I Want Your Sex

A newly launched perfume takes us beyond gender 

- Rituparna Som

Are you male? Female? Do you not want to put a label to it? And are you done with the concept of unisex? Moving beyond simplistic gender specific tags, Prada is embracing gender ambiguity through the launch of La Femme Prada and L’Homme Prada. Yes, the two bottles are distinguished by gender, true. However, the fragrance distils down to the message that creator Miuccia Prada is keen to share – “I wanted to present these fragrances together, with the same concept, with the same photographer, so that they are really interchangeable. We have two actresses and actors that play three or four roles each. This is the main concept, that there isn’t a single icon representing the dream of a woman or a man. It is actually the opposite, that these people represent the reality, the differences and so on.”

If we’re talking about sex (as we are in this month’s Grazia), it’s impossible not to bring in two of its brethren – fragrance and sexuality. And combining the two, is Miuccia’s latest offering (created along with ‘nose’ Daniela Andrier and Design Director Fabio Zambernardi) and her first ever interview on fragrance.