That Scent Wafting Through the Whitney Museum’s New Exhibition? It’s Your Next Perfume Obsession
Some neighbors stop by for a cup of sugar or a spare egg. Zoe Latta, cofounder of the Los Angeles fashion label Eckhaus Latta, found something else entirely on a recent visit to Régime des Fleurs’s perfume atelier, a few doors over in Mid-City. Here, sniffing her way through Régime’s forthcoming fragrances, she lingered on one that triggered a flash of ’90s nostalgia while feeling exactly right for now. (Rather like Eckhaus Latta.)
“I flipped out about that smell because it reminded me of a perfume I had as a kid, possibly when I was in middle school,” says Latta, recalling an eau de toilette by the Gap that bottled up “wet cut grass.” Régime's scent, called Waves, has its own play on water and flora, with frothy, saline notes set against fresh lavender, anise, and bracing mint. The fact that Latta calls it neutral and clean—an olfactory companion to the white-cube gallery—is a clue to where the rest of the world can get a sneak preview, beginning today. Waves is wafting through the air at “Possessed,” Eckhaus Latta’s new experimental exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan.
That shift into the public sphere is key to Régime’s latest collection (samples of which launch today, with the full-size bottles available September 1). Called Personal/Space, it’s the brand’s first foray into multipurpose fragrance—“for skin, hair, and the air,” says Alia Raza, who cofounded the art-minded perfumery with Ezra Woods in 2014. But the five-piece line doesn’t merely set the scene; it transports you to paradise, in homage to Régime’s monthlong artists’ residency on Oahu back in October 2016. “It was the adventure of a lifetime,” Raza says, still a bit incredulous, recalling their self-guided tour of the Hawaiian island, courtesy of Jason Grosfeld (who hosted them at the Ritz Carlton Waikiki) and curator Nu Nguyen. “We kept talking about this sensation we had every day: ‘We can’t tell where our skin stops and the air begins,’” Raza adds—a blurred line that made them reconsider how to interact with perfume.
In characteristic Régime fashion, that nose-first mission meant stopping every few feet to smell some intoxicating bloom (like the thickly fragrant Samoan gardenia—“a total wow,” per Woods). It also meant finding unlikely inspiration in everything from local sweets to otherworldly hikes, like a trip to Manoa Falls that sparked two of the scents. Vines takes after the glowing green rain forest, where familiar houseplants thrive at Jurassic sizes; the fragrance skews earthy, with a hint of subtle fig, musk, and overripe citrus. Falls, meanwhile, evokes the “rushing, pounding cold water,” says Raza, describing the mineral notes of the stones below.
Shells—not something associated with smell—is a case of artistic license. A note of lilikoi (Hawaiian for passion fruit) is one reason Woods likens this fragrance to a tropical fruit plate in a hotel room, albeit with a sweet-sour twist. The perfumers, determined to seek out all the Hawaiian delicacies they could in the course of a month, became obsessed with li hing mui—a “yummy tart powder that they put on candies,” says Raza. “We created an accord because li hing was a big part of our trip.” (So was their hands-down favorite poke joint, Ahi Assassins, but you’ll have to go to Hawaii for a taste of that one.)
The fifth scent, Leis, only sounds like tourist fodder. Instead, the perfume reimagines those heady wearable flowers through the lens of the shops’ glass-front refrigerated cases. “The idea was to re-create the smell that’s in the fridge,” says Raza, describing an intoxicating headspace where puakenikeni mingles with ginger and plumeria. “When you first spray the fragrance, it’s cold and crisp—refrigerated petals. Then, when it warms up on your skin, the florals come out.”
In keeping with those humidity-fogged refrigerator doors, the perfumes come bottled in frosted glass, each tinted in duotone neons that remind Raza of a “1990 Oahu mall.” Waves pairs “neon tennis ball yellow” with the electric turquoise of the shallow water visible from an inbound airplane, says Woods; Leis re-creates the fuchsia sky and hot-pink clouds of a Waikiki sunset—a Technicolor-on-acid experience that had them feeling like “suddenly we were in The Little Mermaid,” Raza adds with a laugh. “If it wasn’t natural, it would be so cheesy; it was so over the top.”
Their jewel-tone homage to Oahu might be wrapped up for now, but there’s plenty to head back for: the secret waterfall in a friend’s backyard; the golden dragon fruit from the neighborhood market Down to Earth; the Liljestrand House, which made Raza swoon for tropical modernism after a falling-out with “mid-century everything”; the shell leis (painstakingly handcrafted and priced accordingly) from the traditional Hawaiian shop Na Mea. Raza and Woods daydream about creating a fragrance installation for the Doris Duke estate, Shangri La. “We ended up running out of time—because a month is long, but it’s not long enough,” says Raza. In the meantime, a lap through Eckhaus Latta’s show, a different kind of Gesamtkunstwerk, is escape enough.
That Scent Wafting Through the Whitney's Eckhaus Latta Exhibition Is Your New Perfume Obsession
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