Fabio Catches Whiff of Success as the Incredible Huckster
F ile this one under naked ambition (subhead: walloping big egos): Fabio, that leonine guy with the pecs and no last name who poses for the covers of all those bodice-ripper novels, is out on the hustings, hawking a line of perfume called Mediterraneum.
Realizing that what Fabio knows about perfume could easily take up all the room in your average dental filling, and further realizing that he’s only one of a fair handful of alleged models out there who are trying desperately to be something other than mannequins, we’ve got a question: What the heck gives here? Isn’t being a ridiculously overpaid and world-famous model/actor enough anymore?
HE: Guess not. We’ve got Cindy Crawford doing makeup ads, Elle MacPherson and a handful of her pals shilling for beer, Jaclyn Smith embracing Kmart. And I’m going to have my sense of smell surgically removed in protest if I have to see too many more of those Elizabeth Taylor perfume spots.
I can see it: One day a designated sycophant pipes up, “Hey, Fabio! I’ll bet even more women would want to shred your clothes off if you became a perfume pitch man! Yeah! That’s the ticket!”
And Fabio, his chest rippling thoughtfully, would grunt, “Ah. Si. Plus I get more bucks to buy these molto expensive aesthetically ripped shirts and maybe I get to watch Super Bowl with Larry Fortensky.”
Could all this hype actually work?
SHE: I think it’s a hoot. Men are going to buy the stuff because they hope it will make them as attractive as Fabio (might this really be Fabian in a comeback?). Women will lap it up because it’s new and they hope it will make their main squeeze Fabio-lous.
Very modern women will buy it and wear it themselves. They understand that a fragrance a man would wear is a fragrance a man will respond to (or so say some perfume gurus).
HE: Let me get this straight: Women are going to buy a men’s fragrance and wear it themselves? Because a man will respond to it? You bet he will. He’ll dive out the nearest window, that’s how he’ll respond to it. I can only speak for myself, but my hormonal-olfactory connection isn’t screwed up enough for me to get all hot when I detect the great smell of Brut wafting off my date.
But maybe that’s what ol’ Fabio’s for. If he shoots a commercial in which he says something like, “Mediterraneum--irresistible on men . . . dangerous on women,” and then sweeps a woman with a big, heaving romance-novel bodice into a crushing embrace and sniffs her neck, well . . SHE: You didn’t know about cross-scenting? I’ve known men who wear fragrances made for women. But we’re getting off the track. Men hawking scents isn’t new. Calvin Klein, Bob Mackie, Oscar de la Renta and Bijan--they’ve all done it.
But why Fabio? I found out when I went to Bullock’s at South Coast Plaza on Tuesday to watch the Mediterraneum launch.
He’s a tall, dreamy, thirtysomething hunk given to lifting ladies in the air and signing autographs until his pen goes dry. He loves the promotion game. And the women--about 500 of them--returned the favor by buying bottle after bottle of the stuff.
HE: Let’s remember that male models have never had the same universal cachet as female models. The world at large believes that guys aren’t supposed to look that perfect. The too-beautiful man makes a lot of people look askance, because that’s traditionally never been the man’s stock in trade. Female models, on the other hand, couldn’t be models unless they conformed to that angular and slightly anorexic ideal of beauty.
But the mere fact that models look good doesn’t confer any particular expertise. Let’s draw a few parallels. I drive a car, but nobody’s going to ask me to lend my name to a new line of Pontiacs. You work on a computer, but Apple isn’t going to ring you up tomorrow and try to convince you to let them call their newest model the Conway Pippin. We know people who play the piano, but they’re not going to end up on a Steinway poster any time soon.
I might buy a “How to Develop a Big Chin” video if Fabio endorsed it, but I’m going to give Mediterraneum a miss.
SHE: I’m betting it will be a hit. It’s a low key, woodsy-fruity scent that is definitely unisex. And the price is right--$21 to $46 a bottle.
Just in time for the holidays, natch.
