BeauFort London Archives

Last week, Olfiction travelled to Florence for the Pitti Fragranze trade fair. Our main purpose for the trip was to celebrate the debut of Terror & Magnificence, the fragrance Olfiction perfumer Pia Long has created for BeauFort London. But this wasn’t our sole purpose and Pitti provided us with a great opportunity to network with people from all aspects of the industry in addition to scoping out all of the new and exciting launches there were (and to eat lots of pizza too, of course).

With an expansive range of exhibitors, Pitti was packed to the rafters with lots of fragrance and some beauty, too. There was a real trend for simplicity and despite a few exceptions, the focus seemed to be on unpretentious packaging and fragrances that held personal significance with those that created them. With new and exciting things in mind, we want to share with you some of our highlights from Pitti – the greatest hits of what we saw and smelled, if you will. There really was a wealth to choose from and a huge variety of brands, each offering their own unique spin on the art of olfaction. Those below are the ones that most resonated with us.

Parfums Dusita

Poetry and scent merge beautifully with Parfums Dusita – a brand created by Pissara Umavijani, a Thai perfumer who is now based in Paris. Pissara’s father, Montri Umavijani, was a poet and his words accompany each of the fragrances in the collection, serving as a personal tribute to his life’s work through the artistic endeavours of his daughter. Splendiris, one of Dusita’s latest creations, caught our attention with its soft, violet-centric take on iris – Splendiris is ethereal and calm but not without presence and serves as a delicate take on the interplay of violet and iris, presented with beautiful lines of poetry: “I write by the candlelight, in a night wrapped by many layers of dreams”. Parfums Dusita is an exciting brand and we are looking forward to see where they go next.

Pekji

Pekji is a Turkish brand created by Omer Ipekci, who composed each of the brand’s five fragrances. With a distinct, graphic aesthetic (thanks to Ipekci’s background as an illustrator and graphic designer), Pekji boasts a bold identity with unique, punchy fragrances to match, each of which take inspiration from the perfumer’s childhood. We were struck by the intense beauty of Ruh, a vivid rose shrouded in rich spices and woods, and the bracing, mineral quality of Eaumer, which presents an image of the ocean without the use of traditional aquatic notes. Pekji is a brand not for the faint-hearted and therein lies its strength – this is a perfume house with fascinating, unique fragrances that satisfy those who enjoy a bold and daring olfactory vision.

Miller Harris

Our client Miller Harris definitely had the most vibrant and colourful stand at the show. Boasting neon tubes, and vinyl hanging flowers scented with their latest launches – and a fluorescent cage overflowing with flora – not to mention the colour blocks of spray-dyed perfume bottles – there really was nowhere more exciting to be than the Miller Harris stand. New launches such as Blousy (a juicy and flirtatious blend of strawberries and rose), upcoming offerings such as Secret Gardenia (a beautiful, buxom blend of white florals) and recent beauties such as DANCE Amongst the Lace (a minty fresh fougere that we’re still obsessed with) all came together to make Miller Harris the most fun and innovative stand at Pitti this year. We are biased on that, of course.

Colourful displays on the Miller Harris stand at Pitti Fragranze 2019 — Colourful display at the Miller Harris stand. Photo credit Olfiction.

Maison Rebatchi

Everything about Maison Rebatchi stood out. The bottles, with their beautiful patterned glass, were an example of luxurious simplicty, whilst the fragrances inside were incredibly complex compositions that subverted expectations. Working with legendary perfumers such as Bertrand Duchaufour, Maurice Roucel and Randa Hammami, Maison Rebatchi has turned familiar materials like jasmine, osmanthus and patchouli on their heads, creating surprising perfumes that feel entirely new. Feu Patchouli is a patchouli on fire, exuding silver streams of mineral smoke. Rose Rebatchi is a wonderfully crisp and jammy rose that makes one feel as if they are standing in a field of roses first thing in the morning. Maison Rebatchi is one of those rare collections where every single fragrance is exceptional and we hope to see them in the UK sometime soon!

Jean-Claude Ellena

One of the key features of this year’s show was the Jean-Claude Ellena retrospective. Curated by journalist Chandler Burr, the retrospective celebrated the life’s work of one of the industry’s most legendary perfumers, ranging from his very first fragrance (First for Van Cleef & Arpels) to his work as in-house perfumer at Hermes, and beyond to his latest creation, Rose & Cuir for Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle. Both Burr and Ellena were in attendance to stage an “in conversation” presentation where the perfumer provided rare insight into his career and process. Believe us when we say that we were on the edge of our seats! You can watch the entire talk here – either in the original French or via the English simultaneous interpreter.

BeauFort London

Finally, we cannot talk about Pitti Fragranze without mentioning Terror & Magnificence by BeauFort London. Read all about how we worked with BeauFort’s Leo Crabtree to compose this brand new addition to their Revenants collection here.

Last weekend at Pitti Fragranze’s 17th edition, BeauFort London launched their latest perfume, Terror & Magnificence, created by Olfiction perfumer Pia Long. The fragrance has already drawn praise from the perfume community, with Sergey Borisov of Fragrantica naming it among his favourite launches at the show. Below, Pia shares her notes and thoughts on the creative process.

Terror and Magnificence – Perfumer’s Notes

Leo Crabtree’s creative ideas around perfumery are larger-than-life, with gothic horror, punk and metal influences. The fragrances he has thus far coaxed out of perfumers have had enormous presence. The idea of something that forces you to pay attention to it; wearable art – these have been the underpinnings of BeauFort London. We happened to meet through some other work we were doing together, and Leo smelled an accord I’d created of concrete and hyper-real brutalism. Of course, there is no “concrete essential oil”, yet somehow, I’d managed to create a smell that made sense as wet concrete and towering brutalist architecture.

We started working together on some concepts, and I developed a smoke accord for Leo, which felt at once enormous and transparent. This sparked something.

My style of perfumery is probably best described as magic realism. I like to create something hyper-real, and then push it to be more than the real thing, and add fantasy elements. When Leo’s concept for Terror & Magnificence landed on my desk, I immediately felt what the idea’s texture had to be. Darkness of the kind that makes you doubt your own senses. The new scent is based on the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor – and Leo’s brief introduced semi-mythologised elements of Egyptology into church settings; the fantasy elements of mummies about to crawl out of the ground just beneath the apparently civilised surface.

I used smells of the church itself – incense, the wooden pews, the stone floors, and added a sinister, unsettling presence with an accord of a stone cellar that has a whisper of decay. The brief contained a wonderfully evocative sentence: “And one is caught off guard by a vision of Rameses II, almost as if his spirit is trapped somehow beneath the church floor.”

For the darkness, I blended the smoke accord from our earlier meetings with tar, myrrh, benzoin, styrax and a kyphi accord I’d been researching for a while. I like to build individual pieces of the perfume like scenes in a story, and then do multiple trials of them together at different proportions, and once I’m set on an overall harmony, I’ll tinker with the composition to fine tune it until the idea is fully realised. In working with Leo, there is definitely a case of two creative minds trying to bring something into the world, rather than one artist who is being instructed. Leo’s direction and his instinct for what would communicate his vision perfectly was very important.

I listened to a lot of music that set the mood for me during the creative process for this – I think especially Sunn O))) and Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard both had the kinds of tracks that felt right for this perfume’s mood.

The perfume that we created feels like it always existed, as though we’ve conjured a myth into being from the ether. It evolves on each skin I’ve tried it on – some bring out more of the incense, for some the resins and leather, some the myrrh and smoke.

Terror & Magnificence will be available at BeauFort London stockists in the coming weeks.

Highlights from Pitti Fragranze 2019