Interview: Capturing The Essence Of West Village Perfumery Aedes de Venustas

Is perfume like wine, in the sense that there are certain terms, or things that we should know before buying them?

[Photo via] Is perfume like wine, in the sense that there are certain terms, or things that we should know before buying them? The average fragrance has over a hundred different raw materials. We can tell. But the regular customer out there cannot. Yes, there are families, there are florals, spices, whatever. So you can tell people, I like rose, or I like incense. But there is a story behind every perfume. For Frederic Malle, for example. There is a certain fragrance they created, and I asked the perfumer what she had in mind when she created the fragrance, and she said ‘Oh Robert, first day of spring in Paris, walking on the Seine.’ Then I show this fragrance to the customer again, and you smell it, and you realize, ‘Wow, this is spring in Paris.’ And that’s the inspiration of the artist – a perfumer is an artist. So I wear those two that are ours, and I wear a third one – and this, you won’t be able to smell. That sound weird, but it’s meant to enhance fragrances. It’s called Molecule 01, and when they presented it to us, I said “wait a minute, this makes no sense. How am I supposed to sell a fragrance with no scent?” But the way it works is, there is this molecule in every fragrance, and at the end they add it to the raw materials and it rounds them together, and it brings them together. [Photo via]