François Coty recognized that an attractive bottle was essential to a perfume's success. After this French perfume master pioneered the concept of bottle design in the early 20th century, the design of perfume bottles was as important as the perfume itself. Although all luxury brands have their own perfume products, the perfumes of most brand companies are not developed and produced by their own company. Instead, the perfume production process is outsourced to a specialized perfumery group, but it is not as simple as an only single outsourcing cooperation.

As the largest perfumery group in France, Coty has produced many brands of perfumes such as Calvin Klein, Chloe, Bottega Veneta, Gucci and so on. Every time a new perfume will be launched, Coty will generally ask the designer to comprehend the brand by fully communicating, initially positioning the fragrance& determining the original intention and basic fragrance of the new perfume.The work of the bottle designer also starts in the same period. Based on determining the basic fragrance type, the perfume bottle designer’s job is to follow the brand requirements, integrate the brand concept into the bottle, and transform the sense of smell into vision. Bottle designers also need to communicate with other product designers of the brand and draw inspiration from the traditional product designs.

After half a year or a year of preparation and the fragrance is basically determined, the bottle designer can finalize the bottle after communicating with the perfumer to present the style of each brand via extending on the basis of the original brand creativity. Because the brand attributes are the core of the bottle design.

In the perfume world that has pushed the little bottle to the extreme, even those brand owners who didn't care about the bottle design at first can't stay out of it now. it is inevitable between the brands to compete for perfume bottle designers. From 1960 to the present, the design of world-famous perfume bottles has been monopolized by a few famous designers. Dior, Chanel, Gucci, and Lancome even hire their own designers at a huge cost to design their perfume bottles and form a unique style belonging to the brand. The designer of Dior's female fragrance bottle “Hypnotic Poison”, John Galliano, was naturally invited by Dior with a lot of money. This bottle precisely fits the theme of mystery, luxury& wildness and becomes one of the most classic works.

No one of us knows clearly how to calculate the commercial value of perfume bottles, but it touches the senses of consumers. If a bottle can move consumers and guide them to understand its contents through the bottle, then the exquisiteness of the perfume bottle makes sense.

In fact, in recent years, perfume brands have increased the cost of perfume bottles. In the production process of traditional perfume, the research and development cost of perfume accounts for more than 50% of the total cost of perfume, and the design of perfume bottle now covers 20% to 30%. From the brand's point of view, this large proportion of bottle cost investment is often worthy.

By: Sabrina