Grooming – A timeless tradition - Part Two

To Michael M. who does not need any of my tips on shaving!!!




+ Q Perfume Blog chose one very cool BAR & BARBERSHOP just for you!

The Blind Barber - NYC

Combining the classic barbershop style with our contemporary urban vibe, it looks very plain from the inside and pole spinning outside (like the old days), but once you are in you will understand what barbershops have to offer. The blindness is just in the name. All barbers hired have at least 10 years of experience and they are trained to give 2 services: haircut and shave (including the Hangover Remedy Service - a reinvigorating 04 towels process - 3 hot ones and one cold). You will find a vintage bar and an antique lounge with amazing beautiful furniture where you can sit and sip the amazing cocktails. Clinging of scissors, ice cubes dancing inside the glass...you get to party and leaves with a perfect haircut. Worried about mixing alcohol and cutting objects? Only clients are allowed to drink, so the question is? Can you stay still after a few tequila shots?
One more curiosity - besides the classic barbershop experience you will also find an antique medicine cabinet and surgical trays (as barbers performed were once surgeon-babers) and the grandpa's den - a plethora of antique settees.
But you don't have to travel all the way to NYC to have a great grooming experience. I am sure you will find a nice local barber to have a perfect haircut. besides the hair, you can have a great grooming experience at home. So, in order to create the original experience, commit to what you are about to do. Find some quality time for yourself and fully enjoy your grooming experience. Separate and organize all the products and shaving utensils you need, including the robe, the slippers, the towels and the music for background. Cell phone is not allowed during this ritual!

Here I give you some ideas where to buy the best grooming products:

Creed - UK & Ireland - since 1760 providing excellency and elegance! - click HERE for the website an on line shop. They have exclusive fragrances for men, body lotions, soaps, etc... Cary Grant was a fan. And you know he is till today an icon of masculine elegance! 

D.R. Harris & Co. - London - in St James street for more than 200 years now - click HERE for their website and shop on line. They have a great pre shaving lotion with citrusy notes and fern.

Czech & Speake - London - in Jermyn Street - click HERE for the website and on line shop. They have a great selection of fragrances, robes, shaving products, candles...a must!

Gentlemen's Tonic - London - mayfair/Selfridges & Co - click HERE for their website and on line shop. You can also set an appointment for treatment! They have special products, such as the daily foaming cleanser with babassu Oil, Quillaja, Bergamot oil and water chestnut. Their daily shampoo with ginger, nutmeg, bergamot and babassu is very delicate.

Molton Brown - London/International - click HERE for their website and shop on line.They have an exclusive shower gel with black pepper. Winner of Men's Health Grooming Awards in 2010. It has a rich foaming lather with a scent that spreads in the entire bathroom. Pure luxe!

Edwin Jager - London - impeccable since 1988  - click HERE for their website and on line shop - They have beautiful traditional elegant safe razors and amazing gift sets.

Acca Kappa - In Italy since 1869 - click HERE for their website. They have amazing brushes and combs.

Baxter of California - USA - luxurious grooming since 1965 - click HERE for their website and on line shop. They have a beautiful hand made razor with a beautiful leather cordovan. Really impressing!

Crown Shaving Co. - Canada - click HERE for their website and shop on line. They have a smooth, silky, rich shaving cream.

Here you will also find 05 Tips to the perfect shave, that I looked up for you in the best grooming & styling and barbershop's website:

1.Never shave when you are in a rush. perfect shave needs time to be completed. Irritated skin or small cuts hurt and they are not appealing!

2.Shave after the shower and not in the shower, using warm water instead of hot water. Hot water dries the skin!

3.Start with a clean moisturized face. Spread the shaving soap or balm evenly, working up a thick, opaque layer of lather as you skim the brush back and forth across your face, and neck in and up-down motion.

4.Hold the razor firmly to the skin. Never drag your razor or hold your skin back.

5.Wait till your pores close naturally, washing your face with cold water to help the pores to close faster, than apply the aftershave, and you are ready to go!

Now, since I have already worked in a Spa I strongly recommend that you do the hot/cold  towel process - but make sure you have prepared the skin with a moisturizer! Finish your grooming with what we love the most: a great fragrance.

A tip for all guys - women love men who takes care of himself, who looks and smells clean - but don't over do it. We don't like our men to compete with us!

(photo credits: All Brands mentioned)


TO BE CONTINUED!

