume was a link between gods and mortals. It was a way to contact the gods,” Hermès’s Ellena told me. “Now it is a profane link: it’s between you and me.” French poet Paul Valéry said, “A woman who does not perfume herself has no future.”

One day a few years ago, a woman went to the Osmothèque, a perfume conservatory in Versailles, and told its president, Jean Kerléo, that she wanted to find her mother, who had long ago died. Kerléo was taken aback. Her mother, the woman explained, always wore the same oriental floral scent, called Arlequinade, introduced by Paul Poiret’s Parfums de Rosine in
1920
. Her clothes smelled of it. The house reeked of it. A cloud of it lingered whenever she passed by. Arlequinade
was
her mother. Arlequinade disappeared in
1928
after Les Parfums de Rosine went bankrupt. The only place it still existed was in the Osmothèque’s inventory of seventeen hundred perfumes. Kerléo took a
touche
—a strip of white absorbent paper used by perfumers to test scents—dipped it in the tiny brown vial, and handed it to the woman. She inhaled, then sighed. “Ah, mother.”

Perfume, like luxury, has a history as long as civilization itself. Prehistoric man applied scent to his body, and the Mesopotamians burned incense for the gods. The Egyptians discovered
enfleurage
—the process of crushing aromatic plants such as roses, crocuses, and violets in oil, which they kept in elaborate glass bottles and used for massage and their daily toilette. For parties, they would throw flower petals across the floor that perfumed the room when guests trod on them. Cleopatra was so obsessed with scent that the sails of her cedar ship were perfumed. “From the barge / a strange invisible perfume hits the sense / of the adjacent wharfs,” wrote Shakespeare in
Antony and Cleopatra
.

In Crete, athletes anointed themselves with specific aromatic oils before the games, wrote Diane Ackerman in
A Natural History of the Senses
. Greek writers suggested mint for the arms; thyme for the knees; cinnamon, rose, or palm oil for the jaw and chest; and marjoram for the hair and eyebrows. Alexander the Great liberally perfumed his body and had his tunics soaked in saffron essence. Romans bathed in perfume, saturated their clothes in it, drenched their horses and pets with it. Gladiators massaged their bodies with various scented lotions before battle.

In the thirteenth century, a Spanish alchemist named Arnaud de Villeneuve refined the process of distilling alcohol—called
aquae vitae
(waters of life)—and soon after, modern perfume as we know it was born. “Alcohol was used as a medicine, and to make it more agreeable, it was perfumed with lemon or herbs,” Kerléo explained to me when I visited him at the Osmothèque in October
2006
. Kerléo knows perfumes better than anyone else today: he served as Patou’s chief perfumer for thirty-five years, and in
1990
founded Osmothèque, which he still runs.

He took out a
touche
and dipped it in a small flacon labeled Eau de la Reine de Hongrie (Queen of Hungary Water), which Kerléo said was the first aromatic alcohol, created in
1370
for Queen Elizabeth of Hungary to treat rheumatism and gout. It smelled of rosemary and burned my nostrils slightly when I inhaled. The queen used it liberally most of her adult life, and it is said to have preserved her great beauty.

French king Louis XIV had a team of servants on hand to perfume his rooms with rosewater and marjoram and to wash his clothes in a bath of spices and musk. He ordered his perfumer to create a new scent every day. For parties at the “Perfume Court” of Louis XV, the staff doused doves in scent and released them to fly about the guests, each flap of the wing filling the salons with a rich aroma. During the eighteenth century, women perfumed their clothes and bodies, dusted their hair with sweet-smelling powder, and scented their rooms with potpourris. Napoleon doused himself in two entire bottles of eau de cologne, from Cologne, Germany, during his morning toilet.

In the mid-nineteenth century, perfume as we know it today came about when French perfume houses such as Houbigant and Guerlain began creating scents for old-moneyed aristocrats and the new-moneyed industrialists. Like couture and leather goods, perfume was an independent business, its own domain, until
1910
, when couturier Paul Poiret introduced his first scent, Coupe d’Or (Golden Cup), Kerléo said. He dipped a
touche
into a small flask of Coupe d’Or and handed it to me. I inhaled its spicy, floral musk. “It’s very modern, no?” Kerléo said. “Something you could wear today.” He was right. I wanted to dab some on right then and there.

Poiret produced thirty-six perfumes in fifteen years, straight through World War I. One, a rich sweet scent called Fruit Défendu (Forbidden Fruit), was launched during the war, causing a great scandal. “How you could produce something so luxurious when our sons are dying in the trenches?” the public howled. They bought it nevertheless. Poiret’s products sold, but he lost a fortune in the
1929
stock market crash. Shortly after, he went bankrupt and fifteen years later he died a pauper. His perfumes and his couture designs have mostly been forgotten. But his idea of couture brand perfumes lived on. Chanel, Lanvin, Schiaparelli, and Patou all launched perfumes before World War II. The scents were heavy, full of spice and flowers. The bottles were works of art, produced by fine crystal makers as Baccarat and Lalique, and the customer base was extremely limited. Perfume—known in the business as extract, because of its potency—became an essential part of upper-class dress, like made-to-measure clothes, good shoes, fine leather gloves, and elegant chapeaux. The masses wore eau de cologne, a cheaper version that was a small dose of extract diluted with orange blossom or lemon water. “Eau de cologne was very fashionable in the
1920
s,
1930
s, before the war,” Chanel’s nose Jacques Polge explained. “It was sold in the mass market and worn in great quantities. Now it has practically disappeared.”