Magnificent 007, The 007 Fragrance promo, GQ, 2012
[I loved writing advertorials for GQ. I set out to make paid-for content as entertaining as anything else in the magazine. More often than not the client signed off my words without question but it wasn’t so simple with “brand James Bond”. Eon Productions protected anything to do with 007 with an iron will. This interview for the launch of The 007 Fragrance was one of the easier assignments, with Proctor & Gamble’s perfume developer Will Andrews taking us through his process. He brought with him, to the office, his travelling museum of gentlemanly smells, which was a fascinating journey through the olfactory decades. And I have to admit… I quite liked The 007 Fragrance and even wore it once or twice…]
You’ve bought the dark-blue single-breasted suit, shaped your fringe into a Hoagy Carmichael comma and booked a table at Scott’s. For the final James Bond flourish, a spray of The 007 Fragrance will give extra confidence to tackle any eventuality
Creating Bond
Developing a scent that might be worn by a Royal Navy commander with a licence to kill was the unusual brief handed to Will Andrews at P&G’s Fragrance Creation Team. Andrews, whose knowledge of perfume rivals Q’s understanding of gadgetry, tells GQ about The 007 Fragrance
What has been your involvement with The 007 Fragrance?
I’m a fragrance designer. My role is similar to an olfactive creative director, guiding the fragrance design team. You give an opinion on where you think the scent should go. I’m not a perfumer, I’m an evaluator.
Capturing the essence of James Bond… is this one of your more unusual assignments?
The way we design fragrance is unusual. We think about the experience people want and design towards that goal. In this case, the whole fragrance creation is focused on the personality of Bond. You have to get past the actors and ask, “Who is Bond and what is his olfactive identity?” Once you look at lan Fleming’s creation, you realise you’ve got this dangerous, masculine risk-taker. He’s professional and highly trained but on the other hand, you’ve got this stereotypical gent, a charming, charismatic man, a man who’s very aware of social etiquette.
So you’ve tried to bring in two aspects of Bond’s personality…
He’s clean and masculine. These two aspects of his personality are key. You have to make a fragrance that is distinctive and iconic but you can’t go for something cliched. Bond isn’t a cliche, he’s very complex. It was a challenge. We’ve done it before in other things, but not to this degree.
Did your team take part in painstaking research?
People think you’d do a lot of olfactive research, but you’re not trying to make it smell like Bond, it’s what Bond would wear. You’re bringing his identity to life. You try and get it down to a straightforward brief, this double aspect to him, this raw masculinity and his amazing sophistication. And olfactively, they are very different. You wouldn’t expect to find them in the same bottle, but then Bond is unique.
We had a spray of The 007 Fragrance at GQ and thought, “Yes, this is probably what James Bond would wear.”
You need a fragrance that’s wearable but at the same time has this edge to it. You’ve got some elements in the fragrance that are charming and easy to wear – the apple drives that. It’s very smooth, very perfumistic, very sweet. And then you’ve got this edge, an aromatic masculinity to it. You want a fragrance that gives room for the wearer. There’s nothing worse than a fragrance wearing the wearer.
Where does The 007 Fragrance sit in relation to today’s fashionable fragrances?
Aromatic fougère is going through a real revival. This is a classic fougère with a charming, contemporary twist, with apple and musk. It’s bang on the fashion, yet it harks back to a previous era. If you think about when the first Bond films were made, the aromatic fougère family of fragrances was very new.
There’s a definite Sixties tinge.
It’s deliberate. It’s designed in but it’s much fresher than something your dad would have worn. That would have been a bit more old-fashioned, It was the smell of a well-groomed man in the Sixties and Seventies. All those successful fragrances were aromatic fougère, but we didn’t want to go that deep. We wanted something more contemporary. If you smell the Bond fragrance, you get a piece of that heritage. Heritage is important because unconsciously for men – and they won’t realise this – they’re familiar with it. They’ve smelt it over generations, so it’s like a familiar reference point. They’ll feel comfortable, and they’ll get it. This is a fragrance with a sophisticated, charming twist… which you could argue is for the ladies.
You mention there’s a touch of apple in there – is that to bring out the Britishness of Bond?
We weren’t trying to build the British aspect. We talked about it a lot in the team. There’s no doubt that there are ingredients you could call British. There’s apple, lavender and also rose thorn, which is not an ingredient we tend to talk about – it’s like a stemmy green rose note. Bond’s more than British. This is a fragrance that will appeal to men wherever they are, but with a passing reference to Bond’s Britishness.
Is The 007 Fragrance for the office, a night out, or better for keeping your nerve when diverting a nuclear missile?
Let’s say a guy is at the end of his grooming ritual in the bathroom. He looks at himself in the mirror and says, “Now, what would Bond do?” He gets the fragrance, sprays it and he feels ready. That’s a wonderful image. What would Bond do? This is a fragrance for men who aspire to be Bond or at least have the approach that Bond would have. He’s prepared for any situation, and I love that.
Spy tech
The mesh texture of The 007 Fragrance bottle takes its styling from the grille of Bond’s cars, while the twist nozzle holds true to MI6’s ingenious gadgets
Fragrance file
Bond is brought to masculine, sophisticated life through an aromatic fougere fragrance, a heritage scent with a 21st-century twist that combines crisp apple, lavender and warm woods
The 007 Fragrance is available now exclusively at Harrods, then nationwide from 19 September. From £20. harrods.com