Parisian fragrance house Parfums de Marly has unveiled its latest scent, Athénaïs—an ode (rather than an oud) to a particularly notable character in French royal history. With notes of neroli and tonka bean, the scent evokes the opulence of the 18th century, with the splendor of the French court serving as the backdrop to an unfolding swirl of fragrant allure.

The house drew its latest perfume name from Athénaïs de Montespan, the most famous of King Louis XIV’s muses. Renowned not only for her beauty but also her quick wit and arts patronage, Montespan was a woman who understood the power of presence. Born Françoise de Rochechouart, she later adopted the name Athénaïs (after the Greek goddess Athena) to better reflect the self she wished to inhabit. The gesture aligned with the spirit of the Enlightenment period: self-definition over tradition, cheeky personality over tired prescription.

At court, Athénaïs commanded a cultural authority that rivaled even her royal peers. Charismatic, strategic, and unapologetically idiosyncratic, she cultivated a reputation for thinking and living on her own terms. It is precisely this quality that Parfums de Marly has captured in its latest fragrance.

Athénaïs arrives as a deliberate departure from some of the house’s most recognizable scents, such as Delina or Valaya. Instead, the new release leans into a brighter, more airy composition. Its orange-hued bottle offers a hint of what lies inside: vibrant top notes of bergamot, yuzu, and neroli, which immediately signal an unexpected twist on the house’s typically floral and woody universe. In its heart notes, the fragrance unfolds into orange blossom and jasmine before settling into the warmth of vanilla and tonka bean. The result is a floral ambery composition that balances freshness with layered structure.

While remaining anchored in its historical inspirations, Parfums de Marly here expands its olfactory repertoire, inviting loyalists and newcomers alike to experience something daring. For those who spritz it, Athénaïs offers an aroma of mystique and elegance—an accessory for those moving through the world with flair.

More of our favorite stories from CULTURED

The Substack Stars: 21 Newsletters That Your Favorite Writers Can’t Get Enough Of

In Wayne Koestenbaum’s First Novel in Two Decades, Gay Lust Incarnate Is a Rabbi With a Dad Bod

Eva Victor Made the Breakout Indie of the Year. Now, They Have to Do It All Over Again.

What Is It Really Like to Work at a Black Art Institution Right Now?

In Paris for Fashion Week? Catch These 11 Must-See Exhibitions While You’re There

Sign up for our newsletter here to get these stories direct to your inbox.

You have a day off, what’s the first thing you do in the morning? Are you sleeping in or waking up early?

“I let myself sleep in. On a normal day, I’m up at 7 a.m., so a day off usually means waking somewhere between 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.  I start the morning with a long stretch, focusing on my neck, lower back, and hamstrings mostly, while gently waking up the rest of my body.” — MELVIN LAWOVI (corps de ballet)

“I am most definitely sleeping in, but once I am awake I make coffee in my French press, which is heavenly.”  — ZIMMI COKER (corps de ballet)

“Definitely no alarm, that’s for sure. What time I get up is entirely up to the body. Usually start with coffee and a big breakfast, then I’ll call mom to catch up.” — PATRICK FRENETTE (soloist)

“I’m on a pretty good routine of waking up early during the week, so my body is used to getting up at a certain time. I do enjoy those extra 30 minutes to an hour on our days off, though. Once I’m up, I start my morning routine, which consists of skincare, hot lemon water, supplements, red light therapy, and my vibration plate for lymphatic drainage.” — OLIVIA TWEEDY (corps de ballet)

“I try and sleep as much as possible and have a slow morning, ideally with a coffee and a bath.” — HANNAH MARSHALL (corps de ballet)

“Lazy days are important, but my days off are usually still pretty full. I’m up early. Coffee comes first, always. Then it’s usually a series of appointments—a ballet private with my coach, cross-training with my trainer, physical therapy, and any other tune-ups I can squeeze into the day.” — JOSE SEBASTIAN (soloist)

What’s your favorite TV show/podcast to binge/rewatch when you have 24 hours to yourself?

“My taste really depends on my mood. I move very easily between period dramas, reality TV, and anime, so there isn’t just one go-to. It’s about whatever feels right that day.” — LAWOVI 

“I’ve found myself listening to Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast. It’s informative, motivating and every topic varies around wellness—whether it’s mental health or intentional living. He hosts interviews with an assortment of people who have a lot of inspiring stories to share. I feel so pumped every time I listen to it!” — COKER 

“I recently started Ted Lasso, and I’m absolutely loving it. It’s very inspiring to watch an endearing display of radical optimism in such a competitive sport. I try very hard to practice this myself as a dancer.” — FRENETTE 

“I have so many favorite TV shows that it’s hard to choose just one. Right now, I’m rewatching Daisy Jones & The Six—it’s an incredible show. I also love listening to podcasts, primarily wellness-focused. My go-to listens are Move With Heart by Melissa Wood-Tepperberg and The Wellness Process by Elizabeth Endres-Orrigo.” — TWEEDY

“The Pitt. Give me a good doctor drama any day of the week.” — MARSHALL 

“Right now I’m rewatching Schitt’s Creek. It’s a favorite, but it’s definitely hitting differently in light of the recent news.” — SEBASTIAN 

Best massage?

“My good friend and massage therapist Brent Whitney is the BEST. A true healer, one could say! He used to be a dancer so he understands the body.” — COKER

“I’m not a big massage person, but I do get chiropractor appointments on occasion. I’ve gotten so many life-saving adjustments at Integrative Sports on 73rd Street on the Upper West Side.” — FRENETTE 

“I’m very particular when it comes to massages. As an athlete, I both need and prefer deep tissue work, which is surprisingly hard to find done well. I’m a big fan of Ohm Spa—they don’t mess around. I also enjoy lymphatic drainage massages occasionally; my go-to spots are The Tox and IMD Beauty Spa.” — TWEEDY

“I love Rescue Spa.” — MARSHALL 

“Barbara Payne and her associate Derek Wong. They’re incredible. Ask for the fascial claw.” — SEBASTIAN

Best spa/sauna/bathhouse?

“King Spa and SoJo Spa in New Jersey are favorites, as well as QC Spa on Governors Island.” — LAWOVI 

“I LOVE Bathhouse in Flatiron! I feel like I am transported to a different world whenever I go.” — COKER 

“Probably the one at Equinox Sports Club, close to Lincoln Center. It’s the perfect reset spot post-workout or rehearsal/show when ABT is working in Lincoln Center.” — FRENETTE 

“Othership and Remedy Place! I also have a Heat Healer infrared sauna blanket at home that I use almost every night.” — TWEEDY

Best acupuncturist?

“ORA or WTHN.” — TWEEDY

“ORA is fantastic for a little acupuncture and cupping. Needles stress me out so having a full spa experience helps keep me relaxed.” — MARSHALL 

“Dr. Li Ting Lin in Koreatown. She’s helped me through some serious injuries.” — SEBASTIAN

Best place around New York to take your mind off things?

