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IPL is delighted to announce that the stunning Davidoff Oro Blanco box has won a prestigious Luxury Packaging Award at this year’s glittering ceremony in London. Designed by Dew Gibbons + Partners and Oettinger Davidoff AG, enhanced and brought to life by the IPL team, the pack was applauded as “an example of true luxury” within a hotly contested category. Congratulations to all involved in the development of this award-winning pack!
The panel felt ‘this was an example of true luxury within this category. The packaging was beautifully designed and assembled, and the element of personalisation on the Blanco box adds further to the consumer’s experience.’
The highlight of luxury packaging professionals’ calendar, the LuxePack Monaco exhibition, held in the Grimaldi Forum on the stunning shoreline of Monte Carlo, was at its biggest and most flamboyant ever this year. With around 450 exhibitor stands, an extended floorplan and a packed conference programme over 3 full days, you can see why it’s so popular.
As a visitor rather than an exhibitor it’s much easier to make the most of your time at the show, flitting from stand to stand to check out the latest trends, meeting contacts for coffee, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and after dinner drinks (the diet starts now!) and attending the various conferences and awards ceremonies. Having achieved all of the above, we caught up with IPL Senior Project Manager Lindsay Galloway to get her impressions of the show, the future and all things luxury.
Why did you come to the show?
IPL’s been getting involved more and more at the design stage of packaging projects, so we need to make sure we’ve always got our finger on the pulse with the changes going on in the industry – new materials, processes, finishes, closures, and how all this interacts with the consumer. It’s the biggest show of the year, so it’s a really useful place to get a feel for the upcoming trends in the luxury packaging world.
So what trends did you see?
After a couple of years of relative austerity, it seems to me that the focus on quality is returning in force. It’s not nearly as ostentatious as in previous years though – it’s all about the grade of the materials, the robustness of the structure; craftsmanship over bling. That said, there seems to be a resurgence of metallic finishes replacing the natural materials of the last while, but nothing too brash – it’s mainly in muted, classy monochrome with the occasional touch of the delicious copper tones that have been on trend for a while now.
Reviewing the LuxePack Trends Observer publication, they point out a shift towards androgyny that was very visible at the show: gone are the feminine curves and pale pastel shades, replaced with strong, angular silhouettes and bold colours. This is a trend that seems to have finally filtered down through fashion, to perfumes and cosmetics, and should be hitting the liquor industry imminently.
Does that mean that luxury is back?
It never left, and I don’t think it ever will. People will always be drawn to beauty and quality, so there will always be a demand for beautifully crafted, top-of-the-range products, with packaging that reflects the high value of the contents. The year-on-year growth of LuxePack Monaco is testament to this. Although the budget will fluctuate slightly from one year to another, luxury packaging will always be needed to showcase luxury products. It’s something close to our Head of NPD and Innovation Patrick Leclezio’s heart – have a look at his take on the longevity of luxury.
What was your favourite part of the show?
There was a lot of focus at the show in enhancing existing packaging, both bottles and boxes. This meant there were bottles with stunning holographic motion, packs with multiple reveal layers, crystal decanters wrapped in luxurious suede and boxes with bespoke metallic inlay. It was encouraging also to see signs of homogeny between primary and secondary packaging through the use of similar materials. While often bottles and boxes are designed in isolation of each other, paper supplier Winter & Co were showcasing materials used both on bottle labels and wrapped around boxes, bringing the whole pack together. I think these are all things that IPL can take on board and apply to future projects.
What else did you get up to in Monaco?
I had the opportunity to meet up with some of our clients for meetings, lunch, dinner and drinks, so it was great to get their take on what they’d seen at the show. I also dropped in to some of the insightful talks held at the exhibition during the day, and went to the glittering Prix Formes de Luxe award ceremony on the Thursday night to check out the 2015 nominees and winners in the world of luxury packaging. All in all 48 hours in Monaco well spent!
