Keiko Mecheri’s Bespoke Collection

Keiko Mecheri's Bespoke discovery set. Seven gorgeous vials nestled in velvet, accompanied by embossed smelling cards. Courtesy of MiN New York.

I had the good fortune of meeting last night the legendary Keiko Mecheri, at MiN New York.  Although she now calls California home, Mecheri’s Japanese ancestry comes through clearly in her self-effacing and friendly demeanor.  Mecheri studied graphic design at UCLA, and from that training she learned that a work of art is never created by just one person–it is the product of many.  She gives ample credit to all of the people who help her create each scent, starting from her husband and business partner, Kamel Mecheri.  A former industrial designer who worked for Lamborghini, he designed the elegant art deco inspired bottle with its faceted top that houses the exquisite juice.  She admits that she does not have a degree in chemistry, but is grateful for the work that chemists do in order to execute her vision.

Her generous spirit and respect for the craft of perfumery emerges as I go through each vial of perfume in the discovery set of her  Bespoke collection.  Upon first whiff, each scent bears the quality of being both delicately fragile and intensely fierce, like something that the late artist Louise Bourgeois would have made if she made perfumes.  Mecheri’s genius lies in her ability to turn something familiar completely new, something “been here, done that,” into something novel.  One of the things Keiko Mecheri and I have in common is a love of rose, and she is able to make the noble flower shine through her understanding of rose as not simply a flower, but also its important role in Middle Eastern cooking and beautification practices.  In Ambre Mirabilis, she turns the rose into something salty and smoky. With Bal des Roses, violets add an almost punk rock edge to the eternal symbol of love.  Cuir Fauve is a fruity leather that even the girliest of girls can wear.  Mecheri turns topsy-turvy the categories of masculine/feminine.  I smelled her famous Loukhoum on a man and it smelled like cotton candy; on a woman, it blared a dangerously musky “come hither” temptation.

Keiko Mecheri’s creations are not just perfumes.  They occupy three-dimensional space, like monumental sculptures that celebrate our global culture.  Keiko is highly sensitive to the uncanny ways that, in our modern world, we can form unlikely yet successful combinations that pay no attention to labels.  She is a Japanese woman married to a French-Algerian, who both struggle to maintain a family in southern California.  We can be in Turkey and smell Japan; we could be in Los Angeles and smell Tangiers.  We can be whomever we want to be.  Perfume can help us go beyond our physical limitations, and Keiko Mecheri, in her spirit of generosity and grace, gives us this gift of transcendence.

Keiko Mecheri’s perfumes are available exclusively at MiN New York.

Me and the beautiful Keiko Mecheri at MiN New York, April 25, 2012.

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Update: Nose in a Book: “In the Library” by CB I Hate Perfume and “Paper Passion” by Geza Schoen

UPDATE:

I received the following communication from Caroline Lebar, Karl Lagerfeld’s Head of Communications in Paris, regarding my post on “Paper Passion.”

“Mr Lagerfeld refutes his implication in the launch of the perfume Paper Passion. This project, of which Mr Steidl told him about, only emanate from the art books’ publisher himself. Mr Lagerfeld copublishes many books with Mr Steidl but stick to Coty Prestige when it is about his own perfumes’ creations.”

Caroline Lebar
Head of communications
Karl Lagerfeld – 7L

I would like to point out that there was nothing erroneous in my post regarding Mr. Lagerfeld and the book project.  I stated that Geza Schoen is the perfumer who is working with George Steidl, and that Lagerfeld was only involved with the naming of the scent and its packaging, according to page 19 of Steidl’s Spring 2012 catalog:

The perfume is presented in a book with its pages cut out to leave space for the perfume bottle. Both the name of
the fragrance and the packaging concept were the work of Karl Lagerfeld, a long-time friend and collaborator of Steidl.

PAPER-PASSION

Nose in a Book: “In the Library” by CB I Hate Perfume and “Paper Passion” by Geza Schoen

German designer Karl Lagerfeld poses in his studio rue de Lille in Paris, France on November 12, 2008. His collection is said to contain 300,000 volumes. [Photo by Eric Dessons/JDD/ABACAPRESS.COM

My collecting habits are becoming a big problem.  Like most New Yorkers, I live in a tiny apartment.  I don’t have enough wall space to hang the art I have, bottles of perfume overflow from my dresser to my bathroom, and my books cram shelves and sit in stacks on tables and on the floor.  Indeed, my passion for books goes hand in hand with my passion for perfumes.  I stubbornly and irrationally refuse to part with the Marguerite Duras novel I read in high school French class, the worn copy of Lonely Planet’s guide to Vietnam I used for a trip 8 years ago, Janson’s The History of Art, a textbook used in every Art History 101 class that inspired me to love art.  All of these still sit on my shelves, reminders of the experiences I had that make me into the person I am today.