“The New York Philharmonic. I love silencing my phone, sitting in the hall, and being fully present with the music. For the duration of the concert, your only job is to listen, and that kind of focus is incredibly grounding.” — LAWOVI 

“Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City. The sunsets are epic and it’s rarely ever crowded.” — COKER

“Kinokuniya. It’s a fantastic Japanese bookstore by Bryant Park where I can grab a coffee, pick up a manga, or browse some  unique goods for the home.” — FRENETTE 

“For me, it’s anywhere in nature. I love Central Park for long walks or sitting in the Elizabeth Street Garden to journal. I also enjoy spending time at Caffè Paradiso, my favorite coffee shop in New York.” — TWEEDY

“Outside anywhere and everywhere in the city. I love to take a walk to take my mind off things. I grew up in New York, and nothing makes me feel more grounded than taking a walk and  listening to music.” — MARSHALL 

“Central Park has always been my go-to. In the summer, the Hudson River piers at sunset are hard to beat.” — SEBASTIAN 

Go-to comfort food to pick up, order in, or cook?

“Ordering in, always. Indian or Korean is always my go-to comfort food.”  — LAWOVI 

“I LOVE sushi! I don’t think I could ever get enough of it.” — COKER 

“I love making burritos. I use seasoned Beyond Meat for the base, shredded tofu to make sofritas with black beans, shredded Mexican cheese, lots of guac, and Valentina’s hot sauce on a flour tortilla. It’s probably my speciality.” — FRENETTE 

“My comfort food is either Thai cuisine—there are so many great spots in the city—or a grass-fed steak with sweet potatoes and vegetables that I cook at home. I’m also a sucker for a ‘fun’ drink, usually a Poppi or an Olipop.” — TWEEDY

“A Thai curry. In particular, I love the restaurant Little Tiffin in Greenpoint.” — MARSHALL 

“Indian food—I love both cooking it and ordering it.” — SEBASTIAN

Go-to loungewear?

“Very oversized sweatpants paired with an equally oversized T-shirt or hoodie. Comfort comes first at home.” — LAWOVI 

“A warm sweatshirt and shorts. Even in the winter I love to have my legs free, haha. I love a Bloch sweat set!” — COKER 

“I wear a lot of Uniqlo. They have so many stylish, high-quality goods for affordable dancer-friendly prices. Their graphic tee collection is unparalleled. I have hoarded all the pieces from their Chainsaw Man, Berserk, Mobile Suit Gundam, and Jujutsu Kaisen collections.” — FRENETTE 

“You can almost always find me in my ALO Yoga sweat sets. A few other brands I love are Skims, Set Active, Parke, and Dairy Boy.” — TWEEDY

“My all-time favorite sweatpants are my Patagonia sweats. I also love the Elder Statesman for cashmere sweaters and my Irish Yoko Wool slippers.” — MARSHALL 

“A plush bathrobe.” — SEBASTIAN

Go-to bar/coffee shop for a low-key catch up with your friends?

“For coffee, Seoul Sweets in Koreatown. It has a calm atmosphere and a beautiful aesthetic. For a relaxed drink, Musaek or George Bang Bang. I love the service there and the workers are very friendly.” — LAWOVI 

“If I had to choose, I’d pick Employees Only because it has that dim lighting and a fantastic cocktail selection. Always love to catch up with the girlies here!” — COKER

“On a trip to Toronto I discovered % Arabica and now it’s my favorite place for coffee in the city. I get a large iced Kyoto Latte and a pain au chocolat, and I always stop there if I visit MoMA.” — FRENETTE

“Merriweather Coffee in the West Village.” — MARSHALL 

“Elmo’s in Chelsea has long been a favorite.” — SEBASTIAN

The products you swear by to unwind at home? 

“All I need is my Theragun, some cooling eye gels, and eucalyptus epsom salts for recovery.” — COKER

“Is it weird to say my PlayStation 5? I’m a big gamer, so time spent delving into a big open world to explore or clear dungeons with friends online—including some from work!—is a great way to unwind and has always been lots of fun for me.” — FRENETTE 

“Jo Malone red roses bath oil, bath salts by Mirror Water, and Dr. Hauschka arnica oil.” — MARSHALL 

“I’m more of a small rituals person—a hot shower, a glass of wine, watching an episode of something, or finally finishing a task I’ve been putting off. Ending the day (or week) having completed something is always deeply satisfying.” — SEBASTIAN

The app you spend the most time on during your days off?

“A combination of Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.” — LAWOVI 

“NYTimes.” — COKER

“It’s cliché, but probably Instagram. I run two different social media pages—my own and that of Boys Ballet Summer Intensive, the program I started with my family to facilitate high-quality classical training for young men looking to hone their craft.” — FRENETTE 

“I hate to admit it, but TikTok or Instagram. I also love FaceTime—talking with loved ones.” — TWEEDY

“Audible. I love to listen to audiobooks while tidying.” — MARSHALL

“Instagram. I can easily get lost in a thread of Reels. Every now and then I stumble onto a run of genuinely funny ones and the laughter that follows feels worth it.” — SEBASTIAN

What’s the most “dancer” thing about your days off?

“There’s almost always classical music playing. I spend a lot of time searching for lesser-known or unexpected pieces that spark choreographic ideas. Even on my days off, I’m collecting musical inspiration for future movement.” — MELVIN LAWOVI

“I stretch and roll out on a roller for half an hour, and then gently go over choreography in my mind to make sure that it is in my memory bank for the week ahead.” — COKER 

“I gotta say my foot stretcher. I’ve used one religiously since I was a student and still do. It only takes 30 minutes each foot to do the trick, followed by a deep calf stretch.” — FRENETTE

“I sew a few pairs of pointe shoes in preparation for the rehearsal week ahead.” — TWEEDY

“I never really stop dancing. Whether it’s a lazy day or a more intense one, I’m always moving.” — SEBASTIAN

I’ve never really had FOMO, except when it comes to Francis Kurkdjian. Over the years, I’ve heard about the perfumer’s artist collaborations. First there was L’odeur de l’argent, back in 1999, for artist Sophie Calle. I desperately wanted to smell it. I couldn’t imagine Kurkdjian, the king of modern perfumery, creating anything but something beautiful and wearable. Would it be a crisp, efficient cologne, as bright as a brand-new dollar bill? Would it be metallic, deep and charismatic, like an old darkened wheat penny?

For his 2007 PréamBulle, he flooded the gardens of Versailles with a shimmering blizzard of delicate bubbles, each scented with strawberry, pear, or melon—favorites of Louis XIV. Did the pop of each bubble release the scent of an individual fruit? Or did they meld together in a juicy accord?

And then there was 2012’s L’or bleu, the drinkable perfume water that he formulated with artist Yann Toma, inspired by the 14th-century perfume tonic known as “The Queen of Hungary Water” and the methylene-blue-laced cocktails served by Yves Klein at his 1958 “Le Vide” exhibition. (Klein’s guests urinated blue for days after.) Is L’or bleu actually drinkable? Is it something like fresh cucumber juice, where the aroma and taste align? Or non-synchronous like coffee or dark chocolate? Is it blue? Does it taste blue? 

All questions were answered last week at “Perfume: Sculpture of the Invisible,” a Kurkdjian retrospective at the Palais de Tokyo. Running through Nov. 23, the exhibition, curated by Jérôme Neutres, celebrates 30 years of Kurkdjian art, from his collaborations with photographers, chefs, and musicians to his infamous site-specific happenings at cultural monuments around the world.

