NEW YORK — The celebration may be over, but the battle has just begun.
Yves Saint Laurent came to town — for the first time since 1983 — to toast Champagne, his new women’s fragrance. Launched exclusively at Saks Fifth Avenue in June, the scent is rolling out this month and next to 800 doors, where, according to sources, it’s expected to tally $26 million in retail sales for the year.
Retailers begged off predicting whether Champagne would become a classic on the order of Opium, but Saint Laurent said the scent has become his favorite.
“It’s too new not to love it more than the others,” he said at a reception given in his honor Tuesday at Saks Fifth Avenue. “Women love it, and that’s number one.”
The highlight of the week was a fete for 2,000 on Liberty Island, glowing from the light of 6,000 votive candles and a fireworks display.
Pierre Bergé, YSL’s partner, acknowledged that the Liberty Island party was more low key than the famous Opium bash in 1977, but he said, “We were happy to be there for many reasons, especially because the French people gave the statue to the American people in the last century.”
Bergé said that some had suggested YSL hold the party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since several other designers, among them Valentino, had staged events there, he decided against it. “I don’t want to be mixed with those people,” he said.
The Liberty Island gathering may not have been the all-out party-till-you-drop affair of 1977, when Saint Laurent stayed out all night at Studio 54. Monday night, he returned quietly to the Pierre Hotel.
But he can still sell fragrance.
Champagne did $1 million in retail sales from June to early September at Saks, according to Lawrence J. Aiken, president and chief executive officer of Sanofi Beauté, which owns the YSL beauty business. Champagne is expected by sources to do another $1 million at Saks this fall.
“It’s been a phenomenal success,” said Rose Marie Bravo, president of Saks. “We’re just thrilled with the numbers.”
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Steve Bock, senior vice president and divisional merchandise manager, said that Champagne ranks number four in year-to-date volume at Saks, behind Casmir from Parfums Chopard, L’Eau d’Issey by Issey Miyake and Annick Goutal and just ahead of Angel from Thierry Mugler.
“Last month, August, chainwide it was the number-one fragrance at Saks Fifth Avenue,” Bock said.
In conjunction with Saint Laurent’s visit, Saks devoted its windows to the designer’s couture and featured a retrospective of his tuxedo looks in the atrium. Noting that “the whole store’s Saint Laurent,” Bravo said the hoopla was driving sales of Champagne.
Although the scent is rolling out now, Bock said Saks is maintaining an aggressive stance, tying in Champagne with YSL Beauté, the makeup and treatment division, and featuring it in Saks catalogs.
“At the launch store, we’ve created a home base for Champagne,” he said. “We believe it will remain a very successful fragrance at Saks Fifth Avenue.”
Retailers who are rolling out the scent also expect good things from Champagne.
“The fragrance is great, and it’s a great name for a fragrance,” said Rita Burke, senior vice president of fragrances and cosmetics at Macy’s. “It’s got a fun, celebratory feeling to it,” she said, noting that “a lot is riding” on Champagne and a few other fragrances. “In terms of women’s fragrances, it’s a quiet fall.”
Michelle Williams, merchandise manager of cosmetics and fragrances at Federated Merchandising, said Champagne has “a shot at making the top 10.”
In the three weeks since The Bon began stocking Champagne, the fragrance has ranked in the top five, Williams said. She noted that even though Champagne is not as commercial a launch as, say, Karl Lagerfeld’s Sun Moon Stars, the YSL scent will be important due to the designer’s name and his history of creating classics.
Compounding the impact of Champagne’s launch, Williams said, is the fact that YSL has not launched a women’s fragrance since Paris 10 years ago.
Bloomingdale’s, another Federated division, will launch Champagne on Oct. 2 with an ad in the New York Times that twins the scent with YSL Beauté’s champagne fall color story.
Jane Scott, Bloomingdale’s vice president of cosmetics and fragrances, said the fragrance, which will be sold at both the Beauté counter and at the fragrance bar, could rank in the store’s top 10.
Allen Burke, divisional merchandise manager at Dayton’s, Hudson’s & Marshall Field’s, said that despite a logistics problem delaying the arrival of merchandise in the stores, initial sales figures are solid.
“There is no way that this is not going to be a success,” he said.
To pave the way for Champagne this fall, Sanofi hyped the Opium business, YSL’s classic 1977 women’s fragrance. For the first time in the scent’s history, the company staged a special offer. Priced at $37.50, the set contains Opium fragrance and body products.
Williams acknowledged reports that the promotion generated 25 percent sales increases of Opium around the country. She said the sales gain at Federated was in the high double digits.
The week’s activities apparently left some people feeling a bit nostalgic. At the Saks cocktail party, chairman and chief executive officer Philip Miller, exhibiting signs of what his staff said was jet lag, introduced himself as “chairman of Marshall Field’s,” a post he left in 1990.