The modern music merchandise game is a game of creativity, co-branding and innovation. Long gone are the days of a T-shirt being enough to complete a band’s merchandise portfolio. The dawn of e-commerce and a saturated music market has forced artists and marketing firms to think outside the boxy T-shirt. Weezer’s Black Market was the pinnacle of this movement.
In keeping the black theme, Cold Cave, the project of Wesley Eisold, partnered with fragrance company Blackbird to create a signature co-branded fragrance. The catch is that it ruins your clothes unless you fit a very specific aesthetic Eisold and Blackbird suggest:
“This fragrance contains black dye and will stain clothing. Please wear all black.”
Cold Cave's newly announced perfume comes with this warning: "This fragrance contains black dye and will stain clothing. Please wear all black." https://t.co/zerQMe36Dr pic.twitter.com/8sSsFq5mTF
— Stereogum (@stereogum) June 24, 2019
The scent was released in conjunction with Cold Cave’s series of concerts at Hollywood Forever Cemetery and the 10th anniversary of the album “Love Comes Close.”
“We danced to your songs in our stores while you burned our incense at your shows,” Blackbird wrote in marketing materials, according to Stereogum. “Unrequited love, only to meet in death.”
Blackbird’s description of the scent is pretty funny and on-the-nose for this kind of promotion, too.
“Black is the night is the death of the day. Leather is the skin we are imprisoned in. Marble is the stone in which we immortalize our souls. And Sage is the ritual in which we cleanse, heal and begin again.”
Fun!
The bottle costs $96 for 30 mL, and actually lists “a cold cave” in the scent notes, so that’s pretty clever.
