Five questions with
Frédéric Malle
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On a sunny afternoon this February – only a few months before he announced he was leaving his legendary fragrance brand – I walked into Frédéric Malle’s Paris boutique in Rue du Mont-Thabor. It was one of his first – it opened in 2006 – and it’s now the only one in town. It’s a small, cozy space conceived as an elegant apartment, with wood paneling and designer furniture. The first impact is with the “Smelling Columns,” yellow glass capsules with anodized black details, allowing his clients to smell the perfumes as if they were “following the trail left by a passerby on the street.” As I comfortably sat in the armchair opposite his on the other side of the table, I switched on the recorder and pointed to one of the six jazzy, irregular Murano tumblers that serve as pencil cases on his desk. It’s a series of Goto glasses. |
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Interview Caterina Capelli
Photos Alessandro Trevisan
Styling Erica Toffanin |
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Is this one of Marie’s Goto glasses?
Yes. All of them are. Marie was my friend. I always had these on my desk for my pencils. I have one for my toothbrush and four or five on my desk. [They’re] everywhere. Marie and I have known each other since we were little kids, but we became close friends at 14, when we hung out with the same group of kids in Paris, going to parties together. When I got married, she became good friends with my wife too – she’s also called Marie – and we often visited each other.
She always wore your Carnal Flower. Why do you think she loved it that much?
It’s funny because I knew the perfume Marie was wearing before. One day, I gave her Carnal Flower and told her: “This should work with you.” She liked it and kept it. I think what she liked most was that Carnal Flower has the purity of a flower, but at the same time, it’s very sophisticated. And it conveys a huge sex appeal. It leaves a [remarkable] “trail,” so she was never unnoticed when she walked through a room. She loved dancing, Marie. And Carnal Flower is part of that [side of hers]. It embodies this idea of joy, of partying in a nice way – and sensuality, too. [...] There’s an absolute, direct link between your personality and the perfume you’re wearing. Sometimes, the connection is not obvious, but if you really think about it, you’ll usually find the logic. There are so many ways of living life, so many different ways of seducing – and there’s a perfume for each of these stories. |
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How does creativity work for you?
I think that, somehow, you have to get into a rhythm. When I take pictures, draw something, or when I work on the layout of a packaging... I know it probably won’t turn out very well at the beginning. But I get going, and one thing leads to the other. I don’t believe in genius – especially for me, that is for sure. But I really, really believe in work and in not being scared. So you get going, you work work work work, and then things get better. It’s a bit like a trance. You just have to get going. Coming back to my job, I think creativity (or art) is also about making decisions. It’s important to enter the flow, but not everything in the flow will turn out to be good. The process also consists of taking the wrong stuff out. [In your work,] it might mean “hurting” yourself enough to take one paragraph away, even if it was cool after all…It’s exactly the same with perfumes.
In our work with Laguna~B we often question the role of luxury in today’s society. What’s your opinion? In a way, Marie’s glasses are also a luxury product, considering their price.
They could be way more expensive. To go back to choices: she chose the colors and the proportions – just as I make choices on certain proportions in my fragrances. Luxury results from the sum of these decisions. In this way, an object ends up encapsulating all the thought processes of one human being. Even if Marie’s Goto glasses are made in hundreds of pieces, they still emanate this enormous energy. Think of Mondrian, for instance. If you look at his paintings very, very carefully, you can see that he’s been moving the lines so many times, and then, at one point, you get that balance. And it vibrates. There’s this energy coming out of the painting. It forms a certain kind of perfection because it’s so thoroughly considered. This is what I perceive as luxury. However, today, luxury can be anything. Large, international brands are like big bags that fill those pipes, where you have VIPs, you have events, and you have – sometimes – quality. All these things create a big planet you want to be part of. When you buy small luxury goods from them – which may be made in China – you’re getting a piece of that planet. This is a modern, mass-market idea of luxury. Those planets are full of highs and lows, including cheap things that bring them down and extraordinary things that bring them up. So, the planet remains at a level that is somehow desirable. But deep down, when you know what it takes to make something good, you also know that a delicious meal doesn't necessarily need caviar. Instead, it will probably result from the decisions of an experienced chef on top of his craft. Luxury can be simple things – think of Duchamp’s idea that beauty is in the eyes of those who watch. What role does sensuality play in the success of a product?
[In perfumery,] it’s crucial. First, a perfume is not a smell. There are some smells you feel in nature or while you’re walking home. Delicious, yes, but they don’t smell like a person. The beginning of a perfume and the end of a person’s natural smell should not be seen; it should be one. You should feel that the perfume is coming out of your pores. That’s step number one. Secondly, there are many ways of being sexy. Some people think they are sexy when they are as clean as a bathtub, with white teeth and all that. I don’t think that’s sexy, but they see sexiness in perfection. Some people are the opposite. They feel they’re sexy when they smell like a wet animal, wild, with heavy hair. And, between these two opposites, there’s a huge spectrum. Flowers are often a trap because when you smell too much like a flower, you often don’t smell human. That was the magic of Marie’s perfume. It smells like a flower, yes, but it also smells human because it has been stretched in many ways and dimensions.
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Discover Frédéric's selection
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