Paul Walker's Davidoff Cool Water Ad Airs During UK Soccer Game, Fragrance Company Apologizes

Davidoff

A commercial for Davidoff Cool Water cologne starring Paul Walker aired in the U.K. on Sunday, Dec.1, during a high-profile soccer match and some fans were understandably outraged.

After all, it was shown less than a day after the 40-year-old actor died in a fiery car accident.

In the wake of the controversy, the company behind the fragrance said in a statement to E! News, "Coty, Inc., the global beauty company that has worked closely with Paul Walker, is saddened to hear the news of his sudden death. As the face of Davidoff Cool Water, Paul contributed to the National Geographic 'Love the Ocean' campaign, whose mission is to protect the ocean. His talent, generosity and passion for giving back were admirable."

"We send our deepest and most sincere condolences to Paul's family, friends and fans around the world," noted CEO Michele Scannavini in the statement. "We are working quickly to suspend all of our ads featuring Paul out of respect to his family and friends. We apologize for any upset that may have been caused by those that were aired subsequent to his death."

The ad itself was shot a few years ago, but Walker continued to serve as the face for the fragrance, having done a photo shoot as recently as September for a new campaign.

Walker also had deals in Brazil with brands Colcci and Renault.

"Colcci deeply regrets the untimely death of Paul Walker and conveys condolences to your entire family," a statement (translated) on the company's Facebook page read, "In two campaigns he worked for the brand, the last picture a month ago in New York, he stood by professionalism, kindness and generosity with which treated everyone."

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Sophisticated men's fragrance sets to give your guy this holiday

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French ready-to-wear brand Zadig & Voltaire presents its Tome 1 - La Pureté For Him fragrance in a box that resembles a boxed set of books.

Each year, honoring a long-standing Christmas tradition, perfume makers present their star fragrances in exceptionally enticing gift sets. In 2013, these brands are emphasizing elegance and masculinity, presenting boxes in black, white and grey containing luxurious male fragrances and skincare products.
Tome 1 - La Pureté For Him by Zadig & Voltaire
For this holiday gift set, the French ready-to-wear brand stayed true to the literary theme used in the standard packaging for the fragrance. Printed with the iconic Zadig & Voltaire cupid, this boxed set contains two book-shaped containers: one concealing a Zadig & Voltaire T-shirt and the other a 50mL Tome 1 La Pureté For Him eau de toilette. The fragrance opens with bergamot and orange blossom notes, rounded out by a musk and sandalwood accord.
Price: around $64
Boss Bottled by Hugo Boss

Hugo Boss offers an original touch with its Boss Bottled eau de toilette gift set this year by including a deodorant and grooming kit alongside the fragrance.

In addition to a generous 100mL Boss Bottled eau de toilette spray, this latest gift set from the German brand contains a stick of deodorant made with the signature fragrance. Last but not least, the white and silver box also contains a grooming kit, with all of the tools a man needs to keep his nails in tip-top shape.

Price: around $91
Armani Code by Giorgio Armani
RELATED: 2013 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE: GIFTS FOR THE EVERY FAN
Launched nearly a decade ago, this fragrance has become a contemporary classic, and Giorgio Armani presents a unique and elegant gift set each holiday season. While last year's edition came in red, the 2013 Armani Code gift set comes in a refined pale grey box calling to mind brushed steel. The set contains a 75mL eau de toilette as well as a shower gel and an aftershave balm with the sexy masculine fragrance.

Calvin Klein combines fashion and fragrance with its latest ck one gift set.

Price: around $97
Spicebomb by Viktor & Rolf
The only men's fragrance from the famous Dutch designer duo, Spicebomb, is available in a minimalist gift set this season. The grenade-shaped bottle of eau de toilette comes in a matching grey box -- complete with a matching black horizontal label -- along with a shower gel and an aftershave balm.
Price: around $110
ck one by Calvin Klein
For the holidays, the American brand has presented a gift set based on its classic unisex fragrance in an elegant, striped silver box. Rather than with accompanying toiletries, the 100mL eau de toilette spray comes with a pale grey and white belt, in a standard size, with ck one engraved on the buckle.
Price: around $75

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Star Fragrance Rundown: The Olsen Twins’ New Scents

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are adding a new feature to their growing lifestyle brand: fragrance.
The perfume duo, which the twins named Nirvana, will be associated with their Elizabeth and James line and sold exclusively at Sephora stores starting in January.

"We always knew we wanted to have a fragrance for this brand, because it's very lifestyle," Ashley told Women's Wear Daily. "We felt that between the brand Elizabeth and James and Sephora that we were really speaking together directly to our customer. We felt that was a really good place to start exploring the world of fragrance and beauty."

