Always at the forefront of creative innovations, luxury packaging designers are always pushing for greater impact. Mike Hale looks at some of 2006's luxury designs
Luxury packaging in-volves design ideals being enabled or limited primarily by the creative force of designers rather than technical constraints or financial considerations. After all, a sense of intrinsic quality cannot by definition be created out of thin air on a tight budget. And technical constraints are increasingly being pushed back through innovation in techniques and equipment, unlocking new possibilities to designers.
So what is the nature of luxury? “Luxury is quality and exclusivity - these are the two component parts,” says Clive Christian, designer and head of his eponymous luxury brand. “Everyone can't have it and it must be the very best you can make it. For our brand the focus is on beauty - ugly luxury is a struggle to say the least - luxury beyond fucntion and timelessness. By timelessness I mean things that will last in terms of aesthetics as well as in terms of construction. something classic will last forever - and as such people are prepared to spend more on it, allowing brands like ours to spend more money on the quality of luxurious goods. Our perfume range shows this with the attention to every aspect of the products, with packaging as important as any.”
Whilst not every fragrance company has to match the hyper luxury offered by Clive Christian to be considered part of the luxury sector, generally beauty packaging is moving upscale. The rise of masstige brands that aim to offer prestige qualities in all aspects of a product, including packaging, whilst remaining mass market in appeal, is putting great pressure on luxury brands to turn to new methods of differentiating their products in the marketplace. Since conventional luxury packaging is becoming commonplace, the challenge for luxury packaging designers is now to create of a heightened sense of luxury or redefine luxury in new ways. Obviously this can be done through the use of precious metals or decorations but can also be achieved through the added value of brilliant and original design.
The creation of such luxury is an art that Federico Restrepo, designer, excels at. “Every aspect of a luxury product must radiate quality and the packaging as a first point of visual and tactile contact with a consumer especially so,” he says. “The sense of luxury must be relevant to the specific nature of the brand, there can be no general rules of how to achieve this - each case is different.”
Packaging companies are now expected to deliver more for less and many are involved in restructuring programmes to cope with the pressures of the highly competitve C&T marketplace. These pressures are exacerbated by a general slow-down of global growth in consumption, increased competition from regions with low labour costs and increasing base material costs.
Although a notable trend, packaging company RPC beauté says the movement towards sourcing from countries with low costs is slowing down due to the inability of low cost suppliers to provide the level of service and quality that brands expect and the significant reduction in the price gap between low cost producers, whose production costs are increasing, and certain western producers who have learned to efficiently automate their manufacturing processes.
Plastic glass
With its reassuring weight and unique properties glass is heavily associated with luxury products. Materials with glass-like properties, for example DuPont’s Surlyn or Eastman’s Glass Polymer are increasingly seen as valid for use in luxury packaging, although they still play second fiddle to glass as adornments to the main bottle. These materials have many of the desirable properties of glass but, due to differences, can be used to utilise previously unachievable designs.
Other technological advances allow increasingly complicated designs (ideal for the luxury market) to be realised. Manufacturing equipment like multi-layer blow moulding machines are widely available, allowing the creation of layering effects.
In glassware technology now allows for a greater accuracy to be achieved. This has allowed for perfume bottles to be formed in new shapes and use the optical effects produced by the interior lines juxtaposing with the outer walls of a bottle.
The increased importance of packaging means that the manufacturers of C&T products are now working with design groups from the gestation of a project right the way to production. This integrated process allows a creative design to be seamlessly incorporated into a product. An holistic approach can bring new possibilities into reach with no great economic difference.
A key aspect of a product with luxurious association is weight. Heavy and thick glass is often used in fragrance bottles and a trend can be observed in heavy fragrance caps which can be made out of modern plastics as well as conventional glass. For example Lancôme Hypnôse features very heavy caps that demonstrate a crystal-clear transparency and feature a decorative metal plate. The caps are moulded in Surlyn PC 2000. Total transparency is obtained through a perfect mastering of the cooling process. The decorative aluminium plate is then affixed to the top through an innovative gluing process. RPC beauté also used a new proprietary technology allowing a 30% reduction in the moulding time, without compromising either quality or functionality but with the associated advantages in price.
