She's An Original
YOU may recognise the name but that's not what this fragrance is about - Anja Rubik tells Vogue's Lisa Niven about her debut scent and why it truly is her very own creation.
It may be common to see the name of an actress, model or singer on a fragrance, but it's significantly less common to find that the name on the box is the same one that put their blood, sweat and tears into creating the product - from the packaging to the scent itself. Original by Anja Rubik, the Polish model's debut scent, is a labour of love.
"It was about four years ago that the concept first came into my mind. I've advertised a lot of fragrances over the years but it wasn't really me doing it - I'd embody the vision of a designer," she told us this morning, in London as the fragrance launches in Liberty following its initial debut late last year. "I thought it'd be really amazing to put something out there that was me, and represented my own vision of beauty, my aesthetic, my smell. I looked around a lot of fragrances that came out under the names of actresses or singers and I thought: 'They could do this in such a beautiful way' - but a lot of those fragrances are very sweet or very kitsch. I wanted to create something that was 100 per cent me."
Slowly but carefully Rubik created a team around her to help her realise her concept, meeting with noses until she met Patricia Choux of Takasago - who she "connected with immediately" - and building her own mood boards and criteria. She may be a frequent face on Forbes's list of highest-paid models and certainly has a platform with which to access consumers, but as she's quick to point out, the fragrance world is not one she has been a part of, until now.
"Patricia took me under her wing and really taught me about creating fragrance, how to smell, how to recognise different smells. We had many sessions before we actually sat down to create the fragrance," she said. "I brought along my mood board which had lots of fashion on it actually. Lots of Anthony Vaccarello, because that's very much my style, Geoffrey Beene, and then photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who is always somewhere in my head - I love his work, and particularly his black and white images of lilies. I love lilies - the smell and how delicate and innocent and white it is whilst at the same time symbolising erotica. There's a huge contrast, which is something I think every woman has inside of her."
Lily, along with amber, green tea and pink peppercorns, is one of the fragrance's key notes. A clean-smelling floral with woody undertones, the fragrance is a far cry from the "celebrity fragrances" on the market, settling and changing on the skin. If it's made it into the hallowed perfume hall at Liberty, it must be good - it was Rubik herself who attended the meetings with the department store about stocking it, much to their surprise. "I think they thought 'Oh!' when I said it would be me," she remarked.
"This is my world, my vision, and if people respond to it then that's amazing, but I didn't want to put something out that that everyone would like. Something easy," she told us. "I didn't want to do mass tests - I wanted something I believe in, rather than pleasing everyone. That was important for me. There were about 20 close friends and family who helped test it - my mum was the worst because she'd spray herself with all three samples and say: 'But they smell so good combined!' - but everyone from my husband to all my friends did help. But at the end of the day it's my baby. I had a lot of headaches, I got nauseous - smelling things all the time does that to you. It was a year-and-a-half-long process."
As well as creating something for people to simply enjoy, Rubik wants women to be able to connect with the fragrance on a deeper level.
"Scent can really put you in a state of mind. You might smell one and think of your childhood, or your mum, or you pass by someone in the street and you think: 'Oh, my previous boyfriend wore that," and then a whole emotion comes. So I thought it would be interesting to create not just a beautiful product, but one with a message behind it," she told us. Accordingly the fragrance comes complete with Rubik's printed "manifesto" - which urges women to "follow your own path and spirit", tucked inside the box.
"The idea is that you smell it, you read the message and then every time you smell it it triggers that emotion and idea," she explained. "It is quite unisex but at the same time has that feminine floral. We live in a time where women are taking over a lot of men's responsibilities, so I wanted it to have that."
The bottle itself is quite a thing of beauty too - sheer glass at the bottom with the name printed in bold black on a matt white background up top, and a graphic slash of white at the back.
"I wanted it to be black and white because that's my style, the whole mood board was black and white. I wanted it very graphic and modern, like a lot of my fashion, but then with that element of surprise, which is at the back," she said. "Everyone was telling me: 'Be careful with white, because it gets dirty, you're always grabbing it,' but that's the whole idea - it's yours."
So what's next, then, for the model who has created what she describes as her ultimate fragrance, walked and posed for the biggest names in the fashion industry and has her own magazine, 25, to her name?
"I've been in the industry for so long that I'm in the very beautiful position of being able to collaborate with people who are my good friends, or who I identify with. So I stand for things I really believe in, like at Chloe where I love what Clare does, or Anthony Vaccarello who is my close friend."
And could another fragrance be on the cards in the future? When the first was the summation of everything that she wanted from a scent?
"Maybe. I'm starting to think about it, but I'm very focused on this right now," she said. "If I did it would have to be a fragrance that I didn't directly identify with maybe, perhaps connected to some other world."
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