Tate McRae launched "Tate 01," her first fragrance, on Thursday in partnership with Scent Beauty, Inc., according to Page Six. The black-and-white campaign shot by Mario Sorrenti features the 23-year-old standing waist-deep in a pool and wearing, in the press release's words, "little more than the scent itself."
Read the copy twice before you laugh. "That final invisible layer." "Entirely second-skin." "It never wears you. It just enhances who you already are." The press release is describing a product that does not exist, and the mechanism is elegant. If the perfume is invisible and "perfectly you," the only ingredient left to sell is the name. You are not buying a scent. You are buying the concept of yourself, in a bottle.
And the chemistry backs up the joke. The hero ingredient is ISO E Super, a synthetic molecule the release says "interacts dynamically with individual skin chemistry" to deliver an "intimately personalized" experience. That is: it smells different on everyone, including "not like perfume at all." The perfumers on the release promise the whole thing "leaves a trail of confidence long after she's gone," which is either the greatest line in perfume marketing history or a fire code violation, and I cannot tell which.
The campaign sells the invisibility, too: black-and-white photos of a wet young woman in a pool, a perfume that shows the model but never the bottle. The Second Skin has entered the chat, and per the release it lands in more than 1,500 Ulta stores on October 25, which is a personal aura with a national footprint.
YOUR TURN: If the scent is "perfectly you," who exactly is it for, and why does a company get to sell your body back to you?
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