Sunday, February 24, 2008

Bond no. 9: Andy Warhol Union Square







New York based Bond no. 9 has made me revisit this decision. Their iconic bottle has been a canvas for beautiful designs, each inspired by different neighborhoods of New York. A few months back we announced that Bond no. 9 had launched a series of 12 perfumes with the Andy Warhol Foundation. On March 1st, Bond no.9 is launching its second fragrance in collaboration with The Warhol Foundation: Andy Warhol Union Square. It’s a big, fresh, seductive green floral with equally major inspiration: Warhol’s Flowers silk-screens and Union Square itself, the second location of Warhol’s Factory (and the place where he created his Flowers). The scent is launching in early March because after all: “My favorite smell is the first smell of spring in New York,” Warhol once said.

And can we talk about the design of the bottle? It’s gorgeous. Half the mystique of perfume is the bottle it comes in and Bond no.9 does true justice to Warhol’s vision. If you’re super-serious, and you have money to spend, then the limited edition collector’s porfolio is for you. The collection includes 10 bottles, each with different flower prints.













Limited-edition Portfolio of ten bottles, each a different Flowers print. Suggested retail price: $1500 for ten 100ml bottles.

Available in 100 ml and 50ml flacons, Andy Warhol Union Square will be available at Bond No. 9’s four New York boutiques and at Saks Fifth Avenue nationwide beginning March 15, 2008.

Read Bond No. 9’s story of the inspiration, scent and bottle design ....



The Sweet (and Cool) Smell of Pop Art in Andy Warhol Union Square by Bond No. 9

“My favorite smell is the first smell of spring in New York,” Andy Warhol once said. Perhaps in a similar spirit, Warhol began painting and silk-screening a series of highly stylized, phantasmagorically colored flowers during the 1960s. He returned to this age-old painter’s subject in 1970, when he developed a portfolio of vibrantly colored flower screenprints at the first of his two studios on Union Square. Both the florals and the location were the inspiration for Andy Warhol Union Square, the latest in Bond No. 9’s series of collectible Warhol eaux de parfum, arriving on counter in March, 2008.

The scent, a seductive green floral that’s simultaneously cool and warm, is housed in the slim Bond No. 9 superstar flacon, this time displaying Warhol’s flowers as its surface design. Outsize, otherworldly flowers such as these are of course a major fashion statement for spring 2008—with multitudes of designers taking their cue from the Warhol Flowers series. Likewise, Bond No. 9’s Andy Warhol Union Square is in tune with the times (as perfumes should be). But let us go one further and propose that this latest scent of ours, enveloped in Warhol’s iconic flower motif, raises the art of perfumery to—dare we say it?—a new level of sophistication.

The Fragrance

Let’s start with the scent itself. While most floral fragrances just hint at cool, and vice versa, this one is an ambi-sexual, daringly balanced mix of sweet and cool. Sometimes the gentle scent of lily of the valley seems about to prevail, looped together with blue freesia, golden amber, and animal musk to enhance its sensuality. At other times, crunchy green-stem notes and white birch wood are poised to turn this scent into one of pure, clean energy. But then the sweetness and the coolness merge, and stay merged.

The Bottle/Warhol’s Flowers on Display

Now let’s take a look at the bottle. Its surface design places Warhol’s artistry in a new medium: the surface of the sculpted glass perfume flacon. We present fuchsia, red and yellow colored flowers with blue colored blades of grass. Like nothing found in nature, these flowers remain on the two-dimensional plane. They are like psychedelic paper cut-outs superimposed above the blades of grass, which have an outsized life of their own. Yet the two coalesce in the overall composition, just as the scent’s floral and green notes merge in their own artistic composition.

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