Locally concocted: Prince's new perfume
By A.D. Amorosi
For The Inquirer
Prince's perfume is the creation of Larry and Carol Couey of Revelations
Perfume & Cosmetics in Huntingdon Valley. Couey linked up with the singer by
chance last year.
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For Prince - the famously secretive, richly enigmatic musical legend - a
"top note" might be a high C; an octave or so up if he reaches for his
falsetto as he has on hits like "Purple Rain" or his new song, "Guitar."
But for those in the perfume business, a "top note" is the first scent you
smell; the one between leaving the bottle and hitting the skin.
It turns out that Prince is conversant about the latter, now that he's
entered the perfume game. Just yesterday, on lucky 7/7/07, Prince debuted
his own scent - 3121, just like his last album and his Las Vegas club - in
Minneapolis, several weeks before his new CD, Planet Earth, is due in
stores.
Lots of celebrities have perfume lines - Britney Spears, Smokey Robinson,
Elizabeth Taylor. Still, somehow, Prince perfume seems odd. This is the guy
who protested his first record label, Warner Bros., by writing the word
Slave on his face, and changed his name to a glyph.
But perhaps the strangest thing about 3121 is that it's being made in
Huntingdon Valley by an independent company named Revelations, owned by a
married couple who happen to be veterans of the cosmetics trade.
Larry J. Couey, the owner of Revelations Perfume & Cosmetics, got the Prince
gig by accident. While visiting an agent in Los Angeles in August 2006,
Couey overheard a conference call with Prince's former label. The musician's
perfume discussions with a larger cosmetics company had broken down, and he
wanted to find a smaller independent firm.
"I was in the right place at the right time," says Couey, who gave his age
as mid-50s. (Prince, through his label, declined to comment for this
article.)
Revelations, started by the Coueys in 1998, is a small, private operation
with a development office on Veit Road and a 35,000-square-foot packaging
and assembly plant just blocks away. There's nothing handsome or ornate
about their location. Heck, the walls of Revelations aren't even purple -
Prince's favored color.
Nonetheless, soon after his L.A. trip, Couey found himself at Prince's
Paisley Park house and studio in Minneapolis, with Prince's business manager
and two twin dancers in the room.
"Prince was wearing a black 3121 shirt with white pants when we first met,"
says Couey. "It was the most casual I've ever seen him, as I've only seen
him wearing impeccable suits and dressed to perfection."
Few people get to have private meetings with Prince. But the vibe was
welcoming, with candles burning everywhere.
"It smelled relaxed," says Couey.
The two hit it off immediately. They share Midwestern roots (Couey grew up
in Wisconsin, a little over an hour from Minneapolis). Each man is quiet and
businesslike.
But Prince had one key question: Why had Couey named his company
Revelations?
Couey was working as a marketer in the consumer product division for Bath &
Body Works, flying between the coasts, when an old friend in Ohio had a
serious car accident and wound up in a coma for months.
Visits with his friend got Couey to thinking of his family - his wife,
Carol, and three adult daughters he put through college. "The revelation was
that I could stay closer to home, be with my family and make a smaller
business without having to run around for a big company," he said.
He had done it before. In 1981, Couey cofounded Parfums de Coeur, a company
that he sold to his partner by the end of the decade. So along with Carol -
a Havertown native with a background in scent development at Ralph Lauren
Fragrances - Couey eschewed corporate life to find his own niche.
Prince understood that. He left Warners in 1996, had his own label for a
time, and currently uses big labels to distribute his records, rather than
signing up with them.
And so the deal was done: Revelations would fast-track Prince's 3121 scent
(normally the process takes 15 to 24 months) with the singer/guitarist in on
every aspect.
Revelations had worked with other personalities on fragrance. Among the 14
fragrances Revelations makes is Stacie J - Golden, created for the
model/Apprentice contestant Stacie J. There's also Stoked, a surf-inspired
fragrance made for Bethany Hamilton, the young blond surfer who lost her arm
in a shark attack in Hawaii.
Small-timers compared to Prince. Marla Beck, CEO of Blue Mercury, finds it
interesting that an indie scent-maker like Revelations was able to land a
"get" like Prince.
A celebrity scent "is a risky proposition," says Beck, who was not familiar
with Revelations. "Those scents either really fail or really succeed."
Couey described Prince as the "most creative" person he has worked with.
"Not just music but branding," he said. "What the package should look like,
fragrance development."
Keeping with Prince's love of all things 7 (still curious about what 3121
stands for? Add it up), Couey and his wife had six more meetings with
Prince. They were held at all hours of the day at recording studios,
dressing rooms at Prince's 3121 club in Las Vegas, and his suite at the Rio
Hotel.
"We needed to be pretty flexible," said Carol Couey.
Aside from the late-night rendezvous, the Coueys say there was nothing
eccentric about Prince. "He's a perfectionist who doesn't endeavor in
anything he can't be passionate about," said Larry Couey. "He makes you more
passionate."
And astute. Remember those candles? Prince is a candle fanatic and a
fragrance fiend. He'd bring the Coueys into rooms where a candle had been
burning for several hours so they'd get a feel for each scent.
"Sometimes we'd bring one of our perfumers to detect what notes were
involved," Larry Couey said.
There are three stages of a fragrance to consider in its development. You
smell the top note when a scent just comes out of the bottle and onto your
skin. The mid-note evolves when the scent begins to blend with skin and
settle. And finally, the dry-down occurs about 10 minutes later when the
fragrance has had time to bind with your skin and its natural scent.
"You have to have success in all three stages to be a blockbuster," Couey
said.
3121 contains hints of jasmine, tuberose and bergamot, with musk on the
dry-down. "That's very sensual - Prince really liked that," Couey said.
After nine months of fine-tuning those scents, Prince and the Coueys moved
on to the bottle. They decided on a bevel-cut heavy glass with a 22-karat
gold label in - of course - a purplish box.
In tune with Prince's numerical obsession, the 3121 perfume collection,
which comes in 100-mL, 50-mL and 30-mL sizes, will be sold at prices that
add up to 7. Gift sets are $77 and $250. The body crème is $43. The purse
spray is $52.
All this leads, obviously, to yesterday's launch date - 7/7/07. For all
bottles sold that day, Prince planned to donate 7 percent of the sales to
seven global charities.
Too much? The Coueys say no. While Prince joked that people said his scent
should be dubbed "Purple Rain" ("he knew that would be cheesy," Carol Couey
says), Larry Couey insists there were no unreasonable requests or demands.
"We're our own most demanding critics," he said. "Prince just happened to be
as passionate as we are."
Princely Perfume
For more information on where to buy 3121, go to www.3121.com or
www.3121perfume.com
Find this article at:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/image/8321372.html
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