Grooming – A timeless tradition - Part One

TO ERIK K.

Some things never go out of style. One of them is performed by men, every morning as they stand in front of the mirror, to shave and fix their hair before going to work. But there were times when a man did not touch his beard!

From the very beginning, grooming was done by barbers only. They performed sacerdotal ceremonies of cutting hair to remove evil spirits in ancient times; as barbers surgeons, surgical interventions and dental extraction during the Middle Ages; wig design and maintenance during the 17^th century; and since 1850, barbers practice only the art of cutting and styling hair & trimming beards (grooming as we know today).

Men did not did not shave by themselves. They went to barbershops, or received the visit of a barber at home.

The golden era of barbershops lasted from 1880 to 1940. During this period, going to the barbershop was a weekly, or even a daily routine. It was an opportunity to meet and socialize with others. Besides getting a haircut, a trimmed mustache or a clean fresh look, clients had the gathered to catch up with the local news and politics.

In the late 18^th century Jean Jacques Perret invented the safe razor inspired by a joiner’s airplane, but it was only in 1904 that men began to shave themselves, with the invention of King C. Gillette: an inexpensive, double-edged blade that could be clamped over a handle, used, and then discarded.

The use of safety razors was the first cause to the decline of the barbershops era, followed by WWII, the Hippie movement, the creation of hair salons in the 80’s and the metrosexual movement of the 90’s.

Today you can still find some nice classic barbershops, but there are only very few exceptions to bad haircuts available. The good news is: there are brands  still investing in the traditional art of grooming, by offering luxurious toiletry products, such as high badger hair shaving brushes, elegant razors, traditional shaving soaps and balms, fresh aftershaves and fragrances, etc… It means that you still can recreate a classic barbershop grooming experience in front of very own mirror!


to be continued... part 2 will bring you more secrets under the beard!

Culture, Tradition, Modernism, Luxury Brands and Perfumery - The NEW ERA CONT

Continuing our journey through luxury brands and their history, we finally arrived to our present times. In this final part of the article, we will reflect on the changes and major challenge companies are facing to pace up with the velocity of the digital era, and how marketing strategies are developed in this new context.

Lovely EDP by SJP - the website

THE DIGITAL ERA AND SOCIAL MEDIAS
The beginning of an era:

Once most Luxury brands understood that launching a website did not drove them away from the image of elegance and exclusiveness, that ads in magazines such as Vogue, Marie Claire and Elle wasn't just going to be enough to bring consumers attention to their brands, and once they understood that fast and continued accessibility was the key to survive in the present times, they ran to hire web and graphic designers to launch their digital luxury space. The challenge was how to bring the elements of tradition and high quality standards to their website. As we mentioned previously, French brand Hermés cleverly presents hand made illustrations, bringing online, the concept of handcraft tradition. Names like Marc Jacobs launched fragrance campaigns offering to his customers one web site that reveals an experience. He invited his public to share ideas and to even grow virtual daisies of their own (campaign for his Fifi award winner, Daisy EDP). Thierry Mugler went to the same direction by asking people all over the world to help him build a mosaic of images for his newest launch, Womanity. Samples of future launches began to be distributed before the perfumes reached the counters. In 2005 Sarah Jessica Parker invited all her fans to join her Lovely website to receive samples of the fragrance.

Web sites also brought a different way to purchase. On line boutiques sell virtually what was once sold personally. The relationship sales person-consumer was broken, and instead consumers began to explore the sales experience via Internet.


Moving forward:
As brand's website and on line shops were established and successfully reaching consumers, luxury brands learned that they were still one step behind consumers' behavior in the internet. For a long period of time they turned their back to social medias and blogging. They did not realize that the more we advance into the digital era, the more we go back to the simple one-to-one way of communication. 

