Pure White Linen by Estee Lauder is a luxury fragrance designed for women seeking a fresh, crisp, and clean aura. The perfume, with its lush aldehydic composition, combines floral, green, and fruity notes to create a timelessly delicate, airy scent.
Perfume acts as a medium for self-expression, captivating others with its alluring scent. It envelops the wearer in an exquisite blend of notes to convey a specific mood. Our sense of smell is inextricably tied to our emotions and memories, making perfume an effective tool for establishing a signature scent—a subtle yet powerful element of personal grooming as an invisible accessory—and enhancing sensory pleasure through aromatherapeutic elements. A captivating fragrance can attract positive attention from others and thus serve as a confidence boost. Given its intimate nature, a well-chosen fragrance makes for a thoughtful and versatile gift, personalised specially for the recipient.
Pure White Linen perfume embodies a classic scent of tulips, roses, and raspberries, inspired by the simplicity and ease desired by women with busy everyday routines. This essence is encapsulated in its name, reflecting the founder’s vision of the wearer as fresh, crisp, and clean, epitomising a perfected elegance that transcends the cycle of seasons.
The product serves as a symbol of status, with a price tag of $78 for 60 ml of perfume, signifying exclusivity, prestige, and wealth. Estee Lauder, a globally renowned beauty brand, is celebrated for its iconic status, characterised by high-quality craftsmanship and meticulously developed formulas. Such luxury brands are often associated with a premium image, brand loyalty, and attention to detail. The high price tag reflects this brand recognition, creating an aura of exclusivity and contributing to the product’s perceived value. Additionally, the cost ensures ethical production practices, avoiding animal testing, and utilising high-quality ingredients in the formula.
Despite the brand’s objective to create a simple scent, the perfume is subject to criticism for its perceived lack of complexity. There is also a risk of counterfeit or duplicate products made from cheap, harmful ingredients being sold. Taking a broader perspective, traditional perfumes contribute to environmental harm through the disposal of non-biodegradable bottles and the subsequent release of volatile organic compounds that pollute the natural world. To enhance this product, Estee Lauder could explore eco-friendly or refillable packaging options to mitigate the environmental impact associated with unsustainable packaging practices.
Competing with the perfume lines of other luxury cosmetic brands such as Chanel or Dior, which promote a similar femme fatale image, the product caters to consumers seeking a fashionable lifestyle of high social status. As these high-calibre brands offer economically substitutable goods, differentiation through strategic advertising becomes crucial for the product to stand out in a competitive market.
Estee Lauder’s advertisement for Pure White Linen perfume promotes a luxury fragrance for women that sets it apart from conventional perfume marketing. Rather than explicitly revealing the actual fragrance notes, the advertisement strategically focuses on the implicit appeal embodied by the aura of the female model.
Through the skillful interplay of texts and images, the advertisement communicates a compelling overarching message: the perfume bestows a clean, natural, and feminine image on its wearer. The minimalistic text and striking images effectively link the perfume with concepts of beauty, youth, and wealth, personified by the female model through composition, colours, symbolism, emotions, and persuasive techniques.
At the heart of the advertisement, the focal point lies in the female model’s captivated facial expression, gazing directly at the audience, fostering an alluring and feminine ambience. Her confident, direct gaze implies a demand with the expectation of a response, acting as a visual cue that engages the audience and reinforces the association of attractiveness and desire with the product—echoing the value message of beauty.
Moreover, the composition of the advertisement plays a role in creating a tranquil, natural atmosphere. The visual elements guide the audience’s view of the product. The rule of thirds is also applied to highlight the female model, the text, and the product in each section. Moreover, the washed-out colours in the image feel light and harmonised, and accentuate the natural, unadulterated beauty of the model.
The soft, unsaturated colour palette of white and light blue for the models’ clothes symbolises purity, airiness, and freshness and adds to the image of cleanliness. The warm, daylight tone and rural lake scenery in the background subtly make the image feel like it was captured in the wild, contributing to the tranquil, natural atmosphere. Furthermore, the typographic styling is composed of the idiosyncratic Estee Lauderbrand font and uppercase stylisation, which makes the product easily identifiable with brand recognition as a luxury cosmetic and appeals to the audience’s ethos with the typically high-quality reputation of a luxury brand.
The luxury brand logo and opulent yacht lifestyle portrayed in the image suggest that the target audience of this advertisement is likely to be young, affluent women who are pursuing such a clean, natural, and feminine image. These components synergise to convey the subtext that the product can help the audience achieve the youthful, wealthy lifestyle depicted.
Furthermore, the textual elements employ persuasive techniques to convey the creation of a clean, natural, and feminine image by the product. The use of the literary device hendiatris in the product name “Pure White Linen” skillfully condenses the idea of cleanliness and naturalness. The choice of the noun “linen” particularly evokes an association with clean, natural laundry scents.
The phrase “the fragrance to live in all year long” further reinforces the notion of a perennial scent suitable for all occasions, highlighting the natural quality that the product possesses. In addition, the minimalistic text achieved through a fine point and thin weight font places emphasis on the visual elements, reinforcing the value messages of beauty, youth, and wealth to captivate the audience.
This clean, natural, and feminine mood evokes emotions of inspiration, tranquillity, and envy among the audience. The advertisement presents the value messages of beauty, youth, and wealth through the model, lifestyle, and setting portrayed, offering a subtext suggesting that the product is an essential component in achieving the image of an attractive, young, and affluent woman.
The audience may be compelled to buy the product to emulate this image, suggesting that the advertisement not only sells a fragrance but also promises an aura of charisma, youth, and opulence. In modern society, women are expected to groom and care for themselves, and the advertisement capitalises on this expectation to market a feminine scent as an integral step in the process. This approach appeals to pathos by evoking a sense of inspiration and envy, prompting the audience to consider the product as an essential part of elegance.
In effect, the interplay of texts and images effectively conveys the overarching message that the product can cultivate a clean, natural, and feminine image, along with an aura of beauty, youth, and wealth. Diverging from the typical layout of a perfume advertisement, the marketing strategy proves effective. Through the value messages and subtext, the advertisement also demonstrates how beauty, youth, and wealth are highly coveted qualities in current society.
The nature of these qualities, often elusive with limited access, increases the perceived value of the image advertised by the product. While the perfume itself is an appealing luxury item, it is the advertisement that attracts the audience’s attention through the interplay of texts and images, advertising strategies, and persuasive techniques. The reality is that the product being marketed is not merely a bottle of perfume but the actual concept of embodying an attractive young woman, as demonstrated in the advertisement.
In conclusion, the precisely targeted marketing, combined with the elegant notes of the fragrance, weaves a captivating narrative of charisma. Ultimately, the appeal of Pure White Linen perfume lies not only in the pleasant scents it offers but also in the exclusive image of allure that it inspires, extending beyond the olfactory experience to become a symbol, a statement, and an embodiment of aspirational qualities.
By: Clare Chaeeun Park
Write and Win: Participate in Creative writing Contest & International Essay Contest and win fabulous prizes.
