PERFECT PAIRING Frédéric Malle and Alber Elbaz combine their artistic visions in a chic perfume collaboration
What happened when the king of Parisian perfume, Frédéric Malle, joined forces with the master couturier Alber Elbaz
The history of scent is a tale of encounters between couturiers and perfumers: Coco Chanel and Ernest Beaux, Hubert de Givenchy and Marcel Rochas, Christian Dior and Edmond Roudnitska. However, few will have been as enthusiastic as Frédéric Malle on joining forces with Alber Elbaz, the creative genius formerly of Lanvin and Yves Saint Laurent. Their meeting was evidently an artistic coup de foudre, the fragrance it has led to – Superstitious – an expression of fraternal love.
‘You don’t meet an Alber every five minutes!’ declares Malle, as we discuss the collaboration at his store in Piccadilly’s Burlington Arcade. ‘There is something about Alber where you really want to give your best: mostly out of generosity, but also out of pride, because you can’t put your name next to one like his without wanting to live up to it.’
Malle is a self-effacing chap: ‘All your childhood you are told not to talk about yourself, and now all anyone wants me to do is to go into talkingabout-myself mode.’ He has only himself to blame, since Monsieur Malle is held in global regard for his pioneering brilliance within the perfume world, begetting not merely a cornucopia of what are already considered 21st-century classics, but also for changing the face of the industry as a whole.
I first met him back in the spring of 2004, following my nose in search of Paris’ most talked-about new fragrance talent. The grandson of Serge Heftler Louiche, the founder of Parfums Christian Dior (who trained Malle), and the nephew of the film director Louis, Malle was already being heralded as ‘the Guerlain of tomorrow’ and ‘king of Parisian perfume’.
Over the years, people have only grown more passionate about the man and his oeuvre. When I tell friends I will be interviewing him, several turn stalkerish. For what he achieved with his Editions de Parfums, Frédéric Malle was nothing less than a renaissance of artisanship within the industry: a revival of seriousness and authenticity that rescued the science of scent from the marketing banalities that had overtaken it.
As editor to his author-perfumers, he invited names such as Jean-Claude Ellena, Maurice Roucel and Olivia Giacobetti to create masterpieces free from the constraints of fashion and finance. Then, in the winter of 2014, it was
announced that his brand was being purchased by Estée Lauder; cue horror that Paris’ prince of ‘niche’ was selling his soul for American big bucks.
His acolytes misread their champion: ‘niche’ being a word for which Malle reserves a palpable distaste. ‘We grew slowly with very, very good things, but my aim was to have an impact upon this business. I wanted to be large like Hermès is large.’
Malle measures out his life in flacons, as Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons. Reading between the lines of his Elbaz passion, was he feeling jaded prior to their alliance? ‘My life had become very busy. Having someone as powerful, challenging and inspiring as Alber was like a breath of fresh air. It took me back to what I was doing when I started this company.’ Elbaz, for his part, has spoken about the joy of the experience, observing: ‘It’s not about a collaboration, it’s about friendship and respect.’
The brief was a compelling one: ‘Alber wanted the smell of a dress, the scent of this very smart Parisian woman. I always saw Alber as someone capable of loving women like Saint Laurent did, but making them themselves, not dressing them like Barbie dolls.
‘A dress can be anything, but Alber has this style. I thought of femininity because that’s what he did at Lanvin. I thought of something that doesn’t feel like architecture, while being very architectural. And I thought that, despite growing up abroad, Alber’s style has the cultivation of all the great Parisian couturiers.’
I tell Malle that, on the occasion I met him back in 2004, I also visited the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré to press my nose to Lanvin’s window, swooning over its jewel-coloured cocktail dresses. ‘Exactly!’ he cries. ‘I was exactly thinking of those. What would this type of woman wear? That timeless feminine style.
‘I realised that what I had been working on with the perfumer Dominique Ropion echoed what Alber had in mind. We had been trying to redefine the floral aldehydic type – seen in Chanel No 5 and Arpège – which was huge, but has completely disappeared.
‘The aldehyde is a very cold, almost cutting smell. It has a sort of dagger feel to it in the middle of this lavish, floral voluptuousness. Then there’s a an ambery aspect to the base, there’s a lot of vetiver in it, some musk, and a sexy, animalistic element. And Alber loved it, and chose it like Dior chose Miss Dior and Chanel chose No 5.’
What is clear is that Malle’s collaborators – be they designers such as Dries Van Noten before Elbaz, or perfumers such as Ropion – have to have ideas, intellect, hinterland. With Elbaz there was another affinity, as the designer himself elaborates: ‘We are both superstitious. In our pre-programmed world, there remains chance, accidental meetings, surprises, superstition.’ The result is pure serendipity – the kind of magic that ensues when great minds meet.
Superstitious, £158 for 50ml, Alber Elbaz by Frédéric Malle.
‘I always saw Alber as someone capable of loving women… making them themselves, not dressing them like Barbie dolls’