Behind the Design: Formosa

Capturing scent in an unexpected shape or form is no easy feat. With seven FiFi wins for his fragrance designs, Marc Rosen makes unexpected designs look sophisticated and easy. Marc’s latest endeavour takes him on a journey to Taiwan with his friend Shining Sung. Formosa is a new brand that embodies Taiwanese culture and specialities. Marc’s attention to detail presents a design that is meaningful to Formosa’s mantra. In this interview, we take a dive into the journey of design for Formosa...

What does fragrance and the power of scent mean to you?
My favourite part of fragrance is that it can evoke such amazing memories. I love the fact that you can walk into a room and smell a scent that you haven’t smelt in years and suddenly it can remind you of your childhood or someone important in your life. Memories are built into fragrance. I also love the connection I can create with the design and scent; I connect deeply with that sensation.

In designing for Formosa this deep connection resonates. When I met with Bergdorf in New York, the buyer there that I have known for years said, “Marc I love it because it’s consistent: the bottle, the fragrance, the name, the concept” and to me that is what embodies the power of a scent. I feel like a lot of bottles can look the same, but I try and find the unique personality of the scent in my work. I teach a graduate course at Pratt institute, and I call the bottle the ‘silent salesman’ because you see it in an advert, in the store and it speaks to you. My thesis in graduate school is in tactile communication which I employ in my designs, and I try to design things that the consumer wants to touch. And I think that’s the case with Formosa, the cap, and the shape of the bottle, you want to touch it. If that happens, I feel like the power of scent has been captured in design.

Where do you take your inspiration from?

In this case the creative process and brief was easier to understand as Shining is a friend that I have known for many years. She lives in New York, but her heart is in Taiwan which is why she did this fragrance. She called me up and at first, I was sceptical but after doing research I became hooked. The name Formosa is a Portuguese name given by the sailors who discovered the Taiwan island which means ‘beautiful island’. I thought that it was a perfect name. With this knowledge and the concept of ingredients being indigenous to Taiwan, I could imagine a story. I thought we could capture the consumer’s interest through the ingredients and the experience of the design.
Doing more research, I found out that Taiwan was a leading producer of jade. I knew that when Chiang Kai- Shek left China to come to Taiwan, he bought treasures from the China museum including carved Jade.

It was an ‘a-ha’ moment, I had something tangible and tactile that I can be inspired by. I always like to have something old and new together in my designs, I like the contradiction. With Formosa, the cap looks like antique carved jade, but the bottle is very contemporary and very hard to make!

How has your experience in creating with Shining differed from your other journeys in creating fragrance bottle designs?

It’s different because I knew her as a friend first. In other experiences, it’s a client relationship that can of course develop into a friendship. I worked with Karl Lagerfeld and many designers over many years and people always ask me how it was working with them, and we got along beautifully. It’s professional, and respectful and a great time. Working with Shining I was able to bring my friend into the world of fragrance. She respected my knowledge of the industry as she was starting with very little. I connected her with some amazing people, for example, Firmenich. We went to them with the design concept, and I was involved in the fragrance decision but of course, it was Shining’s choice. We were lucky to work with Honorine Blanc who is one of the top master perfumers who came back to us with several submissions which Shining chose one as the scent we have now. Obviously, Bergdorf liked it and as does Fenwick’s. It's a gratifying process for both Shining and me.

How do the ingredients and scent itself inspire your vision of the bottle?
In all the years of designing, they’ve never had the scent before the bottle. The bottle has to inspire the perfumers! I wish the fragrance could inspire me, but it never works that way. It’s a timing thing, the fragrance takes longer to develop than the design concept (not necessarily the design manufacturing).

What challenges did you have to overcome when creating for Formosa?

The challenge was the shape of the bottle itself. I wanted to create it in Taiwan, but it was impossible because their glass making is not sophisticated enough. So, I went to Pavisa which is a Mexican company that I have worked with many times, so I knew they had the expertise to achieve my vision. Technically the process is semi- automatic which is a slow process and enables them to blow the glass to create the curved smile at the bottom of the vessel. To match this with the sharp corners on the shoulders of the bottle is very difficult to achieve along with the fit of the cap embedded into the glass. To find the right partner, as I did with Pavisa, was integral to the design process. They did a beautiful job, and I am very pleased with the result!

Timing is also a challenge, it took longer than expected. I’m picky! I wanted the shoulder of the glass to remain flat and for the smile of the glass to be proportionate. I tell my students proportion is so important and, in this case, I didn’t want the glass of the bottle to the cap to look diminutive.

How do you connect something abstract and intangible like scent with something that is meant to be handled and tactile like design?

