In partnership with Elle.it
Cold fragrances. Conceptual. Abstract, unisex with metal scents and aseptic and intriguing packaging. Some olfactory harmonies replicate cosmo’s scents, other blood’s flow. The avant-garde trend of virtual perfumes, born thank to head-space, a technique that allows to clone, analyze and decompose all molecules that make up a smell, state itself. Bouquets of inorganic odors and abstract ideas give products great energy, transparency and intangibility. Dozer of the trend, Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, in 2000 destabilized the rules of perfumer creating Odeur 53, so named for the number of chemical formulas used in its composition. An “abstract anti-perfume”, without references and organic components. Nose “IFF” Anne-Sophie Chapuis, asserts that the initial concept of Rei Kawakubo was to invent an unprecedented perfume, that we could not connect to a perfume heard before, the olfactory equivalent of a fashion that reinvents itself every collection, starting from zero. This scent is describable only for oxymorons and metaphors made of visions, instead of notes. In its own press release is told in poetic fragments and material impressions just like a programmatic futuristic manifesto: mist of nylon, steel against tongue, absence of any memory of smell, desperation of shapes to come, baby breath, silence of cellular movements.
From left: Eau de Parfum Hydrogen NU_BE created by Nose Antoine Lie. Eau de Parfum Odeur 53 by COMME DES GARÇONS. Eau de Parfum AB by BLOOD CONCEPT.
NU_BE line of fragrances created by Fluidounce. The name has a double meaning: “cloud”, such as those clouds rich in primordial elements that gave rise to the universe and life on Earth, but also “new being”. This collection consists of five fragrances: Lithium, Helium, Hydrogen, Carbon and Oxygen. They were all created by a team of master innovative perfumers like Antoine Lie, François Caron, Sylvie Fischer and Nicolas Bonneville. They bring smell inside the periodic table of elements, in a game of balancing between organic and not-organic. They explore the microscopic, interpretating those elements that lit stars. Blood Concept created by Antonio Zuddas and Giovanni Castelli, celebrate blood as a river of life; fragrances are called with same letters as real four blood groups: O, A, B, AB. Intense and visceral scents, are a symposium without sex and without flowers. These particular conceptual perfumes, ethereal and not organic, also have the power to create a side micro-climate and to affect the air quality of who wears them. Anyway… go and sniff them!
