(Above: Gucci Guilty Pour Homme – Director’s Cut, starring Chris Evans and Evan Rachel Wood. Directed by Frank Miller. Soundtrack by Bat for Lashes. Check out the home of Gucci Guilty Pour Homme at http://gucciguilty.com/)
Last autumn, the House of Gucci introduced Gucci Guilty for Her, a fragrance for an iconoclast who lives life at full throttle – potent, spirited, unrepentant. The Gucci Guilty heroine is a 21st Century beauty who holds all in her thrall, her scent an audacious contemporary creation.
Now we meet her partner-in-crime….
The Concept
Gucci takes as a catalyst its iconic entwined Gs and brings us a hero who sees this emblem as an incitement to provoke, challenging convention. For this most modern of mavericks, Gucci represents a powerful mix of excitement, allure and sensuality. In Gucci Guilty for Him, the latest fragrance conceived by Creative Director Frida Giannini, this man instinctively recognizes a strong representation of himself in the scent.
The Man
Young, fearless, with impeccable taste, the wearer of Gucci Guilty for Him is a hero for our age – exuding charisma and more than a little dangerous. His life may be under his control, but he refuses to exert any restraint over his passions. The spirit of hedonism that this unleashes is intoxicating. His power resides in knowing that power is a game, and he is ready to play this game to the full when he meets his female match.
The Gucci Guilty hero takes pleasure in refusing to feel guilty about who he is. His remarkable self-confidence allows him to constantly explore new experiences. His unshakable sense of self-identity wields an irresistible force. He knows what he wants, and he goes after it with single-minded determination and compulsive charm. It is exhilarating to yield to the impulses of a man with such exceptional magnetism.
Frida Giannini observes: “Everyone is in love with the Gucci Guilty man. He is a risk-taker, a thrill-seeker, yet he always remains sensitive to a woman’s desires. He embodies these desires. Men yearn to be him, women to be his.”
The Fragrance
Gucci Guilty for Him is an intense and individual contemporary fougère that provokes as it seduces.
The scent seizes hold of the senses with a heady cocktail of invigorating Italian lemon and mandarin with crushed green leaves – evocative of sap rising – and a defiant punch of pink pepper.
Its middle motifs persuade like a whispered invitation. The herbal freshness of lavender coils around an aphrodisiac cardamom note – at once stimulating and entrancing – on an unexpectedly tender bed of orange flower and neroli.
The patchouli that is the hallmark of all Gucci fragrances is married with cedar and sandal wood gleaming with amber to create a robustly earthy, yet suggestively exotic sensuality of a profound masculinity. The effect is both remarkable and uncompromisingly alluring.
The Design
As with its forebear, Gucci Guilty for Her, the packaging of Gucci Guilty for Him is iconic. An arresting fusion of tactile metal and flint anthracite glass – its signature interlocking Gs a window onto a sophisticated light purple juice – the flacon will prove as covetable as the latest Gucci loafers. While its glossy black box completes an overall sense of refinement.
As one would expect from Gucci, there is consummate craftsmanship in the bottle’s union of high-tech and high style. Giannini notes: “I wanted the bottle to feel like a contemporary objet d’art – to be as elegant to look at as it is intriguing to hold.”
Gucci Guilty for Him is as much a visual as an olfactory style statement. The world’s most trailblazing men will be proud to brandish this essential urban accessory.
The Campaign
The ensemble that Frida Giannini has brought together to tell the story of Gucci Guilty will have an irresistible appeal to a generation of modern young men; a collaboration in which edge and creativity are combined in an unprecedented way.
“I knew we needed something special for this project, something absolutely unique,” confirms Giannini. “The look, the sound, the cast – I am incredibly excited by what we have achieved.”
The advertisement was shot at Cinecittà Studios, the legendary home of Italian cinema. Its director was film-noir graphic artist and Sin City creator Frank Miller, whose inimitable comic strip aesthetic will galvanize young audiences.
In Giannini and Miller’s vision, a rugged urban cowboy roars into the metropolis on a blazing motorcycle. His tires screech to a halt, and our stranger removes his helmet to reveal our hero. His bracelet triggers his memories…Still in his leathers; he strides into a bar and catches a beguiling scent: a woman, a defiant beauty, his match. Their eyes lock, and with that look begins the story of their night of rapture. In the morning, he will be gone. He is a rebel, the freest of spirits: dangerous, impassioned, a man who will continue to shape her desires.
Hollywood leading man Chris Evans smolders in the role of the Gucci Guilty hero. “Chris was an absolute revelation,” remarks Giannini. “His looks are hypnotic, and he has such an incredibly powerful presence in front of the camera. In a few brief moments, he creates an unforgettable character.”
Evan’s mesmerizing co-star is Evan Rachel Wood, one of the foremost talents of her generation. Giannini is full of admiration: “Evan Rachel Wood is such a gifted and beautiful actress. I have always admired her confidence and ability to transform herself.”
The chemistry between these players is palpable. Their story unfolds to the strains of Depeche Mode’s “Strange Love”, given a haunting new rendition for the Gucci Guilty for Him fragrance by acclaimed British musician Natasha Khan, the lead singer of Bat for Lashes.
Renowned fashion photographers Mert & Marcus are responsible for the print advertising – unapologetically sensual images that will etch themselves on the consciousnesses of a generation.
The Gucci Guilty advertising campaign was art directed by Riccardo Ruini, Creative Director at REM (Ruini e Mariotti), who has collaborated with Frida Giannini on Gucci’s fashion and fragrance campaigns since 2007, including the 2009 Cannes Lion award-winning campaign for the fragrance Flora by Gucci.
The campaign will prove groundbreaking in its embrace of innovative, youth-focused media and technologies. Like Gucci Guilty for Her, Gucci Guilty for Him is destined to become a viral phenomenon.
(Below, Frida Giannini with graphic novel artist and Gucci Guilty film director Frank Miller.)
