Of course perfume is fun for the scent experience, but it’s even better with a bottle you can show off. While plenty of perfumes are barely old enough to drive, Roger & Gallet’s Jean Marie Farina cologne has been around for long enough that you could see it showing up in the bathrooms of classic movies. This baby’s been around since the early 1800’s, and it’s not going anywhere— especially not with its elegant new redesign from Servaire & Co.
This classic bottle takes inspiration from the roaring ’20s, a commercial peak for the brand and an era of famously phenomenal bottle design. The final product looks like a well-preserved relic from another time, with all kinds of loving details like a charming chain around the bottleneck, vintage wrapping paper, a star on the bottom of the bottle, and Jean Marie Farina’s signed approval. The bottle gets environmental friendliness points for using a beautiful red stopper instead of the more popular, more wasteful, and nowhere near as visually striking spray-bottle formula. Why fix what isn’t broken?
It’s always a great challenge for a creative agency to redesign a pioneering product. The original product that launched a category. The number 1.
That’s what Roger & Gallet’s Jean Marie Farina cologne embodies.
It was in 1806 that this Italian perfumer invented what was to become eau de Cologne, the great classic of perfumery. Since 1806, the recipe has remained unchanged and is still the same ancestral, secret, artisanal formula, produced in Grasse, the cradle of French perfumery, made from citrus fruits and 13 medicinal plants.
Imagine that this formula has spanned the centuries, delighted emperors and seduced queens before gradually losing its splendour over the last few decades.
As part of its global rebranding for the Roger & Gallet brand, the creative agency rehabilitated its history in a new design that breaks completely with the existing one.
The bottle features a deliberately oversized red medallion. The modernised brand symbol displays its heritage in a contemporary way.
The agency has redefined the red, opting for a bright, luminous red that perfectly reflects the radiant freshness of citrus fruit.
A small seal has been added to the emery stopper, a reminder of the authenticity of the product and its formula, copied a thousand times but never equalled.
The creative team also redesigned the bottle, drawing on the brand’s archives. The bottle, with its unusual shoulder, was inspired by one of the brand’s bottles from the Art Deco period, when the brand was at its peak.
Reinterpreting a detail also seen in the archives, the sole of the bottle features a star-shaped relief reminiscent of the particular pleating that Roger & Gallet favours for its art of gifting.
Jean Marie Farina’s signature appears at the bottom of the bottle, as if to attest to its authenticity.
With its strong, highly recognisable codes, the agency has adapted the identity to several sizes and limited editions.
Balancing modernity and a common thread with the heritage of this icon, the creative agency was part of the repositioning of the brand that it defined for Roger& Gallet, a hygiene brand that spreads happiness and well-being through essential products, known to all, whose nostalgic power, continues to maintain like one of Proust’s madeleines.
