Holmes & Marchant revives Grossmith brand
Branding and design agency Holmes & Marchant has worked to resurrect early nineteenth century fragrance brand Grossmith, which ceased trading 30 years ago.
The agency has created the entire visual identity for the new Grossmith brand, with its work encompassing logos, colour schemes, glass bottles, lids, boxes, edging patterns and type.
It drew on original bottle shapes, decorative designs and typefaces to bring the brand upto date while keeping faith with "its roots firmly in the past".
The agency was given the brief by Simon Brooke, who discovered the Grossmith brand founded by his ancestors after tracing his family history and set about resurrecting it as a family-owned business.
Some designs in the new product range take their inspiration from a crystal bottle commissioned by Grossmith in 1919 from Maison Baccarat to house a special range of scents.
"The Baccarat bottles were where the project began,” said Nick Hanson, creative director at Holmes & Marchant.
“It is a reverential nod to Grossmith’s heritage that we have taken the original Baccarat bottle as the basis for the new flagship range of the brand. The exquisite patterns of the new gold etching are a modern interpretation of the Victorian decoration.”
The wider brand identity also references the brand's heritage, with the logo based on designs used on old fragrance cards and the packaging of early Grossmith scents.
“We’ve taken the personality from the early fragrances and recrafted it to create a logo and identity that can work across this range as well as for any future Grossmith launches,” Hanson said.
“It’s very Art Deco and communicates that this is a luxury, handcrafted product – reflecting in the packaging and the attention to detail that has always been a hallmark of Grossmith," he added.
The range primarily uses a gold, regal blue and white colour scheme, which the agency said is more subtle than the bright multicoloured labels of the Victorian and Edwardian originals.
Each bottle in the perfume range will come in an "elegant, luxurious-feeling white box", while the eau de parfum boxes will be blue. Baccarat bottles will be sold in hand-made oak presentation cases.
Simon Brooke, managing director of Grossmith, said: “There’s no doubt that the relaunch of Grossmith was a challenging brief, with so much to take into account and a heritage that we needed both to reference and evolve.
"The work that Holmes & Marchant has produced is absolutely stunning and completely in keeping with the idea of remastering such a classic brand."