The perfume that never was

Marni perfume bottle Sybarite

Exhibition idea! All those incredible ideas, expensive mistakes, too impossible-to-produce design innovations that never came to fruition.

Example: this Marni perfume bottle by design firm, Sybarite, who created Marni’s global retail identity during the Consuelo Castiglioni years. Sybarite founders Torquil McIntosh and Simon Mitchell’s fragrance bottle never made it to stores, as Castiglioni decided to keep it for her own private collection.

“It nearly launched until Consuelo decided she loved it so much she didn’t want the public to have it,” recalled Mitchell. “We spent 18 months developing this beautiful bottle in various glass colours, which was refillable, and we worked with Consuela for the scent as well as the packaging, glass, everything.”

I love Macintosh’s explanation of the design. “Its probably the smallest thing we’ve designed – and the most challenging. Instead of squirting the bottle with your index finger, we decided it should be shaped more like a pebble. It’s more tactile and you have a thumb action instead, but to develop that was was an absolute mission.”

Just imagine all the other prototypes of amazing innovations out there, that, if they had seen the light of day could have created an entirely different world to the one we live in now.

WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGE: Marni perfume bottle by Sybarite
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