“Every aspect of a luxury product must radiate quality and the packaging as a first point of visual and tactile contact with a consumer especially so” |
Federico Restrepo |
New for old
Fragrance is the natural home of luxury packaging, existing at a higher price point than other products. Looking back on recent fragrance launches, while a handful of new fragrances launched in striking bottle designs, more commonly brands are introducing new fragrances as line extensions of an original fragrance. Often, these line extension fragrances are packaged in bottles whose shapes are similar to or the same as those designed for a fragrance's original version.
Inspiration from the past is certainly one way bottle designers have gone this year. Delices de Cartier, launched this year, is packaged in a bottle curved like a diamond and echoes an elegant Cartier brooch from the 1920s. Supplied by Pochet, both the bottle and cap were designed in-house by Cartier's team in France. A transparent, flower-shaped cap made of DuPont Surlyn, moulded and decorated by Alcan Packaging Beauty in France, adorns the new fragrance. Used on the 30, 50 and 100ml bottles for the edt, the functional yet aesthetic resin from DuPont was chosen for its crystal-clear transparency, ability to produce thick walled parts and ease of finishing. A red Surlyn cap has been produced for the 30ml parfum.” Our designers were already aware of the virtually unique Surlyn proposition: glass-like transparency combined with the functional properties of chemical and impact resistance,” commented Sophie Gaspin, fragrance and skin care marketing manager at Alcan.
Nina Ricci used an original bottle design for its new fragrance entitled Nina. The apple-shaped design references the company's past in that it is a modern reinterpretation of Nina Ricci's iconic 1953 bottle for the Fille d'Eve scent. A romantic fragrance, the bottle continues the theme with pink and red shades, including an apple blush, and a silver collar and cap adding to the apple effect.
Given the saturated nature of the fragrance marketplace there are advantages to using the same bottle for additions to a range. Fragrances are generally more short-lived and all aspects of a perfume must be developed swiftly. Given that packaging concepts take a good deal of time to develop, a popular option is to use the same bottle again and differentiate through decoration or colour scheme. A example of this is the return of DKNY's apple-shaped bottle for the brand’s Red Delicious scent. The new addition is differentiated from the original scent as it is coloured red, with different shades for the men's and women's versions, compared with the green of the original fragrance.
Aside from practical considerations, using the same bottle has advantages in terms of marketing too. If a packaging design is to serve a company several times over a period of years then it allows greater investment in terms of time and finance to develop the concept. With a strong identity from the packaging design the brand is already established in the eyes of consumers, making additions easily accepted. Of course using the same bottle again could be viewed as detrimental to design creativity in that once the original concept is conceived creativity is limited to mere minor adjustment. Can such bottles be truly luxurious when they are not unique to one fragrance?
Clive Christian believes: “A luxury product should be entirely stand alone - not just an add-on to extend a brand line”. But Agent Provocateur disagrees and has acted accordingly by launching its new scent Maitresse in the same egg-shaped bottle. The egg is golden this time round and the glass is red with laser cutting depicting the decorative script and picture.
“Having created a truly iconic package for the original Agent Provocateur scent we felt no qualms about using it again,” says Azzi Glasser, creative consultant for the fragrance. “The differences are clear between the two. This new bottle has a very strong identity and a very luxurious one at that. Using the same bottle in this case is due to the strength of the original design and the opportunities for new original features on this update. ”
Discreet charm
A point of design that shows how luxury design can encompass opposing concepts are the developments in the dip tubes that are used in fragrance bottles. There has been a general trend towards less intrusive tubes that aim to be invisible rather than an active part of the design concept. Indeed, MeadWestvaco Calmar has recently announced the introduction of NoC, marketed as the world's first invisible dip tube. The NoC employs light refraction technology that is said to allow the tube to disappear to the human eye when it come into contact with fragrance solution. Besides the perceived aesthetic advantages this has its uses in anti-counterfeiting methods due to the difficulty inherent in copying such technology.
Other luxury designers prefer to incorporate the dip tube into the design of fragrance packaging, making an adornment out of a part of the bottle generally held to be undesirable; most companies leave the dip tube out of promotional photography. An example of this is the Rexam stainless steel featured enclosing the dip tube in the Dior Homme fragrance, where the dip tube becomes a striking feature of the bottle.
Generally there is a return to a glamourous style of packaging in the designer end of the perfume market. This ongoing trend is epitomised by the use of classic atomisers by Prada for its debut fragrance and by Calvin Klein for a collectible edition of Euphoria.