Interview: Michael Fragoso, The 22-Year-Old Behind The Weekly Les Garcons Party At Le Baron

Who are the guys behind Aedes de Venustas? They are these guys, Robert Gerstner and Karl Brandl. They are two really hot, older German guys, and they're my best friends now. [Photo: Inside the Aedes de Venustas Store in NYC's West Village via] How did you meet them in the first place? So, I always loved perfume and I never knew how to get into that world. I was working at Miu Miu and I was going to school, but I still wanted to find a way to do it. And I had like one day off a week so I went to this perfume store and I bought some fucking $300 perfume just so I could talk to them. Actually it wasn't some $300 perfume, it was a Cire Trudon candle. And so, I told the guys, I know nothing about perfume, but wanted to be their intern. Robert looked at me and was like, I've never had anybody ask me that question. So anyways, I started interning there and the next thing you know I'm in Paris with them. [Karl Bradl, Robert Gerstner via] What? That's crazy, how did you end up in Paris? We were there on a research trip. Here was my day-to-day. I would wake up at 11am. I was living at the Hotel Costes on Rue Saint-Honore. A car would be waiting downstairs for me and Robert. They would whisk us off to Versailles and we would go to this place called Osmothèque, which is a museum that houses the world's most historic perfumes. How long was the stay? A couple months. Like 4. We smelled THE perfume of Mary Antoinette. We smelled the stuff that Napoleon washed himself with when he was stuck in Corsica. And then we would go back to the Hotel Costes and sit on the terrace drinking Rose till 2am in the morning. Then we would get a call to go to Le Baron.

That was what I did every day, and I was 20. I actually celebrated my 21^st birthday in Paris, and Calvin Klein said happy birthday to me because he was there with his boyfriend. It was fucking bananas.