A few works are on display for the first time: In L’Alchemie des sens, Kurkdjian’s friends—artist Elias Crespin, pianists Katia and Marielle Lebèque, composer David Chalmin, and director Cyril Teste—team up to translate Kurkdjian’s Baccarat Rouge Édition Millésime (only 54 bottles are available each year) into an immersive experience touching each of the five senses. (There’s chocolate involved!) Calle sent over bags of material from her personal archives; during Kurkdjian’s remarks at the opening, she stood on tip-toes in the middle of the crowd, waving her arms in the air. Musician Kilo Kish flew in from New York. “The past does hold keys, processes, and ways of being that could potentially be lost without drawing those connections into the future,” Kish says. “I’m inspired both to try new things and to collaborate in new ways, as well as study the histories a bit more.” Kish’s personal favorite of the 40-plus scents on display? The rich, velvety tuberose Opening Night, composed for Isabelle Adjani in 2019, when she starred in Cyril Teste’s stage adaptation of John Cassavetes’s film. 

At perfume school, Kurkdjian and his fellow students were all told that they were artists. “Because many perfumers think that what they create is art,” he says. “But I am lucky in that my parents gave me an artistic education, so before going to the perfume school, I knew what being an artist meant.” Kurkdjian’s grandparents would take him to the Louvre all the time. Everyone in his family plays a musical instrument. He started ballet at the age of five, eventually performing with Compagnie Versailles Soleil. “Art is all of the aspects of life. Art is about finding the beauty in death. If you think about Goya, art is about feeling pain. When you listen to music, art is about all of the emotions. Art is not just one spectrum of feeling. Art has no boundaries, no limits on self-expression,” he says.

According to Kurkdjian, commercial perfume, on the other hand, has very defined boundaries. “The way the perfume world sees the world is a very narrow window where everything is beautiful,” he says. “Literally beautiful, in a very normal way. All the women and the men are just beautiful. They all drive beautiful cars. They all are happy every time. They all find love. Perfume, unfortunately, usually shows a very narrow spectrum of life, an ideal life. The perfume world just shows paradise.”

Within this paradise, Kurkdjian has excelled, winning fragrance awards and breaking sales records. He’s launched over 300 scents over the past 30 years, from his first blockbuster, Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male in 1995, to ethereal works for Christian Dior Parfums, where he has been the Perfume Creation Director since 2022. At his own maison, he has redefined paradise with complex, polarizing creations such as his wildly popular Baccarat Rouge 540 (currently TikTok’s most searched beauty product).

Kurkdjian credits Calle with pushing him out of commercial perfume’s safe, pretty paradise. “She opened the door to abstraction. She opened the door to something totally out there. She opened the door to the world of linking art and smell together. I owe her all of that,” Kurkdjian says. “Sophie is the one who brought my consciousness to another aesthetic level.”

“Perfume: Sculpture of the Invisible“ spotlights Kurkdjian’s more challenging scents, such as the aggressively melancholic Courante—created by Kurkdjian and cellist Klaus Mäkelä for a 2022 performance of Bach’s “Cello Suite No 2.” One museum-goer said that it felt like “a punch to the nose.” And as for the Calle x Kurkdjian scent of money? While the notes seem benign—linen, ink, and basmati rice—the final composition is far from innocuous: it smells uncomfortably warm, sticky, and oily, like the body odor of a stranger. After smelling it, you’ll feel itchy. You’ll feel like you need to wash your hands. 

L’or bleu, however, is pure delight. At the installation, the clear water (no methylene blue here) is served in paper cups. The recipe, hung on the wall, promises, “This magical and beneficial water will bestow the finest artistic energies on whomever drinks it.” It is addictive—light and fresh, super invigorating, with hints of citrus, rosemary, and spearmint. Over the course of the hour, I went back for a second and third cup: the first two, I drank straight away, the third I splashed on my wrists and neck. I would buy gallons of this.

L’or bleu tastes cool and sparkling, yet, physically, it’s neither cool nor sparkling, a magic trick created via the power of aroma. When teaching, Kurkdjian hands out bags of Haribo Tagada. He’ll ask students to plug their noses “really tight, so no air gets in,” place the treat on their tongue, and then chew for three seconds. “Really pay attention to the flavor, to the texture,” he says. The treat tastes flat—sweet and white, generic. At four seconds, he’ll instruct you to “free your nose” and take a breath. A candy-bright flood of red strawberry will hit your mouth with such force that you’ll see pink. For the rest of your life, you might never see a tagada without thinking of Kurkdjian. 

For his VR experience Ėden, Kurkdjian developed V-scent, a device that attaches to a traditional VR headset to release timed aromas. Wherever you “look” while wearing the scented VR headset, you’ll grow a new, mysterious plant or tree or fungi, each releasing a unique odor—some ominous and others ethereal—and each, like the flora that they belong to, both strangely familiar yet completely new. You might, unaware, brush up against the IRL gauze curtains that enclose each viewing cabine, and feel as if your garden has reached out into the real world to touch you. That’s the magic of Kurkdjian: he brings the surreal into the real world and makes the real world feel more surreal.

The culmination of the visit is a recreation of Kurkdjian’s office—on the walls, his art; at his desk, paper blotters and glass vials and, intermittently over the four weeks of the exhibition, Kurkdjian himself. On my visit, he was answering emails. During other “work hours,” he will tinker with Variation pour Sophie, a brand-new fragrance being created on site for Calle. A lifelong perfume lover who wears scent everyday, Calle told Kurkdjian that “perfume dresses her just as clothing does, and that she can’t imagine leaving her house without it.” She challenged Kurkdjian to create a new scent that would “synthesize” those that she’s loved the most: Kurkdjian’s own Grand Soir, Guerlain’s Habit Rouge (created by perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain in 1965; updated by perfumer Delphine Jelk in 2024), and Molinard’s Habinita (created by perfumer Henri Bénard). As the formula is updated throughout the month, Kurkdjian will sample the latest version via unlabeled blotters in the back of his “office.”

On opening night, version one of Variation—a seductive warm, smoky amber—was already a hit. Guests were going back again and again for the blotters, tucking them behind an ear or in a lapel. At the opening, I asked Calle for her opinion of this first iteration of Variation pour Sophie, but she replied that I was too impatient, that the perfume wasn’t finished yet, and that she wouldn’t be able to give me her opinion for another four weeks.

When the body shifts with age, how do our rituals shift with it? La Prairie, the luxury skincare line out of Switzerland, has built its formulas around this question.

Dr. Jacqueline Hill, who leads strategic innovation and science, points to the line’s latest innovation, the Pure Gold Revitalizing Essence, as evidence. It targets one key factor behind the changing appearance of skin as it ages: hormonal slowdown. As she notes, estrogen levels decrease from around the age of 30, while “the skin loses its radiance due to the decrease in skin lipids and hydration.” 

Barrier functions weaken, skin becomes less firm, and collagen and elastin stores begin to ebb. It was around these issues, Hill explains, that the brand decided to focus its Pure Gold collection. The new system is designed “to help counteract the decline in skin’s natural functions and resilience, commonly associated with hormonal slowdown,” while also strengthening the barrier and enhancing radiance. Sustainability also sits at the core of the collection, from the absence of microplastics and silicones to the responsibly sourced gold from the Swiss Better Gold Association, which supports thoughtful acquisition rather than large-scale extraction.

