As a business plan, setting up your own boutique luxury fragrance company with no advertising, purposefully plain packaging and limited distribution isn’t one likely to be endorsed by your bank manager. But that’s exactly what Fabrice Penot and
As a business plan, setting up your own boutique luxury fragrance company with no advertising, purposefully plain packaging and limited distribution isn’t one likely to be endorsed by your bank manager. But that’s exactly what Fabrice Penot and Edouard (Eddie) Roschi did after leaving the international cosmetics group where they first met and setting up Le Labo four years ago. Explains Roschi, “We wanted to start with a creative difference. We didn’t want to start with market tests and ask 20 different people what they thought of the perfume. We wanted a more creative point of view. We wanted to remind people what fragrance is about and to remind them that perfume is a luxury but also an extension of who you are.”
True to its name, (Le Labo meaning “the lab” in French) there is an experimental edge to their work. The pair delight in breaking the rules of the staid perfume industry: from creating unisex fragrances (their bestselling Rose 31 is equally beguiling on men and women) to making limited edition scents specific to (and only sold in) a particular city – London gets the spicy Poivre 23, New York the smoky Tubereuse 40. For the pair, this was their stand against global homogenisation. “With our city exclusive line, we wanted to create perfumes that were inaccessible and that create frustration. People said that we were arrogant for doing so but it’s arrogant to expect that something be available all the time. We wanted to make something that reminds people that there is more than just consuming.”
They apply their unconventional approach to their collaborations also, most recently working with Jefferson Hack to create a scent blended exclusively for AnOther magazine, AnOther 13. “There’s no formula when you work with somebody else,” says Roschi. “You meet somebody and have a drink and start a discussion. The perfume is basically an extension of that. We obviously appreciate what each other do and we try to understand the other person’s sensibility and find a common story.” After inviting Hack to their New York store, he settled on the dirty, woody musk of Ambrox as the base note for the fragrance – Ambrox being a synthetic scent derived from ambergris, also known as the biliary secretions of sperm whales. From that exotic base, the duo (together with perfumier, Nathalie Lorson) have created a contemporary perfume; elegant, distinctive and with more than a hint of an animalistic quality. In a first for the perfume world, the fragrance was made available last year while still in the stages of development. “Perfume can take many months to years to develop so it was interesting to release it while still a work-in-progress but good enough to stand on its own,” muses Roschi. This fall, the final product is released in a limited edition run of 500 numbered bottles, sold at Le Labo stores and selected concessions worldwide.
