People have been giving 2020 a lot of crap; that’s unfair. 2020 is just what happens when we handle ourselves like feral toddlers for 200 odd years. Of course, there’s no more exemplary manifestation of said perpetual toddlerdom than fragrance ads. So just as you thought you had made it through the year, ready to slide into the steaming yak-mound that 2021 is sure to be, I give you the absolutely terrible, 2020 fragrance ad wrap-up. A Q+M Holiday Tradition: Sexface and Probably a Horse (or catch up on ’19, ’18, ’17, ’16).
Dior Homme
Dior finally went too far when they decided to re-kill Leonard Cohen with this spot. I’m 100% sure when he wrote I’m Your Man he pictured shirtless Robbie P having a seizure (boxing? Dancing?) because nobody showed up to his gala. Apparently, the curse of the teenybopper sex-vampire is to star in smell-ads for the rest of your career. It’s Cannon.
Boss
This is your annual reminder that Hugo Boss was a huge Nazi. Really. Ever year? You betcha. In this spot Chris Hemsworth gives up on being the hottest Hemsworth and settles for the most Naziest. The narrative is a little hard to follow: he puts on a jacket and looks for stuff. Far away stuff. Real far away stuff. Where is it? Far away. Nazis.
Jean Paul Gaultier – Le Male
JPG is back (pronounced “jiff”) with his sailors and sirens; this year with a line-by-line scene from Homer’s Odyssey. Ancient Greece is recreated with meticulous detail as our hero dodges through an average day on the docks at Epidaurus to get some strange with the siren. This Homer’s crew barely even try and OH MY GOD they put a child in this spot. Stop.
Gucci Bloom
This is just a Mazzy Star video from 1994.
Chanel Nº5 : The Film
This couple pauses mid-romantic stroll on a bridge in Paris to perform an interpretive dance of their bodies being torn apart in the vacuum of space. They did manage to get Marion Cotillard so it’s a pretty good interpretation – I can almost see his bowels being ejected into her face – through dance. Buy our scent.
Dior : Poison
This young lady is going to murder someone; how do I know? Because I died during the first million years of this spot.
Not a damn horse.