It’s Fun When I Can Call a Post “Coverage”: Highlights from the Elements Showcase

I confess to being self-conscious about how legitimately I can call myself a blogger, what with my whopping nine followers (and yes, I know it’s not helping things that I would rather die than join Facebook), so I was only half-serious when I RSVP’d as “press” for the Elements Showcase, a New York trade show focused on niche fragrance and beauty brands. But in the end it didn’t matter that I’ve never garnered more than a few dozen unique views in any 24-hour period; everyone I spoke to seemed intrigued that I was even there. Oh, you’re a perfume blogger? Cool! No questions asked.

One of my first stops was the display for the New York-based Joya perfume and home fragrance line, run by Elements Showcase co-founder Frederick Bouchardy. Joya places a lot of significance on containers – most notably the gorgeous matte ceramics by Sarah Cihat that enclose many of their candles and their perfume duo Composition No .1 and Composition No. 6. One of the coolest examples of this appreciation for containers was a double-candle housed in a WWII-era British military soap tin (a clamshell design, thus accomodating one candle poured into each side of the tin; the scents are “Amber Absolute” and “Bitter Orange Leaf”).

But the most fascinating thing on display at Joya was their new limited-run collaboration with indie perfume darlings D.S. & Durga called “Staghorn Sumac” [1], which complements the sharp and lemony namesake plant with accords of lily and bison grass (heavy on the coumarin). I love the way D.S. & Durga translate arcane Americana into scent (i.e. Mississippi Medicine, based on the rituals of a “proto-Mississippian death cult” from the 1200s), and this bright but earthy and bone-dry homage to the American plains fits right in with their oeuvre. I will definitely be pre-ordering one of the 100 bottles they plan to produce.

I got to shoot the shit a bit with Anne McClain, fellow Brooklynite and founder/perfumer of MCMC Fragrances. I’d never smelled the scents in her ‘stories’ collection (each inspired by a personal experience) and I took a real liking to Maine, with its beautifully oddball pairing of Bulgarian rose and seaweed absolutes, and the super-resinous Hunter [2], loaded with fir balsam and tobacco.

I had an equally fun chat with Annie and Therese Gibbons, the sisters behind Alora Ambiance, the first home fragrance company to bring reed diffusers to the U.S. We disagreed on the virtues of vetiver (one of them, like me, adores it; the other not so much) while passing around a scent strip of their interpretation of that note - a pure and wild vetiver, inspired by the woven vetiver mats found just about everywhere in Indonesia.

The display of Williamsburg salon/apothecary Woodley & Bunny featured Andy Tauer’s new Pentachords series (so named because each fragrance is composed of only five components), which I’ve been eager to sniff. After being sold exclusively in Italy for the past few months, the limited-run Pentachords are going global this fall. Verdant [3], as suggested, is green, wet, leafy and earthy. Auburn [4] is warm, dry and woody, with an emphasis on the lovely cinnamon note. While obviously quite different from each other, both were striking and successfully communicated the minimalist intention behind the collection, as opposed to White, a meek, anonymously sweet and utterly non-threatening iris.

I also got to sample two independent European brands that haven’t yet arrived on the U.S. market. The first was Spanish line Carner Barcelona, which launched two perfumes in Europe last year: D600, inspired by Barcelona nightlife; and Tardes [5], a woody floral by Daniela Andrier (I just can’t stay away!) that alludes to wheat fields, almond groves, wild roses and geraniums and the dwindling light of late afternoon. This is a particularly romantic work for Andrier, but – like many of her other works – includes an unexpected element, in this case a fresh, barely salty celery note that keeps the cedar, tonka and Heliotrope in the base from turning too sweet. Fall brings the launch of their third perfume: a great smoky leather simply called Cuirs, surely a nod to the long line of leather artisans from whom founder Sara Carner is descended.

