"PARIS — What do you get when you mix three edgy fashion brands, an uberhip
concept store and an essential oils house?
Some very unusual fragrances, including one perhaps better described as an
odor.
That's what happened when Symrise teamed with Hussein Chalayan, Bless and As
Four to create a limited-edition line of signature scents to be sold
exclusively at Colette here this fall.
"We're always in search of ideas to stimulate the creativity of our
perfumers," said Olivier Perrard, the then outgoing head of Symrise's
business in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
"They [perfumers] are bombarded all year by projects that have timing
restrictions, that must respect regulatory norms and price constraints, so
they don't have time to develop products that they really want to create."
That's where Colette came in. The store is acting as a "curator" for the
collection of one-off fragrances, dubbed "Curated by Colette."
"Colette chose three designers most able to [cause a stir] and participate in
this kind of project," Perrard explained.
The designers worked with Symrise perfumers to come up with scents on sky's-
the-limit budgets. Their only constraint was the flacon in which the scents
are to be bottled, which is the same for all the designers with the exception
of their personalized labels. All three came up with unisex eaux.
Chalayan worked with Paris-based nose Mark Buxton to concoct a scent meant to
remind the designer of a train journey from London's Victoria Station to
Istanbul.
Of course, given Chalayan's conceptual bent, "He didn't want to smell London,
Paris, Venice and Istanbul," noted Elisabeth Carre, Symrise's international
fragrance development director, who acted as an intermediary between
designers and perfumers. "There had to be a teleportation aspect to it."
Chalayan's fragrance comprises top notes of bergamot, cardamom, tea leaves,
rose and lily; Lapsang Souchong tea, birch, tar and violet petal notes are at
the heart, while patchouli, cedarwood, fir balsam and sandalwood notes are at
its base.
Design duo Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag of Bless also worked with Buxton to
create their scent. To give the perfumer an idea of the type of fragrance
they were after, each separately (and unbeknownst to the other) concocted a
mixture of odiferous household products, including chocolate spread, shampoo
and moisturizers.
"I tried to interpret the two ideas," said Buxton. "It's not a fragrance;
it's more like an odor."
The scent, which is meant to reflect the wearer's personality, is made of
notes of cardamom, cypress, ginger, geranium, thyme and mate absolute, plus a
shortbread accord.
New York-based Symrise perfumer Frank Volkl worked with the As Four troika of
designers for a fragrance.
"They were very focused on freshness for everyone," said Carre, adding that
the scent comprises notes of three roots — ginger, vetiver and orris. "They
stayed with the idea of roots of life."
Additional notes include lime, bergamot, cedarwood, sandalwood and musk.
All three fragrances, which will be available at Colette starting in
September, will sell for 50 euros, or $60.50 at current exchange rates, per
50-ml. bottle. Three hundred of each scent will be sold.
In other Symrise news, Roberto Ascoli has taken over as commercial director
of the firm's fine fragrances business."
blink: ) and the Chalayan one is 'a journey beween london and istanbul' 
. 
