There's an elaborate window display at the Bay department store advertising a cologne for men. The cologne is Spicebomb by Viktor and Rolf, and it is shaped like a grenade. I went in the Bay to get a sample, to see if it lives up to its dark and dramatic aura. It doesn't. It is bland and benign. I asked the nice saleswoman about the bottle, and she said that you had to pull a string to "activate" the perfume. She thought it was quite ingenious, although I wasn't convinced. "Like a grenade!" I said.
The notes include: bergamot, pink pepper, cinnamon, vetiver, red pepper and tobacco accord.
I took photos of the big Spicebomb display that is in the Bay's windows, including a stills from a video that is looping on a huge screen. I've posted them below.
The window scene depicts a living room with solid leather furniture, and a male mannequin sitting in a sofa with a cocktail glass in hand. The staged room looks warm and comfortable until the images on the video screen begin to make sense. They start out with James Bond type women, dancing around in leather pants, then some start to whirl around on giant grenades. Eventually, the whole screen is filled with these women on grenades. Then a man's face fills up the screen. And finally the screen explodes into white.
The video in this nice interior is looping some kind of Armageddon, or ultimate annihilation.
After watching the video, I began to notice grenade shapes in the room, most prominently as a decanter at the bottom right of the stills and also as the perfume bottle/grenades in the bottom left.
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Below are shots with stills from the looping video:
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I posted recently on a magazine spread of Eve and the snake, which I titled after the Doors song "Going to the Other Side."
The music that is looping with the video is "Light My Fire" by the Doors, but sang by Shirley Bassey. It was the Doors song "To the Other Side" that came to mind when I did my post on Eve, or Eve's doppelgänger. It seems that the Doors evoke some kind of evil, where even what should be a perfectly manly perfume takes on grenade-carrying females, and exploding scenes (the end of the world, then to the other side). Perhaps it is appropriate that Bassey, a female, sing this song for the Bay perfume display.
But, there is nothing clear-cut about the Viktor and Rolf concoction. Even the Bay's window designers have put a feminine cocktail glass in the mannequin's hand, while the setting (and the "masculine" perfume) call for a strong a whisky tumbler.
Lyrics to "Light my Fire"
You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn't get much higher
Come on baby, light my fire
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire
The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre
Come on baby, light my fire
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire, yeah
The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre
Come on baby, light my fire
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire, yeah
You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn't get much higher
Come on baby, light my fire
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire
Try to set the night on fire
Try to set the night on fire
Try to set the night on fire
