A stream of people skip uphill through long, sunlit grass to a crumbling Italian castle. 'In every dream home, a heartache,' sings Roxy Music.
There's a bohemian group picnic; they run amok through the ruins; they kiss in the grass. Harry Styles dances around a bonfire, arms over his head. 'Is there a heaven? I’d like to think so,' the lyrics go, over nostalgic shots of a medieval castle in the countryside north of Rome.
This is the new advert for Memoire d’une Odeur; the first perfume from Gucci that is 'not assigned to a gender.' From this tagline – a playful wink to the transgender community, where 'gender assigned at birth' describes a gender you no longer identify as – to the use of Styles, longtime LGBTQ+ ally and Gucci collaborator, as the face of the campaign, Gucci’s new ad is an invigorating take on what has become a somewhat outdated genre.
The world of perfume adverts is often wholly white, heteronormative and cisgender (not trans). Gender stereotypes are emphasised and the Western gender binary is reinforced – think women slowly applying makeup in soft lighting, wearing luxurious fabrics; muscular men rowing boats or driving cars, wearing a fragrance that somehow manages to emphasise their bravery or strength.
Unusually for the world of 'unisex' or 'gender-neutral' perfumes, which can, at times, feel quite unsexy and contrived, the minds behind Memoire have managed to market it in a way that feels genuinely celebratory of all genders.
And maybe this is because they got the little things right – Memoire d’une Odeur (which roughly translates as 'memory of a smell') is a 'universal' fragrance that 'transcends gender,' no boring gender-neutral language here – as well as the big things.
Styles, obviously, is the biggest gift of Gucci’s advert.
A legitimate lesbian icon (it’s the shirts), he said in 2017: 'If you are black, if you are white, if you are gay, if you are straight, if you are transgender — whoever you are, whoever you wanna be — I support you.'
And, while his are the most famous coiffed curls in the campaign, Gucci went a step further. The rest of the cast – who Styles, incredibly, elevates rather than overshadows – deserve our attention, too.
Harris Reed, a queer designer and friend of Styles who was in the campaign, says that the Memoire shoot was 'one of the most diverse casts I’ve worked with – in terms of professions, race, sexuality...' The diversity of the cast is certainly a step forward in the context of the beauty industry – and perfume advertising more specifically – although the majority is white and all are able-bodied. Reed, however, cites Michele's representation of gender – in all its forms – as the main thing that made the whole experience feel more inclusive than anything he'd encountered before.
'It was a really beautiful, intimate setting,' he says. 'Everyone was there with a purpose, each person represented something and we were all slowly learning from one another, about so many different things – sexuality, spirituality.'
The subtle, playful way that the ad disrupts the gender binary speaks to Reed, who is genderfluid, too. 'Honestly, with this it comes down to the people. Once I knew Alessandro and Harry were working on this – people I know and have worked with before... it’s such a bohemian family, with such a high level of mutual respect,' he says.
Reed describes Styles as 'beyond open minded' and Michele as being 'like Father Time – one of the gods of fashion, and just the most humble human being.'
What sets Memoire apart from other 'gender-neutral' fragrances is its authenticity. This does not feel like an insincere attempt at inclusivity – and the gender non-conforming, genre-blurring people straddling each other naked in the Italian fields are not trying to assimilate into ‘straight’ society.
The Bacchanalian vibes of the advert are important, too. 'To tackle big issues like this on a global scale you have to have that beauty, that playful attitude,' Reed says. Admitting that he went to Selfridges in London and smelled Memoire 'for a good 40 minutes' so he could genuinely answer questions about its smell, Reed says, very sincerely, that the fragrance is 'honestly something that’s really beautiful.'
'It reminds me of my mother and my father, my summers, bittersweet memories of my youth,' he says. 'This is not a paid thing, I swear – it really does make me feel memories.'
Styles also seems enamoured with the fragrance, telling journalists that he wears it all the time, including to sleep in.
Wear Memoire while you dismantle the gender binary, wear it to invoke your childhood memories – or wear it like Styles does: in bed.
SHOP: Gucci, Memoire d'une Odeur, £66 for 60ml
Gucci, Memoire d'une Odeur, £66 for 60ml
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