After that I was introduced to Technique Indiscrète, a refined but quirky fragrance line by Belgian-born fashion designer Libertin Louison. Standouts from his collection of eight eaux de parfum include: Paname Paname [6], a chypre re-interpretation that kicks off with an audacious cumin-citrus pairing and sweetens with an “apple cake” note; Safran Nobile, inspired by a wedding in India, a heady swirl of sweet spice, saffron, vanillic benzoin, patchouli and dirty jasmine; and Délivre Moi, a modest but comforting better-than-skin scent focused on honey, accented with almond and heliotrope on a mild woody-musky base. Technique Indiscrète also produce three eaux de cologne and a line of hydrosols.

Last but not least, I marveled at sculptor Niho Kozuru’s gorgeous beeswax candles, which she casts in molds made from reclaimed turned-wood architectural details from traditional New England homes. The molds are so accurate that you can often see the woodgrain on the candles’ surfaces. We bonded over our love of the smell of beeswax (“it won’t overpower your dinner party” being one of the benefits I hadn’t previously considered). You can find her candles, appropriately, at the Noguchi Museum gift shop.

Coming Up This Fall

Fall is sadly nowhere near, but happily, there’s more to look forward to than just a merciful drop in temperature.

Prada Candy
As I've confessed before, I’m fascinated by Daniela Andrier’s steadily expanding portfolio for Prada. Her latest, the upcoming Candy, is positioned as a signature fragrance (not part of the Infusions series) and appears to be a departure from her typically diaphanous style towards something much bolder and more saturated: the press release uses the phrase “overdose of benzoin.” Musks and a “modern” caramel accord round out the cast. I'm hoping that Candy is as good as it sounds, and not merely an attempt to translate Love, Chloé into Prada-ese.

Bottega Veneta Eau de Parfum
I covet Bottega Veneta's anony-chic clothes, accessories and $40,000 luggage sets like vampires long for sunlight: quite simply never going to happen. But - lo and behold! - the ultra luxe brand has teamed up with no less than Coty, purveyors of the illustrious David and Victoria Beckam air pollution fragrance line, to launch their first perfume this fall. You, reader, lose 10 points if you missed the skepticism and sass in that last sentence. On the other hand, while the “leathery floral chypre” is transparently a brand ambassador to the non-wealthy, there are two reasons why it may also be a good perfume: 1) The perfumer, Michel Almairac, who was behind the original Gucci Pour Homme, several of the better Bond No. 9 perfumes and the adorably delicate Ambrette 9 for Le Labo; 2) Tomas Maier, the brand's creative director, who conceptualized this Eau and whose taste is frankly unassailable. Brand-whore bonus: the bottom of the flacon bears the same debossed intrecciato pattern as BV's fine Murano glassware.

Parfumerie Générale No. 25 Indochine
I'm planning to write soon about Fareb, the only scent from Pierre Guillaume's new Huitième Art line that I've sampled, but I'm also happy to see PG returning to his signature numbered Parfumerie Générale collection. Like Prada Candy, PG's No. 25 Indochine has benzoin at its core, but augments it in typical PG fashion with exotic supporting ingredients: Kampot pepper, Laotian honey and thanaka, a traditional Burmese cosmetic paste that smells something akin to sandalwood. This one I know will be good.

On L'Eau Ambrée and the Duty-Free Doldrums

I’m sitting in LaGuardia airport (waiting for a flight to Atlanta) with a duty-free spray of Prada’s L’Eau Ambrée on my left wrist. This is an interesting coincidence because of two things: 1) My reluctance to take advantage of duty free airport shops as a legitimate point of purchase for fragrance, and 2) my mixed feelings about the work of Daniela Andrier, Prada’s go-to perfumer for the past several years.

Yes, I am a snob. Even while recognizing that, for most people, buying a bottle of perfume from a duty free shop wouldn’t be terribly different from buying the same bottle from Saks (or even, god forbid, Sephora), I’ll invariably choose the latter. To me at least, the difference between strolling among two thousand-dollar handbags and being constantly jostled by layover zombies in Juicy sweats is appreciable, if not earth-shattering.

Likewise, Daniela Andrier’s work for Prada bears a certain tension between the genuine artistic skill it takes to create a recognizable olfactory signature like that shared among Prada’s Infusion series on one hand, and the take-no-prisoners intention toward plain wearability -- or rather, sell-ability -- on the other. 

