Jackson Perfume Launch Party: No Lift Off

It wasn’t all air kisses and happy talk at Thursday night’s long-delayed launch of the Michael Jackson tribute fragrances. The report from Agence France-Presse ran under the headline “Michael Jackson perfume launch causes stink”.

. . . the event descended into chaos when Joe Jackson, backed briefly by his daughter LaToya, made it clear he wanted to avoid any physical contact with Rouas, head of the perfume company Julian Rouas Paris.

The tension between Jackson and Rouas was obvious even before a press conference attended by more unknown models than journalists, and no members of the US media.

All that tension might have had something to do with the lawsuit that Rouas was hit with the previous day; it seeks an injunction against his use of MJ’s name and image, and if successful would scuttle the whole project.

But FirstNerve fans will notice something even more interesting amid the drama, namely that Joe Jackson and Julian Rouas have changed their story about how the project came about in the first place. Back in our first post in January we linked to Marie-Helene Wagner’s account of it:

Founder of Julian Rouas, Franck Rouas, explains that the project was born literally on the spur of the moment when two kids came up to him at a show asking to borrow his pen. Why, did he ask? It was to get an autograph from the Jacksons. Rouas then was immediately inspired to throw in two of his perfumes for the Jacsons [sic] to smell who then declared themselves charmed. [ . . .] A contract was signed 10 days later on December 12th, 2010.

But this is what they were they saying Thursday in Las Vegas:

“I don’t like the way he does things. But the initiative to create the scents was mine, and that plan goes ahead,” Joe Jackson told AFP . . .

And this:

The French perfumer meanwhile said he had known the singer’s father since 2009, when Jackson approached his company “because he wanted to make a perfume as a tribute to the memory of Michael Jackson.

So the spur-of-the-moment version was just a cock and bull story. Now we are told that within six months of his son’s death, Joe Jackson was actively looking to monetize his memory and that he found Rouas, not vice versa.

Monsieur Rouas scores a final bitch slap against Joe Jackson:

“He is a little angry with me now because someone put online, on the Internet [Ooopsy!—Ed.], the contract which we made for the perfume, but it wasn’t me who did it,” he added.

That is true in a sense—all Rouas did was put it on French television.