Christopher Brosius, the “CB” behind CB I Hate Perfume, calls his perfumery’s headquarters and storefront a “gallery.” Located a few blocks away from the busy main shopping strips of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, the store does feel as much like a gallery, a studio, or a workshop as a retail venue. It’s a former industrial space that now looks half-loft, half-garage, decorated in a minimal, monochromatic scheme with little visual detail to distract you from experiencing CB I Hate Perfume’s fragrances.
And there are many, many fragrances indeed, with testers arranged by category in white box-like shelving units. In the “Perfume” category, you’ll find six series of fragrances with abstract designations such as “Archetype” and “Metamorphosis.” Some of them are inspired by Brosius’s childhood memories and his favorite works of literature and film, and others are his reworkings of classic concepts in perfumery (musk, rose, etc.). The Perfumes are available as perfume absolutes and cologne-like “water perfumes.” The next category includes fourteen series of Accords, from “fruit” and “flower” to “smoke” and “skin.” These oils, individually bottled and packaged at the time of purchase, are meant to be enjoyed singly or layered in your own combinations…
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E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View (1908) is one of my favorite novels, and its Merchant-Ivory film adaptation (1985) is one of my favorite movies. I’m also a longtime admirer of CB I Hate Perfume, so it’s strange that I only recently realized that this niche perfumery offers a scent inspired by a scene from the novel. Christopher Brosius created M4, or A Room with a View, for CB I Hate Perfume’s Metamorphosis Series and designed it to evoke “the moment when one simple beautiful gesture can transform an entire life.”
In the passage that gave Brosius the idea for this fragrance, the young heroine of A Room with a View, Lucy Honeychurch, is picnicking with several other proper English tourists in the Tuscan countryside. She strays from her prim chaperone and, after passing through a wooded area, finds herself looking down a hillside blooming with violets; the only other person enjoying the view is George Emerson, an enigmatic and free-thinking fellow traveler. George impulsively steps forward and kisses Lucy, thus opening her mind and her senses to new possibilities (in romance and in life) and setting the rest of the novel’s plot in motion…
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Posted by Robin
on
25 April 2011
Frankly, if you’re the kind of person who needs a perfume to express who you are … well, Sephora is on that side of the river, thank you very much.
— Perfumer Christopher Brosius of CB I Hate Perfume, quoted in The Invisible Scent at New York magazine.
Posted by Robin
on
28 May 2010
In this country, a lot of people wear perfume for everyone else. People wear my perfume for themselves first. Everyone else comes second.
— Hear, hear. Christopher Brosius of CB I Hate Perfume, quoted in Sniffing Out New Scents In Brooklyn's Williamsburg at the Wall Street Journal, found via CaFleureBon.
Posted by Robin
on
15 June 2009
Dresser Johnson, the team behind the Brooklyn Bunny Cam*, have launched two new limited edition room & body fragrances developed by Christopher Brosius of CB I Hate Perfume.
Brooklyn Bunny Lettuce is “a light and sweet scent as if you were cracking a head of crisp, fresh lettuce in your hands…”
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