Tiffany & Co. Tiffany & Co. 2017

When Truman Capote created the character of Holly Golightly nearly sixty years ago - it has never really made sense to me how anyone could find her even remotely likable, no matter how endearingly fragile Audrey Hepburn tried to portray her a few years later - the eponymous New York store Tiffany & Co. was at the forefront of the luxury jewelers of this world. A proposal with a solitaire from Tiffany - it was invented here! - long stood as the ultimate girlhood dream, and the turquoise boxes with white ribbons became the object of desire for daughters of higher and lesser status around the globe - the box perhaps even more important to some than the accompanying question itself.

Strategically at least questionable, Tiffany & Co. consciously chose in recent decades to progressively demystify and thus trivialize its own brand. Even though the high-quality objects of desire can still be purchased there, the sterling silver portion of the product portfolio has become quite accessible for everyday life. Its current market positioning as a jewelry chain - a sort of 'premium Christian' - may have secured the company's economic survival, but the myth is gone. The launch of this latest fragrance - just in time for the Christmas season - now seals the descent of the once-noble jeweler into the retail segment, as clearly as it could be.

Here is a fragrance that noticeably wants nothing at all. One that is so desperately eager to please that it risks offending no one - and in every respect is so mediocre that one wants to shout: 'Louder! Better! Faster! More!' But nothing of the sort. Instead, there is a passionless and soulless floral sweetness in an inconsequential and almost soundless fruitiness - in a bottle that is certainly not ugly - which simply does not do justice to the history of the former desire merchant Tiffany & Co. A fragrance that seemingly serves only one purpose: to allow one more person to say, 'I got something from Tiffany for Christmas.'

Conclusion: I had never noticed how similar the turquoise tones of Tiffany and Douglas actually are. Until now.