Case in point -- L’Eau Ambrée seems of a feather with Infusion d’Iris, Infusion d’Homme, et al in terms of its cool, translucent and silky texture. And the achievement of that texture is what impresses me most, given what constitutes the core on which it rests. What I smell is a simple powdery white floral accord, clean musk and synthetic ambergris, pretty much linear from start to finish. Or, in other words, salted caramel with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar.  

How do you make salted caramels smell cool, translucent and silky? That’s Daniela Andrier’s genius.

How do people react to the smell of caramel, whether or not they’re aware of the artifice that created it? That’s how Prada makes a killing.

Prada L’Eau Ambrée is not outrageously expensive and available in many, many places.

Translating Margiela

I.

Shall we get right to it? (untitled), the first fragrance from Maison Martin Margiela, was composed by the gifted Daniela Andrier, a watercolorist of a perfumer and the author of Prada’s madly successful Infusions series, and it proceeds something like this: a splash of fresh wet green to start; soft, cuddly resins wrapping a statuesque bigarade; a polite suggestion of jasmine and warm cedar; pretty-but-anemic musk and a drop of sweat. It generates more than decent sillage, but after the opening blast of galbanum fades (it doesn’t take long), all I smell from a distance is pillow-soft amber and bitter orange. If I really hound my wrist I get the faintly animalic musky base and traces of incense.

These are lovely notes, every one, and elegantly interwoven, yet I’m left wishing for twice the effect packed in half the volume, and more importantly, something to skew it a degree or two off-trend. (untitled) is a very nice fragrance, but in the way that a Margiela t-shirt is just a ‘very nice’ t-shirt.

Luckily for the Diesel Group (Maison Martin Margiela’s new corporate parent), very nice is plenty good enough for a lot of people – especially, I would wager, the kind of people who prize expensive simplicity and prefer to smell ‘like nothing.’ I can’t help wondering, though, what might have been if the same devil-may-care daringness had been applied to this project as has been devoted to the house’s most thought-provoking designs. What if the bracing, bitter green notes were prolonged, kept aloft by brighter, headier incense instead of giving way to the woody-floral heart? Or what if the musks were even dirtier, saltier, suggestive of a wet animal coat made strangely desirable (think of the wet fur facet of L’Artisan’s Méchant Loup)?

I’m not suggesting either of these ideas would be better than what ended up in the bottle. The trouble with (untitled) is that I can’t seem to find its identity. It somehow feels overdone and incomplete at the same time. And while I know it’s splitting hairs to say so, even the way it was introduced lacked the intelligence and straightforwardness on which la Maison stakes its reputation.

Last week’s event at the New York Margiela store, for example, featured no experiential process by which to try the scent, unless you want to count the precious scented cloth buttons that were pinned to lapels here and there. Unlike the comparably lavish Paris launch, there was no tower of bottles, no flashy reveal, and no white confetti either. There was merely a pair of tester bottles on a sober white pedestal – arguably more in sync with the house’s aesthetic and yet not very exciting – and a surplus of hors d’oeuvre-bearing waiters. I was kind of hoping I would have to follow the scent across an unlit room to its source on the gaunt neck of a nude model, or something to that effect. I gave up a ticket to Die Zauberflote so I could attend, for pete’s sake! Admittedly, that imaginary scenario is more for-its-own-sake wackitude than something actually meaningful, but surely the passing of lukewarm beet canapes isn’t the only alternative.

Conversely, the house appeared intent on taking its fragrance seriously even if no one else cared to. The testers bottles were accompanied by a handful of small vials bearing samples of (untitled)’s featured raw ingredients (galbanum, galbanum resinoid, bigarade orange, lentiscus resinoid (mastic), and incense) – a thoughtful way of being informative that, by my count, about three partygoers took advantage of. Considering the fashion-oriented crowd and the mill-about, free champagne mood of the gathering, that forlorn display seemed to cry out for all the perfume geeks who weren’t there. It worked as a visual reminder of the house’s preoccupation with construction and process, but then if they really wanted (untitled) to live up to its name and “to hold different meanings for different people” (which itself is not a particularly unique sentiment about perfume), they might have considered not publicizing the list of notes at all, as Hermès did with their new Voyage.

