Frédéric Malle. A publisher of perfumers.

2000: a perfume house on the model of a publisher

Frédéric Malle opened Editions de Parfums in 2000. The idea is stated simply: the best perfumers compose their own scents, and those scents are sold under their own names.

At the time this was unusual. Most perfume was sold under a brand: a fashion house, a star, a product line. Perfumers worked for materials companies, took briefs, submitted trials, and their names rarely travelled beyond the lab. Buyers knew whose bottle it was, not whose smell.

Malle reversed the order. The house's name stays on the bottle, but the perfumer's name stands beside it, as clear as an author's name under a book title. The publisher chooses the manuscript, sees to printing and distribution. The author is the one who writes.

According to the page of the group that now owns the house, some fifteen perfumers have composed for the collection, and a scent usually takes between six and eighteen months to develop.

The authors

The list of people who have published scents with Editions de Parfums reads like the table of contents of a generation. Olivia Giacobetti made En Passant, one of the first scents in 2000. Maurice Roucel made Musc Ravageur. Dominique Ropion made several for the house; when he published his book on the craft in 2017, Malle wrote the preface.

The detail of the preface shows the relationship goes beyond a contract. Editor and author read each other, write for each other, stand up for each other's work.

The Musc Ravageur story is clearer still. As Roucel told it at a talk recorded by Nez magazine, he first wrote the scent in answer to a brief for another house. That brief went to a different perfumer. His scent did not disappear; it found a publisher, and came out under his name.

In the book trade this is ordinary. In perfume it is rare, because a rejected scent usually has nowhere to go.

Removing what is only decoration

A line often attached to Malle is a reminder to strip away everything superfluous, everything merely decorative. Looking at how the house presents its scents, one sees the line followed closely.

The bottle is plain. The label is mostly type. No model's face. The only things brought forward are the name of the scent and the name of the person who wrote it. All attention is pulled to one point: the perfume itself.

It is an aesthetic position, but also a small ethical one. It says the object is enough to be looked at, and its maker deserves to be known by name. No extra story needed. No image standing in.

Who makes a smell?

Malle's model raises a question the perfume trade seldom asks outright: who is the author of a smell? The one who writes the formula? The one who chooses and approves? The company supplying the materials? The one who names it?

Editions de Parfums answers much as publishing does. The author is the writer. The publisher chooses, edits, and answers to the reader. Two different roles, each needing the other, both present on the cover.

The question is asked elsewhere too. The exhibition Nez à nez in Lausanne in 2019 chose thirteen contemporary perfumers and presented them as authors, not brands. The same idea: a smell does not simply occur. Someone sits and makes it, revises, discards, starts again, over many months.

Knowing the maker's name does not make a smell better. But it makes the smell an object with a history.