Francesco Vezzoli has been called both a tease and a whore. The tease camp points to such recent artworks as a trailer for a movie that doesn’t exist and a premiere for a play that never ran, while the other cites his self-admitted obsession with bold-faced names, many of whom — Helen Mirren, Milla Jovovich, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Sharon Stone, Courtney Love, and Benicio Del Torro, to name a few — have participated in these productions.

Both tendencies are evident in Vezzoli’s latest work, a highly polished, celebrity-endorsed marketing campaign for an utterly elusive product. Debuting tomorrow at Gagosian Gallery in Rome and running through March 21 is “Greed,” an exhibition based on a nonexistent perfume, featuring a minute-long commercial directed by Roman Polanski and starring Portman and Michelle Williams, a series of billboard-like ads with images of famous Greed gals (artists ranging from Frida Kahlo to Eva Hesse), and a nifty bottle with a photograph of the artist in drag (an homage to Marcel Duchamp, also auteur of a fake perfume whose bottle has a self-portrait in drag).

And inside the bottle? Well, last we heard that’s still up in the air.

ARTINFO caught up with Vezzoli on the eve of the worldwide launch of his new fragrance and asked about his celebrities, his critics, and the fugitive scent of Greed.

Francesco, how did the idea for Greed come about?

I’ve done a trailer for a movie that didn’t exist, an election campaign for candidates who were completely fictitious, and a premiere for a play that was never going to run. A project about the launch of a perfume that didn’t exist seemed like a natural next step.

Miuccia Prada and Francois Pinault, owner of Gucci, have sponsored some of your works. Did you speak to people at these fashion lines to learn about building a campaign for perfume?

Miuccia Prada and Francois Pinault are collectors of mine, but we never talk perfume.

Do you imagine that Greed has a smell? 

No, I think that Greed smells like nothing, but nothing smells like greed.

That was clever. Have you practiced that answer?

No, no. Only for you.

To give you a more serious answer, I played with the idea of Greed smelling like something. But then I was so happy about the video, which is made by one of the best movie directors in the world, that I thought that even if I worked on a perfume for three years with the best noses in the world I wouldn’t be able to find a perfume that defines the notion of a perfume as well as this perfume commercial defines the notion of a perfume commercial.

I presume you started this project before the current economic crisis.

Yes, otherwise nobody would have green-lighted it.

Do you feel that the meaning of the work has changed as a result?

Well, some people have said, You are clairvoyant, you have anticipated the moment. Others may think that because it’s such a daring project, it belongs more to the type of work that people would have done before the crisis. Me, I just hope that greed will evaporate like a perfume.

It would be very easy for me to claim territory on this project and say that it has a critical and moral stance, etc., etc., but I don’t like to sell this version. I thought of Envy by Gucci and wondered how to push it forward. I thought to myself, What’s similar to a capital sin, and Greed came up.

Unfortunately greed will always be fashionable, with or without a crisis.

So you don’t think of the project as having much of a critical element?

No, I do. I think my work is very political, because it deals with the perception of celebrity culture, which is something that we’re all involved with. But many critics get stuck on the fact that I have celebrities in my work and conclude that since my work is about surface, it stays on the surface. So I have given up trying to claim a political aspect to my work. I leave it to others to judge.

But it’s great that a gallery like Gagosian allowed me to play with everyone’s identity: I play with my identity, since on the label I look like a woman; Roman Polanski plays with his identity by doing the job that a movie director hates the most, which is being a perfume commercial director; and the actresses play with their identity, because they accept to do what most actresses hate the most, which is to be like coathangers; and the gallery allows me to play with its public identity by claiming they produce or sell perfume.