A shop in a major shopping in Sydney’s CBD has a very large ad for GORILLA PERFUME. Before I search online, I want to speculate. Is this perfume for gorillas, or perfume made with some component of gorillas, or perfume which smells like gorillas, or a mis-spelling of guerrillas (in which case the same questions apply), or someone’s silly joke?
I typed ‘[name of company] gor’ into the search bar, and the search engine suggested ‘[name of company] gorgeous [+/- moisturiser]’ and ‘[name of company] gorilla [+/- perfume]’, so it seems like it’s a thing.
I had to click through several times, but eventually found a post on the company’s English blog:
In 2008, a magazine referred to [company] founder [name] and son [name] as ‘guerrilla perfumers’.* [The son’s] brother [name] responded by suggesting that ‘Gorilla’ might be a more appropriate epithet for them and the name stuck; in 2010, the first album [???? non-pretentious people would write ‘range’] of Gorilla Perfumes was released to the public.
The magazine might have been onto something though…
Since its inception, Gorilla Perfumes has danced to a different beat, proudly declaring that perfume is the point. And in the spirit of getting to the point, here’s a TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) of four [sic] ideas that suggest that Gorilla Perfumes is out-of-the-ordinary.
- Gorilla Perfumes are expressions of creativity produced in-house, rather than formulas bought in en masse.Exquisite essential oils are used in the creation of Gorilla perfumes.
- Musicians and a vast network of artists, ecologists and environmentalists inspire, and often collaborate with, Gorilla Perfumes.
- The release of each volume of perfumes is showcased by way of an interactive gallery. Past highlights have included a stone circle (still standing in the Isle of Purbeck), and a large-as-life cross section of a water tank with a fascinating backstory.
It’s perfume. It smells pretty much like any other perfume. I won’t be buying it. But they did get me to notice it. And they did get me to blog about it, so now all my readers know about it.
[* PS they are ‘guerrilla perfumers’ because they develop their own perfumes. It is apparently unusual for a retailer to do this. Perfume developing is usually the preserve of a small number of big perfume developers, who then sell it to the perfume companies.]
Never Pure and Rarely Simple 