The Revitalizing Essence was designed as the first step in this series—a silken preparation that calms irritation while priming the skin to better receive what follows. Its texture is nourishing without being heavy, generous yet quick to absorb (“Still being sufficiently light and quickly absorbed to allow layering of the other products of the collection,” Dr. Hill specifies). Its scent is orchestrated like a complementary bouquet—green leaves, floral notes, and white musk—providing a refresh not only to the skin, but also to the rest of the senses. This is more than a mandatory step before bed or work, it’s a ritual whose impact lingers long after the scent wears off.  

“I try to enjoy the ride,” says artist Kustaa Saksi of the visual auras, brought on by debilitating migraines, that inspire the mesmerizing shapes and psychedelic hues of his tapestries.

Woven on looms at the TextielMuseum’s TextielLab in Tilburg—a former blanket factory turned experimental weaving hub—Saksi’s textiles are dreamscapes of floating threads and dense layers, with luminescent bio-forms that mesmerize and intricate patterns that disorient. His latest piece, Golden Threads, is an abstract ode to the Norse goddess Sif, famed for her golden hair. Saksi created the tapestry—which took six months and more than 180 pounds of thread—in partnership with Oribe as part of its annual artist program, now in its eighth year, which invites creatives to reinterpret Oribe’s visual language for limited-edition holiday packaging. (Past participants include Kenyan photographer Thandiwe Muriu, Japanese digital painter Kohei Kyomori, and American Indigenous clay artist Rowan Harrison.) 

“We consider it a collaboration, not a commission. We learn about the nuances of their world—paper, textures, saturation, technique, endpoints, engineering—everything that the artist incorporates into their work,” says Daniel Kaner, co-founder and president of Oribe. For Kaner, these collaborations carry forward co-founder Oribe Canales’s vision of beauty as art. “Oribe always referred to himself as an artist. Yes, he was a hairdresser, but he considered himself a creator first,” Kaner says. “Oribe [as a brand] has become so much more than just shampoo. It’s become an art project.”

Kaner sends his team to art shows around the world and encourages visits to museums and galleries during work hours. “We create opportunities for people to go out into the art world—we’re not just sitting behind a desk searching artists online,” says Jennifer Smith, vice president of product creation at Oribe. “We became obsessed with Kustaa Saksi’s work. Our team thought he had embodied the mastery of traditional craft with a signature storytelling aesthetic that embraced ideas of nature.” 

Here, Saksi shares his inspirations, his process, and how hair, hallucinations, and history became woven into Oribe’s 2025 holiday collection.

Why did you say yes to Oribe?

There’s such a high level to what they do. The love for craftsmanship and the understanding of quality and texture—there are so many similarities between what we do, that it was easy to say yes.

Your work is known for its hallucinatory jubilance, but also is so grounded in nature. Where do you find inspiration?

I’m really interested in the textures and patterns that we see in our everyday lives — on the street or in a forest. It’s a mishmash of sources of inspiration that come together, and then I convert it to my own visual language at the end…  I’ve suffered from migraines all my life. But the migraine attacks have always been so visual for me, that at one point I started to enjoy it in a way. And, actually, lately, my headaches aren’t so bad anymore, but I still get the visual show. 

What do you see?

It’s always different. It’s never the same. There might be a few continuous elements, but each time it’s a different show. I sometimes try to sketch the images that I see on a paper so I can remember afterwards, because after the attack it might be a couple of days before I can work again.

Should your pieces be touched? I want to curl up in them.

The museums always put signs up saying not to touch, but people still touch them. It’s been almost impossible to prevent it, that drive to touch. The softness of the material, you want to put your hands on it.

Where did your mind go when you first started planning your Oribe work?

My main inspiration was that floating feel of hair—that’s what I wanted to emphasize in this work. I wanted to capture that feeling of movement. So in the piece, most of the yarn is floating free—it’s not flat. You can see the yarn, see how it lifts. The piece is based on a mythology of Sif and her golden hair. She’s the wife of Thor in Norse mythology. The trickster god Loki was so jealous of her hair that he stole it one night. Thor was really angry and forced Loki to weave this amazing wig of golden hair, which was even more beautiful than the original hair of Sif. The story is quite sad, but I wanted to depict it.

That’s the gold we see!

I’ve been using quite a bit of golden yarn in my work. Somehow when I’m mixing materials, natural with metallics, it brings something new out of it. Combining a very natural material with a high-tech material creates something very nice. I have the urge to push the boundaries of weaving every time, and I’m glad that I can work at the TextielLab. There are commercial mills that just all do the same things, but here I can experiment.

What artists do you find inspiring? 

I live right next to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, so I go there quite often to see the works of the Impressionists. I like how they mix colors. I use the same concepts in my work: I don’t actually mix the yarns—rather, the viewer mixes the colors in their head. And also there’s a link to Surrealism. There’s always a surreal approach to my work. I give hints to the viewer, but the viewer needs to do some work.

How do you incorporate innovation—whether a new technique or fiber—into your pieces without having that innovation become the focus of the piece? 

I always try to push the boundaries of weaving, but not go overboard. There’s a challenge there. I think we inspire each other here—the artists and the staff at the TextielMuseum. They might have figured out a new way of weaving or a new material, and I get inspired and use it right away. There’s this fine line between overdoing things and keeping the story alive, which is the most important thing when you are creating. It has to be crystal clear, the message of it.

Shop the Oribe holiday collection with limited-edition packacing by Kustaa Saksi: HERE.

In an age when we can wash our hands with Jean-Claude Ellena soap and blow bubbles scented by Francis Kurkdjian, fine fragrance can be found everywhere. But with over 3,000 new perfumes launching globally each year—and more self-anointed scent experts than ever before (#perfumetok alone has racked up over 7 billion views)—it can be challenging to discern which scents are worth the sniff. To help, CULTURED has enlisted three top fragrance critics, each of whom have earned their loyal audience outside of the algorithm.

For ELLE, The Cut, and Town & Country, New York-based journalist April Long has harvested roses in Turkey and frankincense in Oman, winning 15 Fragrance Foundation edit awards along the way, more than any other writer in the award’s history. Always questioning yet eternally optimistic, bicoastal beauty philosopher Arabelle Sicardi treats perfume as both cultural artifact and personal talisman, exploring our collective, complicated relationship with aesthetics. In Los Angeles, CULTURED contributor Maxwell Williams works both as a journalist and as a perfumer/olfactory artist, a rare blend that gives them deep insight into both the science and culture of fragrance. Here, the three tackle everything from the power of niche perfumery, dupe culture, A.I. noses, and the question at the heart of it all: When is a perfume a work of art, and when is it just another thing to smell? 

Let’s begin at the beginning. What led you to write about perfume? 

Maxwell Williams: I came into writing about fragrance through trying to get away from writing. About 10 years ago, I took a class at the Institute for Art and Olfaction. At first, I was really just dabbling. Then I built a lab in the second bedroom of my apartment, and now I’m a working perfumer. Today, I think of myself more as a perfumer who happens to write, than a writer who writes about perfume.

April Long: Well, Emily, I always credit you with making me the fragrance writer that I became. When you assigned my first fragrance story at ELLE, you said, “I think you will be a good fragrance writer because you are a music writer.” I was like, Really, will I? I set about doing it, and I fell in love with it. I mean, there are countless similarities between the two arts. I went from thinking of fragrance as something not particularly necessary—maybe even obnoxious—to being something that I loved more than any other thing that I could find to write about. Today, I write a perfume column, Good Scents, for The Cut as well as The Pomander, a Substack about fragrance history and the origins of natural ingredients. 

