Alber Elbaz :
A Portrait by Frédéric Malle
I discovered Alber Elbaz’s work in the 90s, when Pierre Bergé appointed him head designer of Yves Saint Laurent. I saw in Alber what I now see in my perfumers: an ability to modernize the classics for a new generation.
As fate would have it, Alber has now met his match in the perfume world. The result of our unique collaboration with Dominique Ropion, born from the convergence of creative vision and mutual admiration, is the elusive scent of a dress: a classic floral aldehydic perfume that structures Alber’s vision of an elaborate fabric in which everyone can find their own beauty.
Alber resists a world that seeks to impose categories rather than free us from them. He considers intuition to be an inexhaustible source of freedom in the face of hyper-order, and beauty to lie in the irrational and the inexplicable. Superstitious is an invitation to discover that this mystery is, in fact, beautiful. So as a confessionary gesture of shared superstition, Alber and I signed the black bottle with his sketch of the evil eye, drawn one day in a Parisian café on the corner of a napkin. Beauty, we have always thought, can be found in the most unexpected of places.
F.M.
Promise by Dominique Ropion is our newest addition to the Middle East collection, and a perfume one does not easily forget. Two precious varieties of rose, lifted by apple, pink pepper and clove, and bound to a sensuous base of patchouli, cypriol and labdanum, celebrate one of the strongest bonds in human relationships, keeping one’s word.
A new Editions de Parfums store is opening in Milan this month, designed by Frédéric Malle himself as his own Milanese pied-à-terre. Adapting his own taste to the original structure and style of the building, he has married 1940s neoclassicism with constellation of modern objects in a paradigm of architectural rigor.
Laguna B, a leader in Venetian glass craftsmanship, has created a limited edition line for Frédéric Malle of five candles in Murano glass. Colorful, playfully extravagant and skillfully executed, each candle is a unique collector’s item, never again replicated.
