Hedi Slimane has designed 11 new fragrances for Celine, marking the French fashion house’s first perfume launch since 1964
Celine is launching a collection of fragrances this autumn, designed by creative director Hedi Slimane. The Celine haute parfumerie collection features 11 perfumes – nine scents will be released this year, with the final two following in 2020 – each of which stems from Slimane’s “olfactory journal”, distilling a personal moment or memory of the designer into a particular fragrance.
The 11 fragrances are unisex, and loosely grouped into scents for day and night (though the house states that this grouping is by no means prescriptive). There are eight perfumes for day: Parade, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Dans Paris, Cologne Française, La Peau Nue, Eau de Californie (the only scent not inspired by Paris, but rather Slimane’s time spent in California), Bois Dormant and Rimbaud – the latter two are the perfumes set for release in 2020. Three more scents follow for evening: Black Tie, Reptile, and Nightclubbing. Paris’ “pronounced classicism and dissonant sophistication” are key to the collection, and the highly personal nature of each scent is intended to strike a similar, emotive chord with the wearer.
Marking Celine’s first fragrance since Vent Fou in 1964, the haute parfumerie collection is an extension of Slimane’s vision for the French fashion house – and has been eagerly anticipated, since the designer hinted at developing a Celine fragrance when he was announced as the brand’s new creative director in January of 2018. Slimane has worked in olfaction before: when he was creative director of Dior Homme, he created three Maison Christian Dior fragrances in 2004.
A single powdery note – “like a diaphanous veil placed over the skin,” according to the house – sits at the core of each perfume, a favourite scent of Slimane’s. Other notes across the collection evoke decades past: tree moss, iris, rose, chypre accord all feature. Each perfume is housed in a luxurious glass bottle of a classic rectangular shape – weighty to signify the traditional French glassmaking methods used to produce the vessels – making these fragrances a treat for the eyes as well as the nose.
In a teaser film for the collection, we see the bottles being made, as the names of the 11 fragrances appear on the screen. Watch below exclusively on AnOthermag.com.