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

Do you find that there are certain scents that are more in fashion? Is there a cycle of trends?

[Photo via] Do you find that there are certain scents that are more in fashion? Is there a cycle of trends? It does. People were told by the big guys and by the industry, that male or female fragrances exist, for example. That didn’t happen in the past. So people come in sometimes, and they say “where’s the men’s section,” and we don’t have that here. It doesn’t work like that. I say sometimes, when you go to a restaurant and order fish, you don’t say “can I have a male or female fish.” For the last couple of years for example, Aoud, which has been used for years, someone decided to talk about it, and the online community and bloggers just hyped it up. It’s very rich, it comes from the Middle East, and they’ve used it for centuries there. So people do have trends, but that’s something that we try to stay away from. But then again, the brands that we carry, being who they are, they understand the market as well, and they are very continuous with their fragrances; not trying to follow trends at all. It’s about the creation itself, the idea behind the fragrance, whatever the inspiration is for that. Over the last couple of years, I have to say, a lot of women tend to go in the spicier direction. In a classic world, people would say ‘no, women cannot wear leather or incense based fragrances,’ because that’s masculine. But they do, for a very simple reason – it’s sensual. Based on your body chemistry, it just makes for a very sexy and irresistible scent. So that’s something I can say I’ve seen in the last couple of years. And we have a lot of male customers who wear tuberose. And that’s something you would think is so feminine – but why not? [Photo via]