What I find interesting about a lot of today’s fragrance marketing is that in a valiant effort to offer up a female embodiment perfectly manufactured aesthetic aspiration for their target market to emulate completely (by all calculations), most brands overlook the fact that today’s women are not in blind pursuit of skin-deep selfhood. They already have that. The internet has enabled people to shape the way they are perceived and has provided stimulus and sanctuary for common interests. We’re not lost on superficial identity. Overly polished narratives of abbreviated lust and self-discovery don’t strike any chords with a generation starved of an emotional connection to visual content in an oversaturated marketplace. I don’t want to know what it takes to look like a smell – to be the perfect amount of sexy and pretty and rock-and-roll. I want to know what the mind’s eye sees when I inhale a fragrance. I want to know the sensory experiences attached to being fresh and youthful. And I want others to share in that visceral reaction.
For those reasons, I’m super proud of what our team was able to achieve in this short film I directed with Chanel, in celebration of Chanel No. 5 L’Eau, to close out the year and set a bar for my further exploration into film in 2017.
DIRECTED BY MARGARET ZHANG
STARRING ROSIE COPPINI @ Chic Management
CINEMATOGRAPHY NICOLE COOPER
PRODUCED BY SAMANTHA BENNETTS
COLLABORATIVE ARTIST LANI MITCHELL
MAKEUP BY VICTORIA BARON FOR CHANEL
HAIR BY ALAN WHITE
SOUNDTRACK BY BEDE BENJAMIN- KORPORAAL
ASSISTED BY ARIANE KHALIL