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 Launching a fragrance may seem simple: design a bottle, fill it
with juice, paper the planet with ads. But if you listen to
Patricia Turck Paquelier, below, head of the Prestige and
Collections International division of L'Oreal in Paris, tell it,
creating a fragrance to match the carefully crafted images of
designers like Giorgio Armani and Viktor & Rolf is no easy task.
After all, designers make clothes for the select few, but a
perfume has to appeal to the masses, not to mention the egos of
the designers involved.
"We leverage their image in a tremendous way," Turck Paquelier
says. "They love it, but they also hate it." Designers love
seeing their names spread around the world, but they hate the
idea that they must water down their image to appeal to a broader
audience. Her challenge is to create products that make the
designers proud and make consumers want to buy.
Turck Paquelier is one of the few senior executives L'Oreal has
hired from the outside. After 13 years at Procter & Gamble and
five at Yves Saint Laurent Parfums, she was chosen by L'Oreal to
balance the needs of designers and of L'Oreal chairman and CEO
Lindsay Owen-Jones. In Turck Paquelier's first six years at the
company, she tripled L'Oreal's Armani business. By 2002, the
brand was bringing in about $429 million a year in sales.
These are the kind of numbers that get Turck Paquelier's juices
flowing. "I am only interested in big things. Not small things.
Not niche brands," she says. Which is strange, because it was
Turck Paquelier's decision to sign up the small Dutch fashion
house of Viktor & Rolf. "They want to be famous," she insists.
Certainly a fragrance backed by L'Oreal will help in that regard.
But what's in it for L'Oreal? Turck Paquelier and Owen-Jones hope
that the Dutch duo will attract inventive managers and
researchers to the company. They also want the designers to keep
them on their toes. "We like that they are creative and
innovative," Turck Paquelier says. "It forces us to create
fragrances that are nonconventional." —By Lauren Goldstein
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