Outre has an undebatable appeal for Gen Y. But what sells alcohol to kids is its usefulness - for paaaarty-ing. So J&B has reinvented itself as ‘the party whisky’. And it is acquiring all the party trappings: a cool social media presence and a hipster look.
This is where Button Button Design and tattoo artist, Sébastien Mathieu, come into the story.
J&B Rare scotch blend whisky was created in London middle of the 19th century by the already famous wine and spirits merchant, Justerini & Brooks, who wanted create its own house whisky. At the the same time, tattoos started to spread through London, the trend coming from Royal Navy sailors, who used to return from distant travels sporting tattoos. The fashion eventually reached the British upper class when Prince Bertie (later Edward VII) was first tattooed in 1862. It then spread throughout Great Britain and Europe…
When Button Button was given the job of designing a limited edition range of bottle, it seized on the opportunity to use Gen Y’s reawakening of tattoo fascination as the foundation of its design. The studio decided to tattoo 25 bottles for real.
The bottles were completely covered with a latex skin, like the one used to practice tattoo, slim enough to respect bottle shape and strong enough to be hit hundreds of times with a tattooer's needles. The skins were given the colour of human skin to strengthen the tattoo perception and create something intriguing. Sébastien Mathieu Bousille, owner of Le Sphinx - a private tattoo room in Paris – was then invited to create the tattoos. He reported later that he responded to the creative challenge and only later, discovered its complexity. It took him about 20 hours to tattoo each bottle.
Each of the 25 bottles is tattooed from a single design but intrinsically, each bottle is unique. All 25 bottles were offered for sale in Paris at Publicis Drugstore and at L'éclaireur rue Herold. They are presented in rough black silkscreened wooden boxes.
