PARIS — Shiseido image maker Serge Lutens has dreamed up two more fragrances to be sold exclusively at the Salons du Palais Royal Shiseido.
The opulent showcase boutique in the center of Paris is the only store in the world to carry Lutens’s collection of unisex eaux de parfums. With the two additions, there are now eight of them.
Iris Silver Mist and Un Bois SÄpia will be introduced next month at the Salons and also will be sold by Minitel, the French telecommunications system, and worldwide by mail order.
The Shiseido boutique sells the company’s complete cosmetics line, but 70 percent of its volume is in fragrance, according to Liliane Menard, director of the Salons.
The Salons doubled sales last fall with the debuts of the fifth and sixth exclusive eaux de parfums, Ambre Sultan and Rose de Nuit, Menard said.
Monthly retail sales went from almost $18,000 to $36,000 (100,000 francs to 200,000 francs). With the two new scents, monthly sales could jump to $54,000 (300,000 francs), Menard predicted.
Yoshiyuki Nagai, president of the Salons and general manager of Shiseido Europe, projected that the boutique will ring up over $446,000 (2.5 million francs) this year, an increase of 50 percent over last year’s sales.
In 1995, two more fragrances will join the stable, and Menard said the sales target will be $536,000 (3 million francs).
“The Salons exist not so much for business but more for welcoming clients and as a means of communication for the company,” said Nagai. “When we opened the Salons, we didn’t aim for a lot of turnover — but I am agreeably surprised.”
The Salons’ elaborately stenciled walls, inlaid wood floors and curving metal staircase designed by Lutens attract many tourists passing through the Palais Royal garden and shopping area, in addition to a regular client base.
Lutens developed the fragrances, which can be worn by men or women, in collaboration with Quest perfumers Christopher Sheldrake and Maurice Roucel.
Iris Silver Mist was blended from iris pallida root, set off by incense resin and white amber. The scent has a galbanum top note, cedar, sandalwood and clove middle notes and vetiver root, musk and benzoin balm base notes.
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Lutens described it as “a summer scent recalling the smell of white linen.”
Un Bois Sepia is more of an oriental fragrance, according to Lutens, and was created to evoke the wet, woody smell of a forest. The scent has top notes of cypress branches and rose, middle notes of oak moss and opopanax resin and base notes of vetiver root, liatris and patchouli leaves.
The two fragrances are priced at $89 (500 francs) for 75-ml. glass apothecary-style pour bottles.
Shiseido plans a print advertising campaign for the Salons as a whole, with ads primarily in travel and decorating magazines, playbills and opera programs. Advertising for the eight eaux de parfums will also appear in the Minitel system, Menard said.