Dior is selling a bottle of Johnny Depp’s fragrance every few seconds
No matter what verdict is announced regarding the Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard defamation trial, it’s undeniable that the Pirates of the Caribbean star’s film career was impacted by both the allegations from and the ongoing court battle with his ex-wife. That being said, when it comes to the world of luxury fragrance, it seems Depp he still as popular as ever, if not more, since it’s been revealed that Dior apparently sold a bottle of Sauvage—the perfume the actor is the face of—every three seconds in 2021.
The claim was first shared by Twitter user John Pompliano who found the information in a January 2022 article from Marie Claire where the publication reported the mind-blowing statistic. This even makes Sauvage the best-selling perfume in both the male and female categories.
Unlike Marie Claire, Pompliano took the research one step further by calculating just how much money Depp’s infamous fragrance was making Dior, “Despite most labels dropping Johnny Depp, @Dior decided to stick with him. Why?” he wrote in the same tweet.
“They sell a bottle of his fragrance ‘Sauvage’ every 3 seconds. At $160 a bottle, that’s over $4.5 million a day in sales,” Pompliano concluded.
We’re talking big money here, which explains why Dior has been ‘standing by’ Depp the whole time—not because it ‘was the only brand that believed him’ as so many fans like to speculate on TikTok, but simply because the actor, even when ostracized, was still making it a heck lot of money.
It also suggests that being dumped by Disney and Warner Bros. didn’t lead Depp to complete bankruptcy. After losing a libel case against The Sun in 2020 after the tabloid called him a “wife beater” in a published article, he was fired from the highly anticipated movie, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
At the time, there were several calls for Dior to follow suit. Despite Depp having been the face of Sauvage fragrance since its launch in 2015, and as reported by The Guardian, a spokesperson for the Advertising Standards Authority said, “We have received a total of 11 complaints about this ad with the complainants believing that Johnny Depp shouldn’t be in the ad due to details concerning his recent court case.”
PR agent Mark Borkowski also argued at the time that Depp should be dropped. Speaking to The Guardian, he said: “I think it would be sensible for Dior to sever links with Depp. Anything can be stopped by pressing a button if they really wanted to. A brand like Dior is not just looking at this territory. The attitude [towards Depp] in the UK will be very different to the one in eastern Europe, for example.”
“Brands hope for short-term memory loss and long-term amnesia,” the British expert continued. “These fashion companies live in their own bubble, it’s like The Devil Wears Prada. They live in a world where they are used to facing controversy.”
Now we know exactly why Dior stuck by the man…
