A New Series of Art World Perfumes Is Challenging What It Means to Smell Good
If you’re the kind of art lover who likes to exit through the gift shop, then you may already be familiar with Folie à Plusieurs. Since launching in 2014, the brand has found a home in the world’s most forward-thinking museum boutiques with fragrances that challenge the conventional alchemy of perfume altogether. Its concepts range wildly: Imagine if your favorite art house movie had a scent (The Lobster, Yorgos Lanthimos’s surrealist rom-com, features in Folie à Plusieurs’s repertoire, as does Mathieu Kassovitz’s explosive ’90s social drama, La Haine—the smell is, by design, a veritable assault on the senses); consider a perfume inspired by the froideur of the northern lights, or curiouser still, one made with a sexual fantasy in mind (believe it or not, there is one based on lactophilia, or what's also known as milk fetishism). There are even rumblings of a scented Folie à Plusieurs book project, one that would effectively flip the script on the idea of burning after reading. “The traditional formula for perfume—so you have the dress, now buy the designer fragrance—has been around for years,” says brand co-founder Kaya Sorhaindo. “I want to explore the possibilities beyond that and think about how we can use scent as a mode of communication.”
The latest Folie à Plusieurs collaboration takes the art of perfume making to its ultimate conclusion with two fragrances that pay homage to the New Museum in the most literal sense. Sorhaindo enlisted the help of olfactory wizards David Chieze and Mark Buxton, the man behind many of Comme Des Garçon’s boundary-pushing scents, to create two fragrances that bottle the spirit of the downtown New York art institution from the inside out, so to speak. Buxton used the museum's impressive seven-story structure as a starting point, drawing on the gleaming metallic facade designed by Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa. Hence, the first note that strikes you is sharp and clinical, much like cold steel. There is a hint of something softer and floral in the mix, too though, inspired by the epic, 28-foot tall rose sculpture created by German artist Iza Genzken that adorned the museum back in 2010.
Somehow Chieze’s scent packs an even more visceral punch. Close your eyes, and the smell of unvarnished concrete is unmistakable, and immediately transports you inside the cavernous gallery halls. The perfumer cites Maurizio Cattlelan as an influence; the slight animalistic whiff is presumably a nod to the Italian artist’s controversial taxidermy installations. Either way, both fragrances manage to distill the rebel yell of the contemporary art of the world: unsettling, unorthodox, and anything but pleasant. Though one questions remains: Does anyone really want to smell this weird?
For the folks at Folie à Plusiuers, wearability is beside the point. “Imposing a scent onto someone is one thing, but sometimes you want to a scent to take you somewhere or remind you of something instead,” insists Sorhaindo. “Maybe it’s the stillness of a church or the forest.” And you’ve got to admit, there is something strangely serene—if a little creepy—about museum spaces. They're certainly interesting to conjure in your mind's eye, whether you're an art aficionado or not. “There aren’t very many people who can go and buy a Basquiat or a Rothko off the gallery wall,” he says. “But a perfume can connect you to the spirit of the work in the same way as a limited-edition poster or a book.” With a series of exhibit-specific Folie à Plusieus partnerships in the works, discovering your new favorite artist could be as simple as, um, following your nose.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