The twins chose Nirvana because, as Ashley explained to WWD, "to us, this was really about a moment—and what's that one word that's going to define that one moment where you feel comfortable, sexy and at ease with yourself?"

Nirvana Black features notes of violet, sandalwood, and vanilla, while Nirvana White is a mesh of peony, muguet, and musk.

Elizabeth and James Nirvana eaux de parfum will be available in three sizes: 50 ml. for $75, 30 ml. for $55 and $22 for a rollerball applicator.



Who: Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, our fashion spirit animals and textured hair gurus.

What: Their first perfumes for Elizabeth and James, “Nirvana White” and “Nirvana Black.”

When: In late January, the scents will be released in Sephora stores in North America and on sephora.com, late January — in other words, too far from now.

Adorable detail: Mary Kate got to “play dog trainer” on the set of the perfume’s photo shoot (which features a naked model and a black dog).

Why we care: The Olsens have developed a serious reputation for quality in the fashion game, and there’s no reason to doubt that their new fragrances will be anything but carefully curated and super stylish. The fragrances took almost two years to develop; they convey, according to Mary Kate, a sense of intimacy, while Ashley says that they embody “that one moment where you feel comfortable, sexy and at ease with yourself.” Nirvana White features peony, muguet, and musk notes. Nirvana Black is violet, sandalwood, and vanilla. Yeah, we’ll do anything to be more like an Olsen.

Jaguars trapped by perfume obsession

Now this is not a problem that most of us have. Even so, let me lay it on you. How would you attract a jaguar to your camera trap?

Let's look at the jaguar. This solitary, nocturnal animal is smaller than lions or tigers and so it's the third largest cat in the world.

The female's territory ranges from 25 to 40 square kilometres, while the male's is twice the size. Today, jaguars are found only in the Americas, from the southwest of the USA across the equator and down to northern Argentina.

Second, what is a camera trap? It's a remote hidden camera that silently takes photographs when an animal passes in front of the lens and triggers some kind of sensor. It has many advantages.

First, you learn about the animal's natural behaviour without the confounding affects of a human presence. Most animals can't sense infrared radiation so infrared flashes are widely used to take the photos.

Second, a camera trap lets you collect data continuously, whereas a human operator would need to sleep.

Third, camera traps have given us both evidence of rare species in the wild and rare behaviour, such as an eagle attacking a deer.

Fourth, it's a lot cheaper to set up a whole bunch of camera traps than to pay many field assistants.

And fifth, camera traps are a much kinder and less invasive way of getting information about animals than the traditional method of trapping, studying and finally releasing them.

So, how do you get a jaguar to visit your camera trap? Well according to Miguel Ordeñana a biologist from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles you spray a men's cologne — that's right Calvin Klein Obsession for Men on a tree branch near the centre of your camera's field of view.

Now, this odd preference was discovered by a researcher at the Bronx Zoo in New York who tried a whole bunch of different scents and found that the jaguars really, really liked Obsession.

Why? Well we're not really sure. But the best guess is related to the fact that Obsession contains two chemicals: civetone and vanilla extract. Perhaps the vanilla triggers the curiosity of the jaguar — we really don't know. But we know a lot more about civetone, one of the oldest-known perfume ingredients.

It's a musky chemical collected by glands near the anus of the civet, and it's widely used as a fragrance and stabilising chemical in perfumes. The poor animal that supplies the much valued civetone is the civet, a mostly nocturnal animal from tropical Africa and Asia. It looks like a cat but it's more closely related to a mongoose. They're not very large, being about 43 to 71 centimetres long with a weight between 1.4 and 4.5 kilograms.

Why would a jaguar be interested in civetone? Well, jaguars like to mark out their territory, and the civetone probably smells like the territorial marker of a potential invader. So the jaguar responds by rubbing its own scent on top of the cologne Calvin Klein Obsession for Men and bingo, it unknowlingly gets photographed.

By the way, there's another twist to this tale. The most expensive coffee in the world, up to $700 per kilogram is made from coffee beans that have passed through the gut of a civet. The civet eats the so-called 'coffee cherry', digests the plump fruit and excretes the indigestible coffee bean covered in civet poo.

This coffee is variously claimed to be "smooth, chocolately and devoid of any bitter after-taste" or having a "smooth, caramel-like taste or a rich, almost full-bodied syrupy quality". Certainly, research by food chemist Massimo Marcone found that the digestive enzymes inside the civet's gut attacked some of the proteins in the coffee bean. This snipped some of the longer proteins into shorter ones and actually generated lots of free amino acids. Did it actually improve the flavour? Well, according to the coffee connoisseurs: "no". Civet coffee is pretty universally reckoned to be an expensive and rare novelty item rather than the prince of coffees.

