Drakkar Noir

Guy Laroche opened its men's line in 1972 with Drakkar, an aromatic designed to win over the British market. Ten years later, the name returned darkened by an adjective, and the younger sibling eclipsed its elder within a few seasons.

The younger sibling and its elder

Barbara Herman describes a darker juice than the 1972 one, held by leather and patchouli that the earlier version did not carry. The house keeps the Viking drakkar and adds to it the color that would make its fortune.

A name that sounds like a vampire

A drakkar is a Scandinavian warship, and the brand draws from it an image of conquering strength. Semiologists Ron Beasley and Marcel Danesi add a second reading: the sound of the word recalls Dracula, and his cruel seduction.

The bottle returns to Pierre Dinand, who had already designed the 1972 one. A black lacquered, opaque pebble, barely lifted by a white edging for the signature, a hard object that the hand recognizes without seeing it.

A campaign that changes skin depending on the country

The most famous poster shows a man's bare forearm gripping the bottle, seized at the wrist by a woman's hand with red nails. Redone for the Emirates, it re-dresses the man and softens the woman's gesture.

On television, a young man shoots an arrow from 1986 to 1991. Stephanie Seymour appears alongside a boxer from 1991 to 1993, under the lens of Herb Ritts. Jean-Baptiste Mondino films a rock star in 1994, Neymar in 2013.

What the market gave back

The Fragrance Foundation honored it in 1985, under a title that varies from one record to another, between best-selling men's fragrance and men's fragrance of the year. In December 1991, the New York Times ranked it first in the global prestige segment, above twenty dollars.

Canada inducted it into its fragrance hall of fame in 2010. In 1993, every box sold contained a rock record; in 2002, L'Oréal signed a ten-million-dollar deal with race car driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.