Johnny Depp Will Continue to Sell Aptly Named Perfume

Anyone worried about Johnny Depp’s future employment can rest easy; it seems he still has “Sauvage.” That is the name of the Dior cologne for which Depp has been the face and official muse since 2015 – a role which he will now hold onto for several more years. TMZ reports Depp signed a new, seven-figure contract to represent the bergamot and Amberwood cologne “inspired by wide-open spaces, a white-hot desert landscape under a vast blue sky.”

When the scent launched in 2015, Dior said they chose Depp for his "singularly authentic allure, tattooed arms and rock-jewellery-covered hands.” The couture company also released a “short film” in which Depp throws aside the guitar he’s playing and proceeds to drive into the desert — past one bison and a hawk — dig a hole, and bury his wood-bead necklaces and titanium rings under some rocks. The message was clear: “I can’t see. I can feel it,” Depp said in a voiceover. “It’s magic. Sauvage.” Or as Wonderland Magazine put it at the time:

We watch him transform from a man stuck in the futility of the urban city, trusting the boundaries society has placed for him, into a man of natural instinct, a man who knows his inner-savage. The campaign promotes self-knowledge and self-discovery, connoting how authenticity can always be found deep within ourselves.

The actor’s tenure at Dior has been a little rocky – they had to pull one ad campaign in 2019 that showed, as The News UK put it, Depp “wearing a poncho playing guitar,” as a “Native American man perform[ed] a traditional dance and a dark-haired model with long hair appear[ed] in Native American dress.” And after Heard first accused Depp of physical abuse, the ads largely stopped airing on television. But the cologne’s sales have nevertheless spiked lately; the Wall Street Journal reported in June that “Sauvage” was the top-selling men’s cologne on both Sephora.com and Ulta.com, a trend that seemed to stem from fans who were channeling their support for the actor into fragrance sales.

Now, the boy is back and appearing on FOX during primetime, in the midst of both his and Heard’s appeals of the June 1 legal decision. Apparently, during Depp’s tour with English guitarist Jeff Beck, he reconnected with fashion photographer Greg Williams at a concert in Paris. The two reportedly did some photoshoots that will be used for the new campaign. One can only hope the result, as the brand wrote of their first launch, “perfectly achieves the balance of raw wildness with masculine sophistication that the fragrance emulates.”