But one thing you should know is: if you are on a bushwalk through the jungles of Nicaragua you might be better off not wearing Calvin Klein Obsession for Men …

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What happens when a woman wears Axe fragrance for a week?

Probably if I had watched the commercials first, I would never have undertaken this whole stupid experiment.

Axe commercials? Awful. They are the media equivalent of the fragrance itself. I mean, naked ladies covered in tiny congruent triangles assault bemused middle managers. These are commercials that could have been made backstage at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show, if angels really liked feathers in their strawberry milkshakes.

Nor did I come to Axe men’s fragrance by sniffing the air at the U.S. Supreme Court, which I cover. Me, I discovered Axe the usual way, through my 13-year-old nephew, for whom the whole prospect of a lifetime of boom-chicka-wah-wah is perhaps still too much to contemplate.

My own boys, at 8 and 10, are too young for Axe, or for fragrance, or for wah-wahs of any variety — or so I shall insist to myself until they are about 40. But after a single day at the beach in August, when they shared a bathroom with their big hockey-playing, Axe-scented cousin/hero, even the 8-year-old was smearing his small hairless self with the body wash, deodorant and spray cologne.

Dinners quickly became unbearable, with three Axe-drenched young people fogging up all tastes and smells. On it went, until the final weekend at the beach, when I found myself trapped in the shower with only a bottle of three-in-one Axe (shampoo, body-wash and conditioner). So I broke down and used it.

It was the most sublimely powerful fragrance experience of my adult life. Truly. After decades of smelling like a flower or a fruit, for the first time, I smelled like teen boy spirit. I smelled the way an adolescent male smells when he feels that everything good in the universe is about to be delivered to him, possibly by girls in angel wings. I loved it. I wanted more.

When I told my husband that I was planning to wear only Axe men’s products for an entire week, his answer was a foreshadowing of things to come: “You’re planning on wearing that stuff to bed every night for a week? Man. Axe really does work. It’s only been a few minutes and look, you’re already single again …” 

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Greg Lauren, Barneys New York fete new designer fragrance

Actor, artist and fashion designer Greg Lauren unveiled his foray into the world of fragrance in Hollywood on Tuesday night -- against a backdrop of olive-drab Army tents, paint-splattered plywood floors and just beyond a paintbrush-wielding gentleman near the entrance who generously anointed arriving guests with a baptismal swath of blue paint.

Once inside, the guests, who had been provided white Greg Lauren overshirts on arrival, removed them and hung them on racks to dry (or, in some cases, have additional paint splattered on them) and were given claim tickets so they could take their one-of-a-kind spontaneous creations with them as they left.

As a way of hammering home Lauren's goal for the scent -- a Barneys New York collaboration -- it was a master (brush) stroke of genius.

"I wanted everyone to immediately and interactively engage in the artistic spirit," he said. "To have fun and feel what it's like to be the bottle."

Lauren was referring to the paint-splattered fragrance bottles, each one distressed by Lauren himself -- a torn label here, a bit of hand-sanding there -- and labeled with a simple piece of masking tape on which he'd written his name with a black Sharpie pen.

"I was so excited to sink my teeth into my natural territory, which is the packaging and the bottle," he said. "I wanted each person to feel like they were getting a little piece of art -- a little jewel -- so that they'd think: 'Wow, a person really touched this.'"

For the scent itself, Lauren turned to renowned perfumer Ralf Schweiger (his past efforts include Marc Jacobs Men and Yves St. Laurent Baby Doll), asking him to craft a fragrance that reflected some of the common themes in the artist's work.

"I wanted the contradictory themes of strength and vulnerability, pain and beauty," Lauren said. "I literally asked [Schweiger] if there was a scent that we could find that would make you cry and make you smile at the same time -- that’s what I wanted."

The result is a unisex fragrance described as "a combination of tonka beans, vanilla, and marine notes." Perhaps it was because Lauren had mentioned crying, but our first sniff gave us a distinct impression of salty and sweet and evoked the image of one's true love sitting in a scented bubble bath, warm tears streaming down her face and pooling atop a vanilla sundae.

Joining Lauren to celebrate the scent were his wife, actress and current "Dancing with the Stars" contestant Elizabeth Berkley; Berkley's "DWTS" dance partner Val Chmerkovskiy; Paula Abdul; Mariel Hemingway; artist Ally Hilfiger; shoemaker of the moment George Esquivel and LACMA chief executive and director Michael Govan and his wife, Katherine Ross.