Arabelle Sicardi: I’ve been online for far too long, and I’ve been writing about beauty since my brain was literally forming. I started writing about beauty for Rookie when I was still in high school and college, and I think my fragrance obsession was always part of it. It’s core to who I am. The origin story for House of Beauty, my nonfiction book coming out this fall, was my obsession with Chanel No.5 [Perfumer: Ernest Beaux], specifically. Before the book was sold, I spent two years of my life shaping my entire existence around it—traveling the world to research it, going to Berlin and Paris to find materials and evidence about Coco Chanel firsthand. 

And you’ve gone from writing about beauty culture to building beauty culture.

Sicardi: I impulsively started Perfumed Pages, which is this scent-centered events collective. I love participating in scent culture, and I wanted to do a collective experiment that was about centering the joy and fun and curiosity and play about fragrance—and beauty in general—because there’s not enough opportunity just for this. It’s really about having a chance to be alongside other people who just really love this thing, and you’re rooting for each other. That’s where I want to be in beauty.

Over the past 25 years, the perfume industry has experienced the same changing of the guard as traditional print media. Nimble, digitally-savvy newcomers have chipped away at the centuries-long dominance of the luxury houses. How has the proliferation of niche perfumery and niche journalism changed how you approach your work?  

Long: I came into it right at the moment that things were pivoting to niche. There was a bunch of garbage, the ubiquitous celebrity scents, but then you had Frederic Malle enter the conversation. The biggest change for me has happened in the last five years. Post-pandemic, there’s been a massive shift in the scope of the job, because there’s just so many new fragrances. Fragrance became a touch point for so many people during the pandemic. People were stuck at home worrying about their sense of smell and, then, learned to love fragrance. It became a wellness product and obviously, wellness sells. So now everybody’s got a fragrance, even Hellman’s mayonnaise. I looked up the stat, and 10 years ago, the norm was for something like 400 new fragrance launches a year. Today, it’s over 3,000. You can’t really smell it all.

So how do you smell it all? 

Williams: I have a bit of a different perspective on the glut. There are so many different musicians and bands producing so much music—way more than 3,000 music releases, right? And we don’t think of that as a glut. Rather, we should focus on the niches that we are attracted to. So if you find the kind of perfume that you like, then seek out more in that category. This might feel like a little less of a task than having to smell all the perfumes. Because I’m never going to be able to listen to all the albums that come out this year.

Maxwell, I like your advice. However, April, as a fragrance critic who writes for massive publications, your job is to cover the entire industry for millions of readers. Are you expected to test all 3,000 launches? 

Long: It’s a beautiful thing that the conversation is so robust. There are Reddit threads, Instagram accounts—what used to be isolated is now everywhere. There are infinite opinions, and that’s amazing. But yes, to be a responsible fragrance journalist for a large readership, you still have to smell all 3,000 of those new launches.

Sicardi: Just thinking about that 3,000 makes my nose run. I am of two minds on this, and I can’t really decide if I need to land anywhere. On one hand, I love how accessible fragrance creation has become. There are more and more niche perfumers that did not and could not exist before, because they didn’t have access to the formal education of going to Grasse, going to the Hogwarts of fragrance. Now you can take educational courses and get formal accreditation through so many more places than even just five years ago. So this has made everything so much more interesting. But we also have more dupe culture than ever before. There’s still this pressure to consume. There’s pressure to have a fragrance wardrobe. Finding a way to balance these multiple natures is part of our task as humans. You have to ask yourself, What do you want out of beauty? Because you can have anything you want if you’re conscious of it, and you determine where you stand. Some people will be absolutely inundated and overwhelmed. Other people really relish the infinite opportunity. And for me, I choose to love the overwhelm.

Let’s talk dupe culture. At a recent CULTURED event for Valentino Beauty perfumer Fabrice Pellegrin, I was reminiscing with a fellow Gen X perfume-head about Primo, “If you like Giorgio, you’ll love Primo!” (one of the original dupes). We grew up hearing about perfumes like Giorgio Beverly Hills [Perfumer: Bob Aliano] in movies and on TV, but for both of us, the nearest Giorgio Beverly Hills fragrance counter was a few states away. At our local drugstore, we had Primo. I desperately wanted to see how it compared to the real thing. The first thing I did when I went to my first big city was track down a Giorgio counter. So although I hate dupes, I have a dupe to thank for my lifelong love of perfumery.

Sicardi:  I have such strong feelings about dupes that I wrote an essay about it on my Substack called “Dupe Culture in Beauty is Ruining Everything.“ And by dupe, I mean the ones that are: “This smells like Baccarat Rouge [Perfumer: Francis Kurkdjian].” Yes, dupes make fragrance more accessible. Love that. Ultimately, I would love beauty to be accessible to all people. But not by sacrificing the work of people involved in artistic creation. Your desire for a beauty product does not make you entitled to it. A lot of people assume that because they want something, they should have it—that the people involved in the labor and the resources required to create it are less important than their desire to consume something. I think this is fundamentally a very American entitlement, and one I don’t agree with. Dupes just basically crib someone else’s homework. They don’t further the fragrance industry. 

“Ultimately, I would love beauty to be accessible to all people. But not by sacrificing the work of people involved in artistic creation.”—Arabelle Sicardi

Williams: There’s no copyright in perfume. You can’t copyright the juice. It’s a really difficult legal question that gets asked a lot in the arts. [Elaine] Sturtevant claimed appropriation, but Richard Prince was successfully sued, right? There’s Sherrie Levine. It goes back and forth in art. It often comes up in French courts with perfume, but with every case, it’s determined that a scent can’t be copyrighted. The bottle can, but not the scent. Pia Long from the British Society of Perfumers says that the duping trade isn’t just plagiarism, it’s fraud. They are deceiving consumers about the quality and the safety of the perfume, so they are criminals. They might work out of perfumery labs, but they are crooks in lab coats. They’re making an exact replica of a Picasso, saying, “You can hang this on your wall and say it’s a Picasso, and we’ll charge you just half of the price of a real Picasso.”

When it comes to perfume, people often celebrate the dupes they’ve “discovered.” They’re proud to hang a forgery up on their wall. 

Williams: Perfume is expensive, and these dupes are cheaper alternatives. They want that fake Picasso. But I’m not trying to be elitist about this. I do think that we should hold space for people who don’t have a lot of money to spend on perfumes. The perfumers behind SAMAR [Na-Moya Lawrence and Debbie Lin], this amazing, small artisan brand in LA, have been thinking of ways to bring people in, to make perfume not such an overwhelmingly expensive thing, so they’ve started offering smaller bottles for purchase.  

Sicardi: Throughout history, perfume has always been classist. It was made for royals. All the original perfumers, they were nepo babies. They had royal decrees to be doing perfume art for actual royals. It was a way to create distinction between them and the peons. So of course I’m glad that perfume is more accessible now, and that it doesn’t fundamentally mean that you’re better than anyone else. With a lot of the newer generation of perfume houses, such as SAMAR—it’s not a coincidence that SAMAR is owned by people of color and they’re queer—their understanding of community and politics and beauty are so intertwined. They want to be transparent, they want access, and they want all of the things that are not often afforded to people of color or to queer people, especially in the beauty space. So what they’re doing is very different, because of the people that they are. 