As blogs about perfume began to pop up in 2005, people were exchanging their preferences and impressions about fragrances on line for the first time . Soon brands realized that some of these blogs were a great space to advertise their products and began to send their samples to be reviewed, risking in the beginning, to get also a lot of criticism. The next step was to sponsor them. On line shops also looked for new places to advertise their links. In one hand, this sponsoring took a lot of blogger's independence to give a truthful opinion about the products they were sampling. In another hand, it also gave them more income to acquire more fragrances to try and write about. (before anyone jumps now, I am not here to judge anyone, just to mention how things are developing. Each perfume blog knows how to manage their own business and consumers know who to trust or not). 
Perfumers and Fragrance House were several times giving statements that they didn't care about what was said in these blogs, or that they had no influence on sales... Little did they know! Today, perfumers and fragrance houses took one step down of their pedestal and they do give interviews to blog writers, and they DO monitor what is said on line. Sometimes they even link to these comments in their websites under "press release".
But back to luxury brands... most recently luxury brands had to face the real challenge: how to introduce this type of channel of communication to their brands? In the fashion industry it was easy to manage blogs. They had runaways to promote, trends to talk about, press releases to link to, etc... But what about fragrances? Is it easy to manage a corporate blog about fragrances? As we know, image is everything for luxury brands. 
Another key word for this market is PASSION. Creating a blog  estimates the passion people has for the brand. It gives to their most passionate fans opportunity to celebrate it on line. Their voice is now heard and published. They feel they became a part of the brand by writing in the brands blog. They live the brand through their postings. In the other hand, the challenge is to remain exclusive. 
How to balance the accessibility with exclusiveness? How to jiggle desirability with full disclosure and the element of surprise? Many questions brands have to ask today.

The internet expands one-to-one communication - The new era of social medias:
As we move forward into digital history, getting social is a huge challenge to luxury brands. Most of them are still trying to understand how to build a social media strategy. The think is, if you don't talk about your brand on line, other people will do the talking about you in your place! That is the first rule on Twitter! (come to my TWITER by clicking HERE)
Communication is personal, less formal, less "snobby", but crucial. When fans create their own page to talk about a luxury brand, the brand itself looses the control of what is published. To make things worst, Twitter gave the possibility to spread the word globally, in seconds. Brands have to run fast and bring good strategist who knows how to deal with compliments, but mostly, the ones who knows how to cope and answer to criticism.  Social media comments are also great thermometers of the market. A good digital marketing team knows how to profit from it. Brand have to monitor their websites and social medias.

So, pages in facebook and Twitter were created and people began to chat and comment the posts. But do they all offer original content? Brands are still baby walking in terms of content production. Some luxury brands are still delivering non stop commercial messages, such as their sales and promotions. Which is crucial info for shoppers by the way, but very very boring, and easy to decide to stop following. Consumers are now in a stage that they want inspiration, they want to feel amused, to connect to the brand.
Some brands have created sharable artifacts, such as applications for Iphone, Ipads etc..., special gifts, wallpapers or pictures for downloading, etc...
As they are still figuring out what to exhibit in their blogs, facebook became what is call today a micro blog. Fragrance groups in facebook were created to share experiences and preferences. I know....it is hard to follow us!! They will need to speed up indeed before we move to the next thing! (Come to PERFUME TALKS - my group in facebook where we discuss fragrances, by clicking HERE).


The future is here:

With the creation of internet gadgets, such as Ipads, iPods etc... luxury brands also saw an opportunity to launch new luxury products such as Chanel's Ipad leather case displayed above, or Louis Vuitton's cell phone case.
The same market has to be explored in terms of applications and technologies, as cell phones are the next trend. Everything we do online will be concentrated in one mobile device: the cell phone. Knowing that Givaudan has already teamed up with Osmoz to launch an Iphone application which fragrance passionates can have info about launches, their favorite brands, info about the nearest perfumery shop with an geolocator etc... The application offers an advisor too.


So we are back to where we started. Influencing and passing  the  traditions, cultural values, trends, preferences, likes and dislikes in a  one-to-one/mouth-to-mouth. The difference now is that we are doing this GLOBALLY and ON LINE. ;-) 

Modernity in video - Chanel

As Chanel’s Global Creative Director of Makeup, Peter Philips’s instinct for trend forecasting is unmatched. Since his appointment in 2008, the Belgian beauty guru has rolled out one hit after another—from his limited-edition nail varnish Jade, which sold for a breathless $100 a bottle on eBay at its peak, to his “temporary tattoos,” a project with Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel’s spring 2010 show, which had a waiting list of 3,589 names before the designs went on sale. For today’s film, directors Jauretsi and Crystal Moselle visited the onetime makeup artist at his Manhattan home to discuss his early memories of his mother, Irving Penn’s light-sculpting ability, and the inspiration behind Philips’s robot-themed animation for Chanel.

Image of the Month - vintage & modern Luxuries

Yesterday

Today

Vintage lotion

Modern gel

Yesterday treatments

Modern lifting

From the attic

From the website