For me, any creative thing I do, I always imagine it complete. Then I work towards it, getting it to happen as I imagined it. So, in terms of Formosa, the bottle and the cap was something I was not willing to compromise on (of course there were some tiny logistics that I had to take into consideration) but I wanted the cap to look like it was floating. I could imagine the consumer’s eye going right to the green of the jade and wanting to touch it. I start with a blank piece of paper, and I start doing sketches, starting with the obvious shapes, a circle, a square, a triangle and I break it out. I abstract those shapes. In this case, I imagined the carved ball first, so I had to find a way to make that tangible with the glass bottle so that it complimented and supported this design. In the end, I wanted to echo the fluidity of the roundness.

I wanted it to be a modern classic and it’s important that it’s unique to the concept of the brand. It’s a challenge to create something that is cohesive and speaks to what is within but with clear communication, you can develop the blank page into something that extends into the physical

Bringing together traditional designs with forward thinking innovation work well to create something completely unique but how do you keep a clear vision and stick to your guns?

I’m lucky that I get the idea very easily. Once I get going, I always know which of the several designs I do will be the right one. Then my challenge is to convince the client (which I usually succeed in!) With all my years of experience coming up with a design concept has become easier as you start out with a formula and you flesh it out into something that is unique. Where I hit a wall is in the engineering as most of my designs are technically hard to craft. For example, my design for Shanghai the bottom is solid glass which was something that had never been done before. I get teased as I normally design something that is a challenge for the glass company!

But it means that I’m a favourite as they like the challenge, it gives them an opportunity to show their expertise. It helps that it’s a team effort.

I’ve learned a lot from antiques and my love of them over the years that I have incorporated into my work including the techniques, the textures, the quality. Quality is always extremely important to my designs, and I must link this clear vision with the manufacturer I partner with. For the consumer these focuses should relay the quality of the product within. The consumer deserves this.

Is the consumer at the forefront of your mind when designing?
I have three scholarships at Pratt Institute where I am a Trustee but I also have an education fund and every year I do a symposium and this year’s topic is called ‘designing for the subliminal’. The concept is that the designer, as they are designing, is thinking about the consumers response consciously (first impression) and then sub-consciously. And that is very much in my mind when I design. I’m intellectual in this way as I consider the consumers reactions, thoughts, and feelings.

How have the expectations for design in the fragrance world shifted?
I’ve seen a lot of changes. Some of them I’ve avoided like coloured glass as I feel like it doesn’t reflect my personal style. I love the quality of glass and I feel like you can see more of it in its truest form. I’ve stuck to my own style. I have been influenced in terms of other types of design like furniture design, jewellery design, fashion design, so I am influenced subliminally by all these things, but I stick to my style of designing bottles that are specific to underscoring brands and fragrance mantras. For me this is paramount to do. I would like to see a shift in designers’ creativity in the fragrance industry. If for economic reasons a designer is using a standard bottle there’s ways to include creativity through customised caps, and graphics work. I think the standard bottle started with the light clean fragrances that younger consumers wanted, the idea that less is more, that the bottle was there to simply house the fragrance. This was fine for that type of fragrance and consumer expectation, but it has become widespread and the concept of the fragrance has in some aspect become lost in some of the designs

we see. I’m surprised that some corporations don’t push their designers and give them room to do things that are more creative. I love this industry and I hope that there are changes going forward and that designers become more involved with the named concept and fragrance. When I designed my most famous piece that’s housed in museums, the fan bottle for Lagerfeld, I understood the fan as part of Lagerfeld on and off the runway so it was bringing the design to life in a way that could underscore Karl and in turn become iconic for the fragrance. It’s about creating a mantra for the brand and finding that individuality and voice.

What’s your advice for someone looking to start designing?

They should study it! There are many courses available. I tell my students to look everywhere. Look at the tops of building, look at lamps, look at jewellery. I have all these books on jewellery design and it’s a great source of inspiration.
Take inspiration from every point of design. Look at everything. Be inspired. Ask questions. Go into stores and asks the salespeople about the bottle and consumers reactions to it. And at home just start sketching. Look at original bottles across the industry and at different houses and look at how you would develop the bottle to fit with the houses mantra today.

What are some of your scent memories?
I was married to an actress, Arlene Dahl, and I was first introduced to her at Revlon, my first ever job, and I was introduced to her there to create a bottle for her first ever fragrance ‘Dahlia’. That scent of course brings back a flood of memories to me of how we met and workedtogether.

And of course, the fanned bottle as it was my first fifi award. In those days at the award ceremonies the president of the company would accept the award but that night the president said, “you accept it Marc, you’ve earned it” and you can imagine, at 30 or 31 years old, how meaningful that was to me and the story subsequently. We launched it in Versailles, I walked through the hall of mirrors, and they had fireworks in the shape of the bottle and the glamour of those days is something that I think about fondly.