When we think about dupes and access, I wish that more people had a better understanding of how hard it is to create a perfume. For perfume, all of the ingredients take so much time and effort, natural or synthetic. Synthetic ingredients can take 40-plus steps to get right. And for naturals—for something like palo santo, you have to find a dead tree. It has to be a female, dead, palo santo tree. You have to have the license to harvest it. It has to be dead a certain amount of time—at least three years—before you can even harvest it. And that’s just one ingredient in a fragrance. 

Long: You can be inspired by Picasso, and make something that might be Picasso-esque, but it should still be a work of art in its own right, not just a copy. The fundamental thing that I would love more people to understand: works of art are precious things. And they shouldn’t be duplicated so casually. I’m all for democratization of fragrance, but it does devalue the original. The original loses something of its luster as it’s photocopied down the line. 

Do you think part of the disconnect is that many view perfume as just another everyday consumable, and not as a form of art? 

Sicardi: That’s a juicy question. This has so much to do with the Industrial Era, and also the fact that social spaces have been sanitized in terms of fragrance. If something is smelly, people get suspicious. There’s a lot of weight to the terms smell [and] smelly. It’s preferred that people in public don’t really have a smell, and if they do wear a fragrance, there’s a certain level of politeness. They shouldn’t smell too much. That’s why I like the work of Dr. Ally Louks on olfactory ethics. People really respond to her because we are starting to understand that smell culture is so part of culture at-large, and [it’s] also so politicized. 

Williams: When the photograph was first invented in the 19th century, it was thought of as this kind of novelty. It took a long time until it was brought into contemporary art spaces. A lot of people credit John Baldessari as the turning point when photography started being considered in the fine arts space. Now that we’re seeing perfume being used in contemporary art with exhibitions that are specifically using scent as a medium, perfume as a fine art is coming more into focus. There are people that are out there, like Maki Ueda and Sissel Tolaas, who are extremely rigorous, contemporary artists using scent. Scent is just part of our palette as artists. There’s even an award at the Institute for Art and Olfaction that’s given out to artists that work with scent in their art. 

“Scent is just part of our palette as artists.”—Maxwell Williams

Long: The disconnect throughout history has been that you don’t know the name of the perfumer. It’s an anonymous art. So people don’t immediately connect to the idea that this perfume was made by a human being, and it’s so conflated with commerce. To draw on the parallel to photography: not every fragrance is a work of art. Not every photograph is a work of art. It’s about intent. And it’s about skill.

Williams: Over the past 5 to 10 years, people have started to have an interest in the perfumers behind a scent. You can go on Fragrantica, see a perfumer and a list of all of their perfumes, and I think that’s really cool, because there are a lot of people out there who have ridiculously cool resumes—like [Christophe] Laudamiel made Abercrombie’s Fierce but has also made really artistic perfumes for small houses. And I think Fierce is very artistic in and of itself. 

Sicardi: Oh yeah, I love Fierce. 

I agree, both on Fierce and the importance of the perfumer. Yet, if you ask an A.I. perfume house, they might say that we don’t need perfumers at all anymore. 

Williams: I’m really, really, really distrustful of A.I. in fragrance. In anything. For instance, I do want to call out Osmo. They’re claiming to use A.I. to create new molecular structures. I don’t think that’s good. It’s just an attempt to claim ownership over all the new molecules. Look at how the film industry has approached A.I., where the unions push for protections to get the studios to say, “We’re not going to use A.I. for this or that reason.” Perfumers aren’t unionized. I’m also scared it’s going to kill off artisan perfumery because A.I. can now dupe things even faster. A.I. makes it easier for more people to make a reconstruction of an entire perfume.

Sicardi: I’m part of the A.I. working group for freelancers at the National Writers Union, so I’m inundated with all of the news about how A.I. is taking creative jobs in every single industry, and I regularly get emails from people who have lost their jobs because of A.I. I agree with Maxwell that this is going to fundamentally hurt independent and small perfumers, because the conglomerates have already been using all of the technology possible to privatize and patent specific molecules and accords for a really long time. So this A.I. definitely feels like an intellectual property grab. It promises ease of access, but at the risk of what? 

Williams: In the Seth Rogen TV show The Studio, they spend a whole episode worrying about a movie being racist. And, at the end of it, they’re still racist, but they leak that they’ve used A.I. And the show ends with Ice Cube and the whole crowd at Comic-Con chanting “Fuck A.I.!” And I just want to say “Fuck A.I.” 

SHOP THEIR PICKS

Below, our panel of fragrance critics speak to the scents that they adore.

April Long

Heretic Flower Porn ($195) by perfumer Douglas Little

“I have been through several bottles of this stuff. It’s like wearing the back room of a flower shop: super-green crushed leaves and snapped stems (geranium, violet leaf and olibanum) mingled with orange blossom and rose.”

Kindred Black The Fall of the Immortal Perfume Oil ($365) by perfumers Alice Kindred Wells and Jennifer Black Francis

“Every Kindred Black essence is so exquisite and special. The bottles are gorgeous magic, and many of the florals are sourced from a genius perfumer/enfleurage expert based in Cherry Valley, New York, where my mom lives. My forever favorite is the seasonal wildflower fragrance that I douse myself with all summer, but The Fall of the Immortal, which is based on 19th century Florida Water, is one I dab on all year like a tonic.”

Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle Heaven Can Wait ($348.50) by perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena

“I wear this Jean-Claude Ellena masterpiece incessantly throughout winter. It smells like a vintage French carnation fragrance, with spicy clove and hazy orris, then soft ambrette and vetiver in the drydown.”

Arabelle Sicardi

ICONOFLY Personne Parfume de l’Odyssée ($210) by perfumer Alexandre Helwani

“This is a cult-favorite for perfume-heads, and for good reason. As a writer of course I am tickled by fragrances inspired by literature, and I have a firm, personal ranking of Odyssey translations. The perfume itself is its own journey through The Odyssey‘s smell landscape and when you smell it, you are plunged into the journey with a splash. The wild laurel, rosemary, roses, shipwreck, hemp, and pear! My first sniff made me gasp. And my second. And, and, and…”

Meo Fuscini Odor 93 ($325) by perfumer Giuseppe Imprezzabile

“If I could have any one single brand’s entire oeuvre, it would be Meo’s. Something about his olfactory sensibility just fits me like the perfect leather jacket, you know what I mean? Odor 93 is my current favorite and it’s a flowery, spicy, green. It opens like fog and you walk into it like you’re chasing your own Persephone into hell. It’s a dark, lush dream, like all my favorite stories are, so no surprise that I love it. Smell while you’re listening to the band it’s inspired by: Current 93.”

Jaeger-LeCoultre The Timeless Stories (not available for sale) by perfumer Nicolas Bonneville

“Jaeger gave me a bottle of this when I was mooning over the movements in their latest watches; I didn’t even know they commissioned fragrance before this, but I guess anything they do, they do marvelously. Violet leaves, orris, and leather in a perfectly balanced composition. I come back to it on my wrists throughout the day and learn it a little differently each time.”

Maxwell Williams

D.grayi Red Jasmine Rice ($100) by perfumer James Nguyen

“James from d.grayi is a mad perfumer. He makes all these tinctures and then builds his perfumes with them. The Jasmine Rice perfume—the red rice version—is so, so good. He gave me a bottle, and my girlfriend ended up buying a bottle of her own. Magical.”

