CROONER’S SCENT
Michael Buble a perfumer
Along with juggling his roles as a husband, father of two and international superstar; these days, Michael Buble is busy keeping a critically close eye on how his time is being spent.
“Having kids gives you a different perspective on life, I think,” the B.C.-born crooner says. “And in a very basic way, it gave me a sense of what was important for me in my very personal life.
“But there was something I felt deeply about the trajectory of where I was going in my career. I’m very proud of where I came from, but I was very deliberate about where I was going.”
And that deliberate path has led him to a point in which he is not just releasing a new album, his first studio release in three years, but also adding a new bullet point to his resume. And it’s one he never expected to add: perfumer.
“It wasn’t really something I was jumping at the chance to do. I fought doing it, to be honest,” Buble says of his recent foray into fragrances. “If it wasn’t done correctly, it would be tacky.”
If he was going to create a fragrance, and it was a very big ‘if,’ Buble says he had to be in complete control.
“I know there are a lot of fragrance deals out there where a company calls and they’re licensed to a celebrity’s name and the celebrity gets the money and they smile, and then they sell the product. And I had no interest in any of that,” he said of his hesitation. “If I was going to do this, it was going to be for solid reasons.” So, what was the motivation behind Buble’s decision to create By Invitation now? “No. 1, it was a great opportunity in a changing landscape in a business where it’s just harder and harder to connect with your audience. Everything has become so diversified and it was a great chance to be invited into the homes and lives of many people who may not know about me or maybe haven’t had the inclination to give my music a chance. And secondly, the fact that I could be in control.” These reasons were the decision-making factors behind his signing off on By Invitation. “I actually got to go to a laboratory with perfumers and I actually go to create the fragrance. The creative process wasn’t that different from writing songs, to be honest with you. When I write a song, I take many different notes and combinations and I take these wonderful notes and I try to complete a harmony in the hopes that something complex sounds effortless.” Described as “a glamorous floral oriental gourmand, encompassing the iconic flowers of love,” the eau de parfum includes top notes of red fruits and bergamot layered over heart notes of lily of the valley, wild jasmine and peony, all on a warm base of sandalwood musk and vanilla.
“I’ve always been a fan of something that wasn’t too strong,” Buble explains of the selection of notes. “I never wanted something as a women’s fragrance that was so floral it made me think of my grandmother. Nor did I want something that was so sweet that I mistook kissing my wife for being in high school.”
The resulting scent is alluring at first spritz, with a candied undertone that’s sweet but not sickly. As it warms and develops on skin, its musky, unisex base wears in a pleasantly complex way.
In addition to controlling the creation of the elixir, Buble says he was also adamant about having final say on every other detail of the project — from the name of the scent, which Buble says is meant to convey a literal invitation to women to “try something different” from their usual scent, to the design of the bottle.
And it was the bottle, which resembles a flat glass bubble suspended from a bevelled gold frame, that almost caused Buble to kill the fragrance before it reached shelves.
“I stopped the whole project, to be frank with you. I was actually making the commercial and I was in -23 weather at around 4 o’clock in the morning and one of my partners in the fragrance showed up with the guy who created the first edition of what the bottle would look like,” he recalls. “He kind of had the demo of what we had created on paper. And I don’t know how to sugar-coat it — it looked like a hockey puck.
“And I’m not a diva, I’m not famous for being a diva, but I know what I want and I know what I need to do to get it … And I said to the guy — keep in mind this is while we’re shooting a million-dollar television commercial — I said, ‘Mike, the deal’s off.’ ”
Buble says he called his management and told them he was unable to go through with the deal.
Accompanied by a photo of the offending bottle Buble snapped himself, he sent a note to his longtime manager Bruce Allen and said he planned to reimburse the company for the commercial and would walk away.
“Either it was going to be perfect or the deal was squashed,” Buble recalls. “It had to be beautiful.”
His interest in creating a fragrance that looked as good on the outside as it smelled on the inside came from his wife Luisana Lopilato’s habit of displaying her favourite fragrances on a nightstand in their home. And he wanted his bottle to hold its own among her picks.
In the end, the bottle was redesigned and Buble says he finally felt happy.
He says his reaction to the lacklustre prototype is indicative of the changes he’s undergone in recent years in the way he views business.
“I think I’ve woken up in a way. I’ve realized that while empathy is something I think I have, and is a wonderful thing to have with your family and your friends … sometimes in business it’s a weakness. And sometimes I feel that’s something I can’t afford to have.
“It wasn’t just the fragrance, it was everything. I didn’t move mountains, but I did what I had to do. I made tough decisions, that ultimately, I have been very fulfilled by them.”
As a result, Buble says his creations — in the studio and beyond — are more authentic. And that’s what he hopes to convey with his first fragrance: a refreshing authenticity.
“I want women, and don’t misquote me, I want women to feel confident, sexy and alive,” Buble replies when asked of his mission for the scent. “That’s how I want women to feel every day of their lives — and that’s without a fragrance.
“I hope they think my fragrance is pretty. But I don’t expect it to change lives.”