According to Barneys New York, Frédéric Malle’s inspirations for Monsieur1 were…
“…remorseless seducers2 who would playfully flit from women’s embrace to social merrymaking. Gentlemen3 whose manly and timeless elegance has relentlessly guided the development of this perfume and enabled Frédéric Malle to stay on course during the creation of this very minimal scent.”
Here they are, a-hem, “aristocrats” all…
Sometimes I want a glamorous perfume. I don’t mean a blatantly sexy fragrance, but one that oozes retro allure. Imagine Carole Lombard, swathed in silk charmeuse, warm from the bath, with bowls of roses in every room. That kind of perfume. I think of these fragrances as “dressing table” perfumes. They’re resolutely feminine and are usually dosed with rose, violet, iris, and powder. The best of them carry an animalic purr. They’d be right at home perched on a vintage dressing table with a postcard from a lover in Paris clipped to the mirror.
Here are five of my favorite dressing table perfumes. With each perfume, I add a dressing table accessory that suits it. In the comments, please share your favorite dressing table perfumes…
But the real memory that was very important for me is, I was at boarding school, playing a lot of sports, as one does. And I must have been about 12, and was still covered in Eau Sauvage. You know when you run and sweat? That sort of smell of, I suppose, myself and the perfume, it was something that I realized then was addictive. And then when I was trying to desperately become a playboy -I was 15 – my mother had some products sent from the States to study, and one of them was Halston Z14. [...] I thought, Wow, this is damned good. I used that stuff for years. First of all, I was probably the only one is Paris who owned it at the time, and I thought I was so goddamn special wearing it. It was the first overdosed use of Iso E Super.
— Frédéric Malle, quoted in Frédéric Malle on the Art of Seduction at W Magazine.
Frédéric Malle and Carlos Benaïm give a talk for the public lecture series at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. About an hour and a half long.
Our 2015 series of holiday gift posts continues — today we’re featuring coffrets and gift sets. More coming up soon!
Tops on our list (raise your hand if you’ve already bought one), the limited edition Frédéric Malle 15th Anniversary Coffret, in two sizes, both featuring 10 ml sprays plus a Bakelite travel spray and a retrospective book illustrated by American sculptor Phillip Low. The larger coffret includes twenty fragrances for $590; the smaller (“designed with men in mind”) includes ten fragrances for $365. You can purchase directly from the Malle website…