Greg Lauren for Barneys New York is the second in the retailer's designer fragrance collection (the first, with L'Wren Scott, came out last November), and the 2,500 limited-edition 100-milliliter bottles are priced at $195 each and are available exclusively through Barneys. 

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Fragrance of the Week: Paul Smith Portrait For Men

Since getting into the perfume business at the turn of the century Paul Smith has put his name to over 30 fragrances for both men and women, often created with the help of some of the sharpest noses in the business. Now the man is back with a new collaborator - magnificently hirsute model and perfumier Barnabe Fillion, who has previously featured in Smith's ad campaigns.

This scent has been created by drawing on the designer's experiences while travelling, not just in the bottle (which is supposedly a mash-up of a water flask and a camera), but also in the essences spliced up inside: cardamom and pink pepper from Indian spice markets, myhrr from Moroccan souks and green tea from Japan, all held together with woody undertones of cedar and Tolu balsam. Fresh, masculine and warm, but not heavy, all in all it's the kind of easy-to-wear scent that is going to fit whatever dress code the day demands.

£39 for 40ml. paulsmith.com

Jay Z’s “Gold” New Perfume Launch

Meanwhile, Jay Z is also taking the fragrance industry by storm: The rap mogul will launch his first men's eau de toilette, "Gold Jay Z" on Black Friday at major department stores across the U.S.

The men's fragrance will be packaged in a gold-topped white bottle and coordinating box. The cap features engraved terms that inspired the cologne: "Power," "Pride," "Confidence," "Strength," "Success," and "Courage."


Who: Jay Z, who’s apparently not pulling out of his now-controversial Barney’s collaboration at all — in fact, he’s adding to it with this scent.

What: Gold by Jay Z, the first men’s fragrance that Hova has released under his own name (he’s previously designed colognes for Rocawear).

When: November 20 at Barneys; expect a guerilla-style marketing campaign up until then (example: handing out perfume samples to people waiting in line for Broadway tickets).

Hilarious detail: Apparently Jay Z rejected 3,200 names for the scent before alighting on “Gold.” Sure, perfume-making involves a series of tough decisions, but it’s kind of the most obvious name ever for a Jay Z scent. “Watch the Throne” was literally released with a gold-embossed cover.

Why we care: The cologne has top notes of cardamom, yellow ginger, grapefruit, and blueberry. If it’s anything like the luxe-minimalist aesthetic of the rest of Jay Z’s Barneys collaboration, the ladies will be buying it, too.

I think the will be a successful venture for the rapper and business mogul. I know the artist and the business man inside Jay Z will be happy he did launch this new gold standard. This will sell with both the grownup businessmen and the young ones who listen to rap and follow sports. Why should Beyonce have all the fragrance fun?

The 10 Best men's fragrances

For the new season, don’t just change what clothes you wear – opt for a hardier fragrance as the weather begins to chill

1. Yohji Homme

If your sartorial tastes are a tad  avant-garde, then look for a scent that reflects this. Yohji Yamamoto’s signature fragrance is a mixture of rum, cardamom and coffee, offering up a spicy and sophisticated concoction.

£35 for 50ml, Yohji Yamamoto,  selfridges.com

2. Gucci Made to Measure

This fragrance has a real air of exclusivity about it. It takes as its inspiration the bespoke tailoring service that the label also offers. With a top note of lavender and a base of patchouli, at its heart is balancing nutmeg which adds texture.

£49 for 50ml, Gucci, houseoffraser.co.uk

3. Amazingreen

Comme des Garçons’ fragrance packs a punch to the nose with a base note of gunpowder and vetiver mixed with, as the name suggests, lots of green: green tea, green pepper, jungle and palm leaves.

£45.60 for 50ml, Comme des Garcons,escentual.com

4. Vetiver Vert

Czech & Speake is world renowned and Vetiver Vert is one of its best. That vetiver is a ubiquitous ingredient of many male fragrances is common knowledge; but here it is lifted by top notes of bergamot and mandarin.

£85 for 100ml, Czech & Speake,czechandspeake.com

5. Moon of Baroda

You wouldn’t normally associate rose oil with a male scent but it’s become increasing popular over the past few years – something to do with how the rose reacts with male skin makes it smell less feminine. Here, Taif rose is the base note that is balanced by fragrant cedar wood.

