Dualité

Chandler Burr, where art thou when I need thee?

As you may know, although I am not a big fan of beauty in products in general, I did have my curiosity piqued when I was asked to stop by L’Artisan Parfumeur at the Ogilvy this week. Most notably this wasn’t just any perfume company asking me to give their atelier a whiff, this was a specialized company who focused on creating perfumes hors commun (out of the ordinary).

Though I knew nothing about perfumes, I was curious. I was given a slight glimpse of the complicated process in Dana Thomas’ “Deluxe”, but I was eager to learn more about this niche industry.

L’Atelier Parfumeur Since 1976

Over the last 30 years, the French company has created over 40 different perfumes, 31 of which I received a sample of (that’s a lot of perfume to inhale!). It’s to be noted that this company have signed a deal with two venerable luxury brands – Bottega Veneta and Burberry. They’ve developed 4 unique “home styled” scents for each company according to the seasons, more on that to follow.

I met with Ciara Tang, a representative of L’Artisan at the Olgivy, Canada’s sole boutique. She graciously gave me a tour of roughly 15 different scents and explained to me the vast world of perfumes. In half an hour, I was immersed, curious and surprised at the range of fragrances presented to me.

Consistency

While many luxury brands spend a good bit of money on the design of the bottle itself, trying to make it the next Chanel No. 5, many times they tend to forget about the quality of the perfume. A winning point was the simplistic and consistent design of their perfume bottle. A hexagonal shaped glass bottle with a hexagonal gold cap, interchanging only the colored banner according to each perfume. If it’s a limited edition, it might have light transparent vector art on the side. It is subtle luxury, none too flashy, and clearly labeled. No muss. No fuss.

Originality

When Ciara asked me what kind of smells I liked, I was actually dumbfounded since I couldn’t really say what I really liked, since I didn’t know what smells I liked. Sweet? Spicy? Earthy? Masculine? Musky? I don’t know. So I was given perfume strips to smell on for size. Surprisingly, each of the perfumes I smelled were quite distinct from one another, if I may perhaps say, quite impossible to mistaken it for something else.

Such as, you can’t possibly mistake Piment Brûlant with Bois Farine, nor from Dzing! from Fleur de Liane.

Piment Brûlant – As Ciara’s favorite, it smells exactly like what it says – like hot peppers. There are slight hints of vanilla and cocoa as base notes.

Bois Farine – Who likes the smell of flour with hints of wood? Unique to say the least, however every time I smell it, I get a tingly feeling in my nose as if I’m about to sneeze.

Dzing! – Though not a best seller, it is an acclaimed scent by critics and has a spicy “animal” feel to it.

Fleur de Liane – This smells very green, very moist, like being in the tropical end of the Botanical Garden.

Most perfume names are pretty straight forward in revealing what you’re smelling like L’Artisan’s European best seller, Mûre et Musc, also the oldest scent created in 1978. I may be a perfume neophyte, but I certainly have never smelled anything like these before.

Informational

When Ciara was rattling off the different smells in each perfume, I asked her in general exactly how many different fragrances are there in a single bottle? To my surprise, one bottle can contain up to 40 different fragrances! Many of which are broken down into a pyramid of perfume notes. As she explained it, there are 3 stages to perfume notes: top, middle (heart) and base notes.

Top notes will be the first to hit your nose thus if I were to smell the Piment Brûlant, I’d smell the peppers first.

Heart notes will be the smell you will experience once the top notes fade thus giving you a second pause if you like the smell.

Base notes are the scents that will cling to you in the long run for up to 7-8hrs and you won’t notice them until much later.

I was given a glimpse of the pyramid chart and noticed that each note consisted of 3 to 4 different fragrances each, many of which I had no idea what fragrances they were.

Extract, Eau de Parfum, Eau de Toilette, Cologne

Dilution of a fragrance is a cause of concern in the perfume industry as it was so pointed out by Dana Thomas in “Deluxe”. Here I was given a breakdown as to what exactly these words mean.

Extract – The most concentrated type of perfume where the odor is strong and pure. Few people can probably handle extracts thus would choose something less imposing. These are pretty uncommon to find and if you can find them, they are usually offered in smaller vials.

Eau de Parfum – Also not commonly found save for a few exceptions, this is probably the strongest most people will wear.

Eau de Toilette – This is the most common form of perfume grade using a diluted formula.

Cologne – This is the weakest form of perfume and is heavily diluted.

Most perfumes at L’Atelier are Eau de Toilette, while the best sellers like Mûre et Musc (which also has an extract  version) and La Chasse aux Papillons will have Eau de Parfum. Special editions are due to an exceptional harvest of a certain fragrance such as Iris or Narcissis in previous releases. Unlike Chanel and Hermès though, L’Artisan does not grow its own flowers.

Collaboration with Bottega Veneta and Burberry

L’Artisan’s collaboration for Bottega Veneta in 2005 was to develop 4 different candles for each season, with matching smell packets. The candles were wrapped with Bottega’s iconic weaving leather and the packets were also weaved in leather in different colors. When it comes to scent, the ones developed for this luxury brand were “very Italian”.

Indeed, who wouldn’t think of old Italy when they described one of their scents like “napping in the library of an old villa in the Veneto countryside.”

Smelling the candle, the scent holds to its promise remarkably. The second candle I smelled was like I was in a vegetable garden, appropriately described that it was made with tomato and basil leaves.

The Bottega Veneta scents were created by veteran nose (perfume talk for “designer”), Olivia Giacobetti, who had worked with the company for 13 years (1993-2006), whose portfolio include John Galliano and Agnès b.

Burberry’s collaboration is quite recent, with their 4th candle about to be released soon called “Hay,” which I’m assuming will smell like – well, hay. One of them smelled like burnt wood, as you would smell in a cabin in the forest burning wood in the fireplace (of course).

When asked how these collaborations came to be, I was told that  these luxury brands have approached L’Artisan to develop these distinct candle smells knowing that the company was capable of reproducing such fragrances with impressive exactitude. Unfortunately, they couldn’t give me more details than that since they weren’t directly involved in the development process (too bad!).

Beyond

L’Artisan has also ventured out towards other scented products like room sprays, potpourri dispensers through their Amber balls, and even luxe mini pillow/sachet cases for women’s lingerie. They currently have one in-house nose, Bertrand Duchaufour,  and  are planning to release a limited edition line next year sold exclusively in their Paris Flagship store. The bottles will be designed by a famous glass blower. You can kiss your chances goodbye in trying to acquire one – one flask will be priced at about $20,000. As for the regular line at the Ogilvy, the price range is more affordable – between $95-$135 a bottle.

I’ve merely scratched the surface of perfumes, though I didn’t come out with any favorites, L’Artisan Parfumeur was definitely a brand that created scents like no other. Most of the scents were not really of fruit base like Body Shop or Dans Un Jardin, nor was it trying to be a designer scent like Armani, Givenchy or Gucci. This specialized company stands on its own, and aims to recreate scents nobody would think could be turned into a fragrance.

Now…if only I can determine which scent I liked most…

Image credits: L’Artisan Parfumeur