Van Cleef & Arpels: "Birmane", the

[dawnstar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: Van Cleef & Arpels: "Birmane", the French Ruby Dream Perfume

It should either be taken  off the market after a severe and aggressive
Free Burma campaign, or a percentage of profits should be given to help
the cause of freedom and democracy in Burma. That would seem to make a
little more sense that abetting the mystification of the struggle and
political crisis today, as the the luxury jewel company famous for
high-priced items that only the rich can afford, appears to have
launched a product, a perfume spin-off with a major publicity campaign
to sell "Birmane". Does anyone know about this. It came to me like a
visit in a surrealist dream as I rode my bike to the local village, a
small community of some hundred farmers and peasants and some city folk.
There are only a few public buildings in town, a post office, a small
mayor's office, the typical french "commune", a tiny convenient store
run by a moroccan "Ali", and an 13th century church, perhaps its that
old, no one seems to really know. And there she was, at the crossroads,
starring in space directly at me, this sublime brown-skinned dark hair
beauty, not looking at all like an indigineous burmese habitant, more
like someone fried by the cote d'Azur, on the french mediterranean
coast. She was sitting, elegantly envelopped in a sort of silk soft
sari, again not the burmese body wrap, sitting aloft an elephant, and
this elephant had all its legs, and on its forehead a large red ruby
implanted on the forehead - of the elephant. The image, a full size
poster the sort you find throughout France appeared so real one was
inclined to think that if you passed through it to the other side to
behold the true mystique of Burma all the beauty and charm of that land
would be yours forever. But not a temple in this two dimensional view.
Only what appeared in the upper right corner, a perfume bottle, with
"Birmane" inscribed on its body as on bottom of the affiche.

So what have you here. Another shallow and shameless disregard of the
tragedy in Burma, brought to you from Madison Avenue advertisers to make
you forget the reality of the dictatorship, in this latest flip of
fashion. 

I certainly think the Free Burma movement should NOT let this item pass
unnoticed. If they want to give Burma so much charm and publicity, and
to make handsome money and profits, from this million dollar ad
campaign, and million dollar product launch, then there is no doubt that
they would be willing to pay NOT to have anything dimnish it. They
should respect the reality of what they undermine and diminish here,
with this fatuous cliché. 

And they should support the democratic movement. Or is this a way for
them to get more rubies on the cheap. In fact, that they use the name
Birmane would not be an insult to the wicked regime. So they are getting
away with murder here, and making a good profit at it.

Please do something now. Contact the FBC, ask them whats going on.
Contact Van Cleef Arpels. They have a fine store, i believe on Madison
avenue, and perhaps here in Paris. 

A pretty boycott demonstration outside their store would certainly bring
in some headlines, and  boost the movement for free Burma. 

dawn star