I like (untitled) more than I’m letting on. But at the end of the day, I would’ve believed any number of other designer names slapped on the smart, paint-dipped lab bottle, and I find it difficult to believe (as the house insists) that Martin Margiela himself had anything to do with the project.

II.

The most curious part of the whole enterprise, though, is the deliberately obfuscated marketing copy being used to promote it. In the interest of mining the true intentions behind (untitled), I took the liberty of translating a few breezy excerpts into more everyday statements:

“Everyone can feel called into question by a colour, a shape or a garment… We wanted to give perfume the same chance. Stripped of any reference to an influence of precise climate, (untitled) can be interpreted and worn for all occasions by every one of us.”

Translation: “Everyone can feel befuddled from time to time by our most overwrought pieces. We wanted to disorient our audience with perfume as well, except in the sense that it has little to do with our founder’s vision, which really no longer directs the house anyway, you see. (untitled) takes Margiela into an entirely new market, bearing an instantly familiar, purely pleasurable character.”

• • •

“For its first olfactive creation, Maison Martin Margiela has chosen to strike out on a new path, reformulating the forgotten green fragrances that symbolised the femininity of the 1970s… The principal element of this woody green floral is Galbanum, a fine and rare raw material. Its incisive notes are boosted with the bitterness of box green, the vibrancy of lentiscus and incense, and the smoothness of bitter orange. Like a huge armful of plants harvested just after the rain, its raw state recalling pared-down garments and hems cut open, emblematic signatures of Maison Martin Margiela.”

Translation: “For our first scent we chose to try one of those green fragrances we learned about. It’s said they are reminiscent of a perfumery style from the ‘70s, and we totally heart the idea of ‘reinterpreting’ and ‘reinventing’ things from the past… The best way of blasting someone with green freshness is evidently a double-hit of galbanum, which is suitably uncommon and smells enough like wet plants that people can describe it as something other than just ‘clean.’ Then we loaded up on that awesome bigarade and some other, more subdued notes that make it smell discreetly expensive.”

• • •

“Faithful to its philosophy of metamorphosis, of finding a ›second life‹, Maison Martin Margiela turns this exhumed classical foundation upside down, and contrasts it with resonances of sweet jasmine and musky cedar. Its striking pedigree is then edged with a dense, almost filmy warmth.” (weird emphasis theirs)

Translation: “We had this retro style that we needed to bring into the ‘now’, so we included some airy jasmine and cedar notes for that luxury soap feeling, and finally some slightly dirty white musk that makes people think of their own skin. We figured that would make it attractive to people who are too cool or too confident or simply embarassed to wear perfume."

• • •

“I know that perfume must not follow a fashion or a trend, but an instinct. This first perfume expresses a femininity which does not fit into formal categories… I am grateful to Maison Martin Margiela for whispering the formula for this perfume into my ear.”  -- Daniela Andrier, perfumer

Translation: “I know that it’s important to this brand to believe in themselves as perfectly unique, so I designed their first perfume to evoke the kind of woman who works hard at her ‘effortless’ look, and is willing to go a few weeks without washing her hair for that bit of grit. I’m grateful that the imprimatur of a brand like Margiela made this gig a walk in the park. I mean, really, who’s going to object to galbanum two ways with an orange julius on top?”

• • •

“By creating fragrances woven in the most beautiful raw materials and melted with poetic impetus that is found in the inspired wearer, perfume can be saved from the terrible trivialization that threatens it. This is how I wrote the formula for this first perfume for Maison Martin Margiela, with that special grace that comes with the perception of the obvious, that clarity that gives us wings in the wonderful encounters of our lives.” -- Daniela Andrier

Translation: “I feel so fortunate to have been selected for this project. Thank the lord Diesel put up enough cash to give it some teeth! And all you catty perfume freaks who think I’ve cloned an easy hybrid of all my recent work can screw off and die. You know it's good! And it was actually a very welcome break from simply formulating the next flavor of Prada-ade.  But, please, don’t tell Miuccia. A girl has to eat, right?”

• • •

(untitled) is available in 30ml, 50ml and 75ml sizes at Maison Martin Margiela boutiques and online at Colette.