The whole idea behind Cumming was about having fun and being provocative.
I have worn Christopher’s scents for years and they always made me feel earthy and sexy, so I knew that whatever he came up with would be something I would love and would feel proud to endorse.
That then gave me the confidence and freedom to have some fun with the whole notion of celebrity endorsement, especially in terms of fragrances. That’s how the images for the marketing campaign (and also the interiors of each product’s packaging) came about, with me in various homages to old fragrance ads, and the commercial on the website that is lampooning itself whilst at the same time saying things that I really believe in.
And finally there’s the matter of my name! After forty years of bad jokes about it, it feels great to have been able to turn the tables and make it work for me!
I just love that we have been able to create something that people feel good about wearing and also get the wit and satire behind it.
Most of all, I love that we are making the world feel sexy.
It was never my ambition to have my own fragrance and range of body products, but sometimes these things are just thrust upon us!
It actually started as a bit of a joke between Christopher Brosius - a really amazing perfumer whose stuff I had admired and worn and had become friends with - and Jason Schell, who had the original idea.
All my life I have had to endure jokes about my name so obviously having the tables turned in this way really appalled to me. I also thought it would be great to shake things up a bit and challenge people's perceptions of celebrity endorsement AND to put my name to something that i think is great and I use every day.
It is still pretty weird when someone comes up to me and instead of saying they have seen me in a movie or a play they say they have my fragrance. Or when I look through a goody bag on the way home from some event and find one of my own products there!
The photos that we shot for the ad campaign were great fun to do and created quite a storm. They are all based on old fragrance ads. Christopher and Jason went to the Fragrance Foundation (yes there is such a thing) and scoured their archives and then we took the ads they found to photographer Steve Vacciarello and we worked on recreating the lighting and feel of each one. I love them. I also love that people might not know what they are at first. I love a slow burn.
My friend Joe Mantegna made the commercial. There are two versions, 45 and 90 seconds. Again we wanted to both make a sexy, provocative commercial but also at the same time take the piss out of all those ads with people rolling around in beds looking dreamy. I tried to channel those Calvin Klein Obsession ads, which I always thought were hilarious.
With this whole project I loved how we were able to produce something that is really good and also make people question what they think of celebrities selling them stuff. And we also had a real laugh. A lot of people didn't get it, or were annoyed because they weren't sure what they were supposed to think. I like that.
And I like Cumming. I love washing my hands with a bar of soap that has my name on it and is called Cumming in a Bar. I love showering with Cumming Clean and scrubbing with Cumming Off Buff and smearing myself in Cumming All Over.
Once when I was doing The Seagull I reached up to get something from a shelf in my dressing room and a bottle of Cumming fell and just missed my head. I thought it would be hilarious to have been killed by a bottle of my own signature fragrance!
Find out more, and even maybe buy it here!