FRANCE. YSL Beauté has launched the first product from its emerging brands division. Kingdom Parfum, a female fragrance under the name of the British designer Alexander McQueen, went instore worldwide last month.
The scent is a rich blend of bergamot, mandarin, neroli, cumin, rose, vanilla and myrrh. The bottle, created to look like a heart, is made of ruby-coloured glass encased in a stainless steal half shell. Patrick Veillet designed it in collaboration with McQueen.
YSL Beauté reinforces the romantic and literary themes of the perfume with an outer packaging of white paper and a red seal, reminiscent of a love letter. Inside, the oval stainless steel form of the heavy bottle is meant to symbolise birth and rebirth.
An inscription of the first line of the poem “Kingdom”, by US poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham, also features on the carton. The first line of the poem is: “Pierce my heart again”.
Why “Pierce my heart again”? Because it is closely linked to the parfum and eau de parfum bottle aesthetic. “We must be willing to live and love deeply, to open our hearts and explore our feelings, even if do so is painful,” says McQueen.
The new emerging brands division also plans to launch a fragrance under the Stella McCartney name in the second half of 2003.