SAMAR Grove is in the Heart ($55) by perfumers Na-Moya Lawrence and Debbie Lin

“SAMAR are so cool. Grove is in the Heart is that long-lasting citrus scent of your dreams. Juicy and jubilant. Funky and fresh.”

Perfumer H Saddle ($205) by perfumer Lyn Harris

“The rumors are true: I’m a horse girl. I love this take on playing horsey so much. The stable, the hay, the leather, the must, the fur, the gallop through the fields—it’s all there. Hermès Galop [Perfumer: Christine Nagel] used to fulfill my horse girl dreams, but Saddle is my new go-to.”

Scent is never inert: “Perfume is always in dialogue with not only the skin but the air,” Régime des Fleurs founder and artistic director Alia Raza says, noting that temperature, humidity, and altitude always chime in to veer the conversation to a new, site-specific direction. “Humidity gives fragrance more of an aura, letting lush and heavy notes bloom and linger. High altitude strips the air, making a fragrance feel more sheer and ephemeral.” When we asked four top fragrance critics to share the best scents for two very different climates, it was no surprise that, unprompted, two of Raza’s creations made the list. Below, find their recommendations—exclusively curated for CULTURED—for fragrances that shine in some of the States’ most sought-after destinations.

Scents of Place: Hamptons

These luminous, high-impact scents sparkle during long nights Out East. 

Steven Gavrielatos, fragrance expert and creative director

Parfums de Luxe Illúsio ($175) by perfumer Daniel René

“With its photorealistic orange blossom, serene jasmine, and sparkling pear notes, [it’s] the perfect fragrance to wear on a long night in the Hamptons.”

SHOP FROM: Valencia Perfumes

Steven Gontarski, artist, musician, and storyteller

Régime des Fleurs Jade Vines ($275) by perfumer Alia Raza

“[This] presents a tuberose and gardenia blend with snappy green stalks. The humid air preserves the scent emanating from gardens, as the sun retreats and the day comes to an end.”

SHOP FROM: Assembly New York, Ministry of Scent, Moda Operandi

Paula Gröger, founder, Revive World 

Diptyque Eau Capitale ($255) by perfumer Olivier Pescheux

“A modern rose chypre with bergamot, pink pepper, and patchouli, [it] brings a sparkling, vibrant elegance that perfectly mirrors the energy of a Hamptons night. You can’t go wrong with this one.”

SHOP FROM: Bluemercury, FWRD, Bloomingdale’s

Roja Parfums Manhattan ($403.39) by perfumer Roja Dove

“It’s a sophisticated amber with warm spices, soft woods, and subtle sweetness that not only holds its own in humidity but also transitions effortlessly from a [busy] day into a late evening out.”

SHOP FROM: Bergdorf Goodman, Scent Split, Fan Di Perfume

Vilhelm Parfumerie Chimilka ($350) by perfumer Jérôme Epinette

 “White peach, cardamom, osmanthus, and leather: confusing combo, maybe, but the result is a beautifully juicy yet laconic scent that’s sophisticated and very unserious! A bit of a chameleon—it’s juicy and fruity, milky and comforting, and also earthy and dark. But it always smells exciting and energizing to me. It has that kind of energy to it that precedes a night out, like anything could happen.” 

SHOP FROM: Saks Fifth Avenue, Twisted Lily, Smallflower

Sable Yong, host of Smell Ya Later; author of Die Hot with A Vengeance

Mancera Instant Crush ($200) by perfumer Pierre Montale

“One of those elusively addictive scents that you can’t quite put your finger on what you’re smelling, but it’s transparently addictive. I call that the saffron effect, as saffron is one of my favorite perfume notes for its chameleon-like quality to add glassy roundness and ozonic sweetness to a scent. I can otherwise broadly categorize it as a musky, ambery floral—it has a delicate floral aura around a warm, creamy center. Is it gourmand? Is it a floral? Is it a spice? Sure, all three! But the balance is so sheer and veiled that it wears lightly despite being a complex profile.”

SHOP FROM: Bloomingdale’s, Twisted Lily, Saks Fifth Avenue

Matière Première French Flower ($320) by perfumer Aurélien Guichard

“My favorite tuberose perfume for giving you exactly what you expect in the most deluxe and decadent scent profile. French tuberose is the sweetest and most nectary kind (so I’ve been told), it has a dessert-like quality that makes me think of macarons or a light crème fraiche if it were made with tuberose. But there is also ginger, green pear, and tea leaf to give it a crisp and vegetal edge, so it’s not just a sweet blob. Honestly, there is so much romantic tension in this perfume!”

SHOP FROM: Liberty US, Fragrancenet, Jomashop

Courrèges La Fille de l’Air ($175.49) by perfumer Fabrice Pellegrin

“This is an airy neroli that reads very fresh in a ’90s way, to me. It’s sweet and slightly tart, like a nectar, with some sort of soft and musky pepper balancing it out, just for texture. It feels very preppy-hot-girl to me.”

SHOP FROM: Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, efragrance

Scents of Place: Aspen

Late nights, low humidity, high elevation: these fragrances are built for an array of extremes.

Paula Gröger, founder, Revive World 

Chanel Les Exclusifs de Chanel Sycomore by perfumer Jacques Polge

“One of the most elegant and understatedly classy perfumes out there. Its cool, dry vetiver and soft smoky cedar evoke the crisp air and natural refinement of alpine landscapes. In high altitudes where scents evaporate quickly, Sycamore’s woodiness lingers just enough without overpowering.” 

SHOP FROM: Modesens, Harrods, Editorialist

Steven Gavrielatos, fragrance expert & creative director

Valentino Private Talk ($340) by perfumer Nicholas Bonneville

“A sophisticated blend of coffee, tuberose, cedar wood, and sandalwood, [it] is long lasting enough to endure the high-altitude temperatures of Aspen, but it also conveys the earthy atmosphere to align with outdoor adventures.” 

SHOP FROM: Sephora, Neiman Marcus, Modesens

Steven Gontarski, artist, musician, and storyteller

Tenebrae 26 by L’Artisan Parfumeur ($314) by perfumer Daphné Bugey

“It smells like the shadow of pine trees in cold air stretched across damp earth. The air is thin and carries a subtle sweetness.”

SHOP FROM: Smallflower, Liberty US, 24S

Sable Yong, host of Smell Ya Later; author of Die Hot with A Vengeance

Arquiste A Grove By The Sea ($205) by perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux

“Salt, mineral, rosemary, and wet stones. It smells like you’re getting closer to the ocean while taking a slight detour off the cobblestone path around a Mediterranean forest.”

SHOP FROM: Derm Store, Scentbird, Smallflower

Elorea Hanok ($131.75) by perfumer Linda Song

“This smells like a hinoki wood cabin in a pine forest, maybe like Twilight if it was re-filmed in a South Korean forest.”

SHOP FROM: Elorea

Hawthorne Green Cypress ($60) by perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux

“Very green, very crisp, and with a resinous sweetness that veers the whole thing slightly ‘sport scent,’ but with a really lovely musky dry-down that declaws any associations with toxic masculinity colognes of the aughts.”