CB I Hate Perfume’s “In the Library”

On my last trip to CB I Hate Perfume in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I encountered “In the Library,” and I thought I had found a kindred spirit in the line’s creator, Christopher Brosius.  Brosius, well known for his avant garde take on traditional perfumery, makes scents like “Soaked Earth” that smells like wet dirt and mushrooms in a forest after a long rain.  On his website, he writes about the huge impact books have made on his life, and when he reads to his nieces and nephews, he asks them to smell the book first in the hopes this will spark a life-long love for books.  “In the Library” has notes of “English Novel (one of CB’s premium accords), Russian & Moroccan Leather Bindings, Worn Cloth and a hint of Wood Polish”:

The main note in this scent was copied from one of my favorite novels originally published in 1927.  I happened to find a signed first edition in pristine condition many years ago in London.  I was more than a little excited because there were only ever a hundred of these in the first place.  It had a marvelous warm woody slightly sweet smell and I set about immediately to bottle it. (1)

You can imagine my excitement when Wallpaper* Handmade announced at the Salone Internzaionale del Mobile in Milan this past week that a book containing a perfume by Geza Schoen (Escentric Molecules, biehl perfumekunstwerke), will be released this May by German publisher, Steidl.   Paper Passion was commissioned by Wallpaper* magazine for the Wallpaper* Handmade exhibition and they brought all the various contributors together to create this unique perfume.  Gerhard Steidl, who began his career publishing editions and books for the famous Conceptual artist, Joseph Beuys, became interested in the smell of books when Karl Lagerfeld, himself a bibliophile, asked Steidl in 1997 to create a book of his own photography for the press launch of his new perfume, “Jako.”

Here is an excerpt from the catalog copy for “Paper Passion” about the experience:

“As the books were placed on the seats, I realised they smelt very strongly of fresh ink on paper, and it didn’t strike me as the ideal situation for a perfume launch,” recounts Steidl. “I told Karl that I didn’t think we should put out the books, but he simply replied, ‘Rubbish! The smell of a freshly printed book is the best perfume in the world.’” Convinced that Lagerfeld would think his books stank, he discovered the exact opposite to be true. “That was the moment when I realised that books should smell,” he continues. “It took away a barrier, and I started making sure my books always smelt good….With experience you get to know how each ink smells on each paper,” he explains. “There are hundreds of ink types: fast drying, which have extra drying agents; high gloss, which have lacquers inside; or shiny, with metallic pigments. All have a basic primer and then various different chemicals added on top. Today, very glossy lacquers are fashionable, but they’re full of plastic materials that just smell really cheap. I only use inks based on vegetable oils, and I know exactly how to compose a smell with them on paper.” (2)

Steidl asked master perfumer Geza Schoen to create a unique scent based on the smells present in his studio and printing facilities in Germany.  Schoen is the creator of such unusual perfumes such as Escentric 01 that uses a very high concentration of the woody Iso E molecule that supposedly mixes with one’s pheromones so it smells differently on everyone.

Paper Passion will be released to the public on May 30, 2012.  Looking forward to it!

For more information, please visit:  http://www.steidlville.com/

Nobody Knows this Little Rose

I will admit that since the trees and flowers began blooming early this year, I’ve had flowers on the brain.  All of my oud, amber, benzoin, and leather scents are going to be stored away with my cashmere and wool, and I’m breaking out the roses.  Rose is one of the few flowery notes that I enjoy, and my small collection of perfumes already has a few examples that are quite different from one another:

  • Secrets de Rose by Parfums de Rosine: a dark, musky rose that says “Temptress” to me. I wear it when I want to seduce (not necessarily between the sheets, I might add.  Seduction’s powers go beyond the bedroom.)
  • Rose Absolue by Annick Goutal: a blend of many roses that brings out the best of the whole idea of the smell.  It is dark, light, frivolous, and mature, all at once.
  • Rose 31 by Le Labo: spicy rose, with huge whiffs of cumin that bring me into a Middle Eastern spice market.  It’s a florally gourmand that both men and women can wear.
  • Rossy de Palma-Eau de Protection by État Libre d’Orange: This iconoclastic perfume house takes roses to another level.  Made for the Spanish actress who epitomizes the strong, androgynous female characters of Pedro Almodovar’s imagination, this rose perfume reeks of drama and power on the first level.
  • Portrait of a Lady by Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle: The real winner is this one, la grand dame of rose perfumes. Rose, patchouli, incense, oud, berries–all of the things girls love, while being incredibly sophisticated.  Portrait of a Lady makes me feel more than a lady.  I am a woman.  The atmospheric sillage fills a room and people always ask what I am wearing.  It’s absolutely DIVINE!

Portrait of a Lady by Frédéric Malle. My all-time favorite rose perfume.

I leave you with this heartbreaking poem by Emily Dickinson, whose poems often featured flowers as a symbol of fleeting beauty:

Nobody knows this little Rose-
It might a pilgrim be
Did I not take it from the ways
And lift it up to thee.
Only a Bee will miss it-
Only a Butterfly,
Hastening from far journey-
On its breast to lie-
Only a Bird will wonder-
Only a Breeze will sigh-
Ah Little Rose-how easy
For such as thee to die!

What is your favorite rose perfume?

UPDATE 4/24/2012:  As SmellyThoughts reminded me below, I forgot to mention By Killian’s Incense Rose, which I love to roll around in while I’m in bed (SMILE), and Comme des Garçons Series 2 Red: Rose, a spicy and fruity rose that perks me up in the morning!

Everything is Coming Up Roses: Marcel Duchamp’s Readymade Perfume Bottle

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. – Marcel Duchamp

Man Ray
Label for the Belle Haleine
1921
gelatin silver print, 8 13/16 x 7 inches
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Marcel Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was an artist known for his work within the 20th century avant-garde movements of Dada and Surrealism, the progenitor of the “readymade” or found object turned into art, and widely acknowledged as the father of Conceptual art.  Insistent on criticizing academic art as defined by fine arts schools, galleries, and museums at the beginning of the 20th century, Duchamp produced a body of work that was incisive and serious in its rebellion against good taste while utilizing puns and off-color humor to convey his point of view.  In 1917, Duchamp caused a scandal with Fountain, a urinal that he signed “R Mutt” and submitted to the Salon of Independent Artists in New York and was rejected, though since then it became one of the landmarks of 20th century modern art.

One of his most well-known creations was the character of Rrose Sélavy.  To take the emphasis away from the signature of the artist as the primarily locus of meaning for an artwork, Duchamp came up with this alter-ego in 1921.  In French, the name is a pun that has been interpreted in many different ways, from “Eros, c’est la vie (Eros, it’s life),” a play on the idea that sex is the undercurrent that runs through human existence, to “Arrose, c’est la vie,” using the French word for “to water” or “to moisten” as a not so subtle sexual reference.  Duchamp took on the identity of his alter-ego by dressing in drag and was photographed numerous times by his friend, Man Ray:

Marcel Duchamp
"Rrose Sélavy"
1921
Photograph by Man Ray. Art direction by Marcel Duchamp.
Silver print. 5-7/8" x 3-7/8"
Philadelphia Museum of Art

In a marvelous essay titled “Belle Haleine: Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath: Veil Water)”  by the American Duchamp scholar, Francis Naumann, he details Duchamp’s foray into the world of perfume.  Members of Dada and the Surrealists were often fascinated by popular culture, specifically advertisements.  Duchamp collaborated with Man Ray to create a readymade inspired by a bottle designed by Rigaud for Un air embaumé, produced in 1915 that became one of the first successful perfumes created by a fashion house.

Advertisement for Un Air Embaumé, Rigaud Perfume, La Rire no. 88 (9 October 1920)

An ad for Un air embaumé, shown above, presents a partially nude woman draped in a sheet, sniffing ribbons of odors emanating from a bottle as though it were an aphrodisiac.  Duchamp took the Rigaud bottle design, inserted an image of himself as Rrose Sélavy, and called it Belle Haleine: Eau de Voilette, with the French word “voilette” meaning a veil, a pun on “violette” or violet, the flower popularly used in perfumes at the time.  The word “haleine,” meaning breath, conjures the name “Hélène,” more specifically Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in antiquity abducted by the Trojan prince named… Paris.  The idea of the veil, that which obscures a woman’s face, is a reference to the obscuration of meaning attributed the object–what you see is not necessarily what you are getting when you see a Duchampian artwork.  Duchamp inserts the initials “RS” to the label, with the letter r reversed against the s, and then inscribes “New York” and “Paris,” the two cities to which he often traveled.

