Marc Jacobs Dot

“I don’t think there is ever a wrong time for a polka dot,” declares fashion designer Marc Jacobs in support of the concept for his new fragrance.

The aptly named Dot, a fragrance wrapped in a ladybug colour scheme of black and red with gold touches, encapsulates fun. The bottle, designed by Sayuri Shoji in collaboration with Jacobs is a plump and playful animé-ish one: big polka dots and a cap styled as a butterfly with smaller butterflies affixed to the sides of the spherical flask.As a scent, Dot sits firmly in the fruity floral category: a pretty spritz with red berries, dragonfruit and honeysuckle blooms on top; jasmine, coconut water and orange blossom in the heart; and vanilla, musk and driftwood at the base.

For the Marc Jacobs fan, this is the third scent to be collected in the playful trio of feminine scents which began with Daisy (2007), and which followed with Lola (2009). Daisy also broke the mould with its innovative plastic packaging, an innovation that has, by the way, spawned many copycats.

Alas, we believe Dot is more surface than the substance. Even the press materials for the new spritz discuss the bottle design before getting into the personality of the fragrance itself.

So yes, Dot is fun and very of-the-moment. Super-cute bottle and super-cute marketing: Those inspired by Dot are invited to tag dot-themed images using the hashtag #MARCtheDOT and upload them to Instagram or Twitter. Those images will then populate at #MARCtheDOT gallery on the designer’s fragrance Facebook page: www.dotmarcjacobs.com. Jacobs will then share his favourite #MARCtheDOT image each week.

For us, Dot is a news story, more a marketing story than a fragrance story, or rather it’s a marketing-a-fragrance story. We’re reminded of the wise words of fragrance critic Chandler Burr: “Traditional fragrance marketing is all about everything that’s not the perfume,” he has said. “It’s the bottle, the packaging, the boy and the girl and the name and the designers. It’s about a dream, …I believe this is very effective for the majority of people who are going to buy their first bottle of perfume. [But] it is extremely ineffective in terms of consumers buying the second bottle. The second bottle is the juice.”
—Deborah Fulsang

Marc Jacobs Dot, $79 (50 ml)/$105 (100 ml), www.marcjacobs.com

Read more about Dot and Marc Jacobs’ other influential fragrances in our Perfume-o-pedia.