The imagery of pagodas, junk boats, lotuses, and cranes being used to sell Do Son seems like unmistakable Orientalism. This film and ad campaign are presenting a fantasy of Vietnam to sell a French perfume. The Vietnamese people won their freedom from French colonial rule in 1954, at the end of the eight-year French Indochina war. Diptyque was founded a few years later in Paris in 1961. The company started as a “bazaar” where the three owners sold textiles and objets d’art collected during their travels of the world.

Orientalism and Primitivism peaked in the 1960’s. Fashion and trends were based on inspiration from cultures and locations that designers perceived as “exotic.” Often these ideas are presented as the Western “discovery” of non-Western cultural phenomena. Orientalism and Primitivism are inextricably linked to cultural hegemony and European imperialism. Cultural appropriation without considering the context of the appropriated design and Western exploitation of other cultures to sell goods was always wrong. Fifty years later we all should know better, and it’s reasonable and ethical to expect people and companies to do better.