This object, after passing through many hands over the course of decades, finally landed in the collection of Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Bergé in 1990, and was then sold at auction at the Christie’s auction house in 2009 for a jaw-dropping amount of €8,913,000, or at the time, $11,489,968.

Watch Out Ladies: Old Spice Vintage ads

A friend forwarded to me a link to a group of perfume and beauty related items for sale on Etsy by Stills of Time.  Among the many jewels, old ads for Old Spice men’s cologne are up for sale.  The sexual innuendos made me realize that the Old Spice ad campaign had the “AXE Effect” beat by decades!  The women in these ads are practically undressing you with their come hither glances.  And hugging a tree?  How obvious is that?

An Empty Bottle of Shalimar: The Art of Louise Bourgeois

Robert Mapplethorpe
"Louise Bourgeois"
1982
photograph on paper
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Image from the National Galleries of Scotland (www.nationalgalleries.org)

Louise Bourgeois is undoubtedly one of the 20th Century’s most important artists.  She passed away in 2010 at the age of 98, leaving behind hundreds of drawings, objects, and sculptures that have captured the imagination of generations.  Bourgeois moved from her native town of Paris to New York in the 1940′s, shortly after she married the art historian and curator, Robert Goldwater, and embarked on a career that is amazing in its duration as well as in the diversity of styles and media she employed to give form to her distinct visual language.

Dreams, childhood memories, sexuality, and motherhood are among the many themes present in Bourgeois’ art.  Although it is easy to wax nostalgic about one’s past, to sentimentalize the search for meaning within fleeting sensations, Bourgeois falls into none of those traps; to the contrary, Bourgeois invents fragile and often menacing objects that invite viewers into the dark shadows of her mind.  Though highly personal, Bourgeois’ art remains legible for those who do not share her story through well chosen subjects that speak a universal language of loss, desire, and explore the mysterious machinations of the unconscious.

Bourgeois’ parents and her relationship to them are the primary sources of inspiration for her art.  She was traumatized by her discovery of an affair between her father and her English governess and stultified by her mother who, though intelligent, chose to not acknowledge the infidelity.  The pain of feeling unworthy of her father’s love and her mother’s steely disposition produced an anxiety and loneliness that she captured in each and every one of her works of art.

Among the most famous series Bourgeois produced was Cells (I-VI) that she began in the 1980′s and was finally exhibited in 1991 at the Carnegie International, a biennial exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.  Each work represented an enclosure such as doors, sheds, metal cages, into which Bourgeois would place objects of significance to her.  In Cell II (1991), Bourgeois encloses a mirrored table within a circle of old doors.  Upon the table are a sculpture of wringing hands, expressing worry and anxiety, with empty or nearly empty bottles of Guerlain’s famous perfume, Shalimar.

Louise Bourgeois
Cell II (1991)
mixed media
Collection of the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh
Image from guggenheim.org

The mirrored table could be a lady’s vanity where she would display her bottles of perfume.  Shalimar could be the scent her mother wore throughout Bourgeois’ childhood.  The mirror reflects the hands, contorted with distress, as are the stylized glass bottles, doubling the impact of both.  The wooden doors connect together as though they have joined hands, confining the memories and emotions associated with the objects inside, unwilling to release.

The simple placement of an empty bottle can evoke so much.  Jacques Guerlain created Shalimar in 1921 on the heels of the end of World War I, when Bourgeois would have been 7 years old.  With notes of vanilla, bergamot, and iris, it is a perfume in the category of “Oriental” that was immensely popular at the time.  Shalimar epitomized elegance, taste, and romance.  It was the story of the Mughal emperor who built the Gardens of Shalimar for his great love in Lahore, and then the Taj Mahal, that inspired Guerlain to put forth this enduring classic.

A perfume, inspired by the story of ideal love, is used up, has dried away in Bourgeois’ sculpture.  Yet the involuntary memory stirred upon smelling the perfume, much like Proust’s experience with tea and the madeleine, is irrepressible.  This is the power of scent.  All that is left are the tortured memories that do not wish to go away.