The discreet charm of Perrier

What is it about Perrier that accounts for its fizzing success? Why does it seem to be on the lips - and in the mouth - of practically every yuppie around?

For aesthetes, there is the clear attraction of the bottle.  Not since the first introduction of the Coke bottle has a shape so impressed itself on a generation and summed up an era.  Its lines are smooth and unhurried, with a classic amplitude which reminds you of Rodin, a delicacy of curve that is positively Brancusi.  It could almost be a Greek artefact, miraculously preserved in some southern French port after a long journey from Neapolis.  It is the embodiment of the Platonic essence of bottleness; as such it deserves no less than to be the carrier for the essence of liquidness: water. 

But perhaps that water is more central to its appeal than its form.  In fact it goes some way to negating the studied artistry of its container.  On the one hand, you see the ultimate in artifice, a bottle which somehow represents the summation of the bottler's art, a lifetime's - perhaps a chain of lifetimes' - experience refined and solidified.  On the other we have the simplest compound in the world - water.  Tasteless, odourless and colourless, it is utterly self-effacing.  It is almost a rebuke to its bottle.

But the power of the imagery of water is too strong; even a beautifully gross encapsulation cannot dim its bright purity.  And this is what the punters are buying: they are purchasing a symbolic purification, conveniently sold in bottles.  It is a token of their own rarefaction, of the fact that they are not constrained by gross mortal needs.  No vulgar sticky Coca Cola for them. Each cool green bottle bespeaks a moral refinement, a self-control, attained only by the chosen.  It says: "See, I have chosen almost nothing; so subtle are my tastes that I can derive pleasure even from this." 

Perrier is the ichor of the bronzed gods and goddesses who live and die by the Nautilus machine.  It argues the same rigour, the same sense of sustained self-improvement and maintained asceticism as gritty physical exertion and tight-kneed celibacy.  It is a statement about the depraved and corrupt times in which we live, and in which its drinkers have no part save as wiser and happier onlookers.

But where water on its own would be passive, and quite out of sorts with the dynamism which lies at the heart of the near manically active yuppie.  Perrier has a further attraction, which is at the same time its own emblem: effervescence.  It is nothing, mere invisible gas.  It is a mysterious quality, only released when the bottle is opened.  It is the ultimate metaphor for its consumers: people who pre-eminently fizz.

However, like all great and deep trends, the pursuit of Perrier contains within it the seeds of its own destruction.  Lately we have witnessed the ultimate perversion: flavoured Perrier.  It could well be that the languorous tear-shaped bottle becomes a fitting memorial too.

(30.6.86)

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