Swedish perfume, make-up, fashion shows and a pink dress code. It was Women’s Night at Dusit Thani Hotel in Bangkok on Tuesday June 17th.
Beautiful women all dressed in pink were taking over the Dusit Thani Hotel in Bangkok Tuesday night. The whole D’Sense penthouse floor was turned into a chilled lounge with delicious food, make-up stands, signature reading, manicure and glitter tattoos.
The reason for this fashionable event, with lobster sushi, champagne and DJ, was the celebration of a 41 year old Swede… or more precisely, Swedish Oriflame’s 41 year anniversary and a launching of some new products, including perfumes for men and women, lipsticks and day creams.
Oriflame is a Swedish cosmetics brand which was started by the two Swedish brothers Robert and Jonas af Jochnick in 1967 and is now a multi-billion direct-selling cosmetics company with branches in more than 60 countries.
In Thailand, Swedish Oriflame is doing extremely well and has increased by 60 percent since the beginning of this year. There are in total five Swedes who are working in the office in Bangkok, three men and two women – Petra and Pia – who were also joining Oriflame’s party on Tuesday night.
“We have both been working for Oriflame in Sweden and got this opportunity to move to Bangkok,” says Petra Rude, 41.
She takes care of the catalogue development in Asia and has both been working for Oriflame in Stockholm, London and Sydney until she moved to Bangkok two months ago.
“I like Thailand. It is a beautiful country, people are nice and the culture is fascinating. The weather is great and we don’t get snow here. But more importantly, the shopping is fantastic…. better than in Scandinavia,” Petra says.
Then she adds:
“Well… not that I came here only to shop… but it is still a very important factor,” she says and laughs.
Her colleague Pia Mansson, 33, is working with region marketing. She moved to Bangkok from Oriflame’s office in Helsingborg two and a half years ago and has been here ever since.
“The biggest difference between Thai women and Scandinavian women is the fact that back home the women want self tanning products to be browner. Out here, the women want bleach products to be whiter,” Pia says.
But apart from the colour of the skin there is no significant difference between the Western and Asian women.
“When it comes down to it all we are all pretty similar. We are women who love make-up and perfume, no matter which part of the world we are from,” she says.
And judging by the mixed, pink crowd of beautiful Asian and Scandinavian women to the event, it looks like she is absolutely right.
