Posted by Kevin
on
19 August 2009
Though he died just short of his 85th birthday, Salvador Dalí was the eternal evil teen; his pronouncements and gestures were designed to startle his “audience” — the World! Dalí seemed sure everyone, everywhere watched him with unflagging fascination and cared what he said and did. Perhaps Dalí’s attention-grabbing ways masked deep insecurities; one wonders if the weird, cruel, inexplicable opinions Dalí proclaimed were true expressions of his heart and mind, or only empty words intended to shock and awe. Did Dalí really “spit for pleasure on the portrait”1 of his dead mother; applaud the murder of his friend Federico García Lorca (“The moment I learned of his death…I cried ‘Olé’!’”)2; and support Franco’s torture and killing of dissidents (“Three times more executions are needed…. Personally I’m against freedom. I’m for the Holy Inquisition.”)3?
What type of perfume would Dalí have created? I imagine him saying something like: “Doesn’t everyone love the scent of blood and dung, sweaty breasts, fuzzy tongues and turtle shells, lady bug shellac and horses’ milk!? Let’s bottle the scent of desperation, the aroma of time running out.” (Actually, that sounds more like García Lorca than Dalí!) Dalí did say, “Of the five senses, the sense of smell is incontestably the one that best conveys a sense of immortality.”4 Dalí, always looking for ways to make money, signed a licensing agreement with Jean-Pierre Grivory of COFCI (now, Cofinluxe) in Paris on Dec. 17, 1982, and the Salvador Dalí brand was born…
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Posted by Robin
on
26 May 2009
Van Cleef & Arpels plans to launch Collection Extraordinaire in September. It will be the brand’s first foray into high-end niche perfume, and will debut at around the same time as Cartier’s upcoming collection, Les Heures du Parfum.
The Collection Extraordinaire fragrances, meant to pay homage to nature, are Gardénia Pétale, Orchidée Vanille, Lys Carmin, Muguet Blanc, Bois d’Iris and Cologne Noire…
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Posted by Robin
on
13 January 2009
The new By Marc Buxton line from perfumer Mark Buxton debuted last year with seven fragrances. Seven strikes me as excessive given the glut of product on the market at the moment — why not two or three really wonderful scents, with more to follow later? Everyone in the industry seems to agree there are too many fragrances; nobody seems willing to release fewer fragrances. Ah well, at least it isn't twelve or fifteen, right?
The fragrances are meant to disclose “the personality through color code”, and on the Mark Buxton website* you can find the fragrance that suits you best by looking at a series of color blocks, then clicking on the color that appeals to you most. I don't know that there is any fool-proof method of selecting suitable fragrances online, but I didn't find this system particularly helpful.
Of the seven fragrances, two of them (Black Angel, Sounds & Visions) left me entirely cold…
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Posted by Robin
on
24 October 2008
Perfumer Mark Buxton has launched his own line of fragrances:
One of the sharpest “noses” ever. Author of fragrances for Givenchy, Versace, Paco Rabanne, Burberry, Salvador Dali, Cartier, Chopard, Ferre. One of the brilliant pages of his perfumer career concerns his companionship of many years with Comme des Garcons. Mark's personal testament has always been “Simplicity is the ultimate degree of luxury”. This credo is incarnated in his works as well as in his life…
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What does communism smell like? How about the Sun, or Cleopatra’s perfume, or the atomic blast that destroyed the city of Hiroshima? This booklet, published on the occasion of the exhibition If There Ever Was, attempts to bring distant, elusive, and sometimes impossible olfactory experiences to life. Curator Robert Blackson commissioned thirteen fragrances from eleven perfumers and smell artists, including Bertrand Duchaufour, Christophe Laudamiel, Christoph Hornetz, Mark Buxton, Sissel Tolaas, and Geza Schön. If, like me, you missed the show at the Reg Vardy Gallery, this booklet gives you a chance to smell them all in the comfort of your own home.
Each scent of the exhibition is encapsulated in a scratch-n-sniff card, and comes with a short explanatory text. What these fragrances have in common is that they all refer to objects that are absent from our experience: they represent things that are temporally and/or spatially remote. There are no traces, for instance, of the original recipe to Cleopatra’s perfume; we can only guess what it really smelled like…
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