£145 for 50ml, Thameen, selfridges.com

6. Private Blend London

This luxurious fragrance has been specially created to celebrate the opening of the first Tom Ford store in London. It’s a mixture of exclusive oud oil and musk, creating a scent that plays with the senses.

£140 for 50ml, Tom Ford, tomford.com

7. Luna Rossa Extreme

This is the latest fragrance from the Prada stable. The heart of the scent is amber mixed with hot black pepper and zesty bergamot. Thrown into the mix are vanilla, juniper and labdanum. It’s a veritable melting pot of flavours which, surprisingly, work well together.

£45 for 100ml, Prada,  fragranceexpert.com

8. 1996 Inez & Vinoodh

If you could bottle the essence of fashion it might very well smell like this – a collaboration between the famous fragrance company Byredo and the equally famous fashion photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. It takes as its inspiration one of the duo’s photographs taken in 1996 combining juniper, black amber, leather and patchouli.

£88 for 50ml, Byredo, liberty.co.uk

9. Velvet Desert Oud

Oud oil is probably one of the most valued in the perfume world –not for nothing is it also known as “liquid gold”. Thankfully, a little of this stuff goes a long way, here providing the base note for the new Dolce & Gabbana fragrance. Heady incense also has its part to play.

£170 for 50ml, Dolce & Gabbana,  harrods.com

10. Vetiver Extraordinaire

Vetiver is a very familiar ingredient of men’s fragrances due to the way it retains its aroma over long periods of time. When used as a base, it anchors the mid and top notes. Here, though, the scent has been flooded with vetiver, making it refreshing and crisp.

£110 for 50ml  Frederic Malle, liberty.co.uk

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What's Gucci Made to Measure Fragrance Spokesman James Franco's Favorite Smell? Spaghetti

James Franco's love affair with Gucci is still going strong. The GQ cover alum was tapped to be the face of the label's new fragrance Made to Measure that just hit shelves (the commercial came out over the summer, but if you want to see Franco drive a classic Lambo in a seriously well-cut tux, click here) and he took part in a short behind-the-scenes film for the ad. The video gets a little heady (Director Nicolas Winding Refn says Franco is supposed to be "trapped inside the bottle"…we got lost) so we reached out to Franco to get the straight scoop on the juice.

"The man that might wear Gucci Made to Measure is someone who is trying to make a statement," he says. Unsurprisingly, Franco's approach to scent goes back to his favorite place—the classroom. "One of my favorite writing teachers, Robert Boswell, would always talk about how in writing we just focus on the visual or the oral. He says if you can bring in all five senses, it will give a reader an even richer experience of whatever story you are telling. When you smell something it gives you a feeling or evokes memories." (The man speaks truth—ever feel your heart race when you walk by someone wearing an ex's perfume?) In case you're wondering which scents get Franco's feelings and memories flowing, it's "pine needles, incense, and spaghetti."

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James Franco - Gucci "Made to Measure" Fragrance Commercial

Perfumes that claim to give sex appeal in a bottle

Sliding into my train seat, I discreetly whipped out the bottle and applied a few judicious squirts. The man sitting opposite looked up. ‘Mmm, that’s nice,’ he said as the fragrance wafted under his nose

Was it my imagination or was that a cheeky twinkle in his eye?

As a single mum, one week shy of my 40th birthday, I had invested heavily in the new Escentric range of pheromone-based products in a bid to succeed where dating sites had resolutely failed.

The magic ingredient in their Molecules body wash (£25, Harvey Nichols) and Molecule 01 perfume (from £39.50 Harvey Nichols) is ISO E Super, an aroma-chemical which, despite sounding like an engine oil, is said to mimic human pheromones — the chemicals which make us attractive to the opposite sex.

In his new book, The Compatability Gene, Professor Daniel Davis explains how smell is genetically paramount in how attractive we judge a prospective partner. 

Buoyed up by the science, I swapped my usual £1 lemon shower cream for the £25 Escentric body wash. It has a woody, almost masculine aroma.

On the way to my first meeting I caught the attention of a portly man in his late 50s with slip-on shoes and a garish shirt — precisely the type of man I would usually swerve to avoid in a bar. He wandered over  and engaged me for 15 minutes in lively chit-chat. 

When we parted he gave a little nod and wink but, although proof the pheromones were doing their job, he wasn’t exactly the kind of mate I was hoping to attract.

My meeting was with a male  colleague to discuss a project. Although he is married with three children — a total no-go area — it seemed a waste not to preface our platonic lunch with a squirt of the perfume. It had little effect but when I got up to leave, he kissed my cheek politely and said: 

‘Oooh, you smell lovely. Really good.’

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