SHOP FROM: Hawthorne

Régimes Des Fleurs Falling Trees ($275) by perfumer Alia Raza

“This is a soft, sweet wood scent—I imagine it like how all the carved cedar furniture smells in a luxury wellness retreat.”

SHOP FROM: Smallflower, Ministry of Scent, Moda Operandi

“How do you feel?” The question—posed again and again by the narrator of Joel Quayson’s short film How Do You Feel?—echoes as Quayson, a student at the Hague’s Royal Academy of Art, dresses and undresses in front of the camera. He pulls a simple white shirt over his head, its open collar revealing a silver cross. How do you feel? He tugs on a fuzzy pink balaclava—a frame for sad eyes bedazzled with fuchsia glitter and shimmering crystals. How do you feel? He removes the shirt. He wipes away the makeup. How do you feel?

“Compact. Raw. Real. It questions you. You question him. The concept is simple but pure,” says Peter Philips, creative and image director for Dior Makeup. He and fellow jurors—including partner institution Luma Arles’s founder Maja Hoffmann and artists from around the globe—awarded Quayson the 2025 Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents at the annual Rencontres d’Arles photo festival. “There’s such a heaviness behind it: He wants his parents to see who he is, but he can’t show them,” adds photographer and jury chair Yuriko Takagi. “After I watched it, I couldn’t stop thinking of it. You wonder how he feels—and by the end, you return to questioning how you feel. How do I feel?”

On the eve of his award ceremony in July, Quayson shared just that with CULTURED’s beauty editor.

Describe the feel of your work in three words.

Vulnerability. Acceptance. Discovery.

What draws your focus to the concept of multiple selves?

It’s something that I have struggled with, the different sides of me. The video shows one part of me: how I’m seen by people who know my orientation, [how] I like to go out and be around my friends. Dressing up. Just being open and expressive. And the other part is about my culture, my religion, and my family—how they see me.

Both sides are very different, but it is still one person. I’m getting ready for a party and putting on things and having fun with it. After the party, when I go back home, I have to take everything off, so that they won’t see. Otherwise, they would question why I dress like this. They would ask, “Are you this? Or are you this?” This struggle has gone on and on and on for so long.

Has your family seen your work?

No, I’ve told them about it, that my work was selected and that I won. They wanted to see it, and I want to show it to them, but I don’t know how to. I don’t know how they will react to it. They don’t know I’m queer.

What are your essential ingredients when shooting photography or a film?

I admire people. I love to look at people on the street, at school, or any place—see how they dress and how they behave. Where else do you turn for inspiration? Movies, TV, definitely music. Charli XCX really inspires me. For photographers: Peter Lindbergh, Tyler Mitchell, Ryan McGinley, Petra Collins.

Petra’s really the one, along with Peter Lindbergh, who made me want to start doing photography. Her work is so vulnerable and so soft and beautiful. Whenever I see her work, I go, How does she do this? I check on YouTube to see behind the scenes but still can’t figure it out. With makeup, I’m inspired by the people around me: drag queens, ballroom artists, photographers. On social media, [it’s] the people doing extraordinary things with makeup, and Euphoria. It was so simple, but so beautiful.

You don’t have to be a tetrachromat to recognize a shade created by Gregoris Pyrpylis. As the creative director of Hermès Beauty, the Greece-born, Paris-based makeup artist works in microtones and glimmers, concocting jamais vu versions of a classic brick-red lip or smoked-out gray shadow. For his latest collection—17 sheer, silk-inspired lipsticks—he plays with the idea of color, suspending pigments in a texture as airy as organza, laced with a barely-there shimmer— just enough to catch the light and flatter absolutely everyone. “That was my goal!” Pyrpylis says. “You can close your eyes, pick any color, and it will still look beautiful.”

How much silk did you surround yourself with when designing this lipstick collection?

You know when you wear a silk scarf around your neck, and it creates this radiance on the skin? I’ve always thought that lipstick has this same power. Even before Hermès, I wore silk scarves—the small ones that fit in a suit pocket. They bring such beautiful light to the face. When I’m tired, I wear one. I wanted the lipstick to feel like that. In the ’90s, my mom would pick me up from school wearing a long silk scarf. She would hold my hand as we walked, and the scarf would float in front of my face. I would look at the world through it.

For the lipstick, I borrowed this transparency from chiffon, shine from silk lamé, the caressing feel of tulle. It’s a melting pot of my favorite elements. The memory of sunlight shining on the Aegean sea inspired the soft shimmer of some of these shades.

Can you tell us more about how memory influences your work?

I grew up in a place where beauty comes through light, through the transition of the seasons. Everything transforms while keeping its essence. I fall in love with the sparkles on the sea in summer, and I also find beauty in the winter sea, when it’s rougher and the blue is a different hue. It’s about having open eyes, an open mind, and observing. I think that’s where I fit in with the house of Hermès. We don’t try to transform with makeup—we try to express and celebrate what’s already there.

You mentioned that you think Rothko would have made a great makeup artist. Are there other artists who influence your use of color?

Rothko’s colors are so singular. When you stand in front of one of his paintings, you get a vibration from the color. It’s almost spiritual. Josef Albers was also a great influence—he taught me how a specific color can interact with a specific complexion. Helen Frankenthaler’s eye for the transparency and evolution of color inspires me too. For this particular collection, there’s a beautiful painting by Matisse, L’Atelier Rouge. I’ve always loved this specific shade of red. Yesterday I was at MoMA, and there it was.

Was there a particular moment growing up when you decided to become a makeup artist?

I remember it exactly. One day at university, my best friend wanted to go out. She had a small makeup bag—three or four products—and I did her makeup. She had a kind of caramel terra-cotta lipstick, and I used it for her lips, cheeks, and eyes, and added a bit of mascara. It was natural, but she looked in the mirror and felt in sync with herself. I’ve seen that moment with other women—models, actresses, even my mom. She’s always minimal with makeup, but the moment she applies it, there’s a transformation. The inner self and the outer self snap into alignment.

In a puff of fragrance, hand-embroidery, and tulle, artist Judy Chicago has reimagined Miss Dior. The initiative, which follows Chicago’s striking installation for the maison’s Spring/Summer 2020 Haute Couture show and a series of limited-edition Lady Dior purses, pays tribute not to the man whose name tends to prick ears and draw the spotlight, but to the house’s enduring muse: Catherine Dior.

The Miss Dior x Judy Chicago perfume trunk—of which only 25 have been made—is the third in a series of super-rare, artist-designed boxes created for Dior perfumes using the atelier’s unique finesse. Inspired by Chicago’s vibrant designs, Dior Perfume Creation Director Francis Kurkdjian punched up the original eau with bright citrus for an only-found-here version of Miss Dior. The handcrafted trunk features a poly-chromatic portrait of Catherine, floral motifs, and bright shades of pink and blue adapted from The Dinner Party—Chicago’s ground-breaking 1970s tribute to women’s overlooked role in history. Inside, red velvet contrasts with vivid florals.

Christian’s sister was a decorated member of the French Resistance and a concentration camp survivor, whose eclipsed reputation strikes a familiar chord for Chicago, who has herself fought to make space for female voices in the art world and historical record. Here, the 85-year-old artist plucks the threads that tie her and Catherine’s work together.

How did you reinterpret Catherine Dior’s legacy for a new audience?

Catherine Dior is a heroine in the long line of women whose contributions have been unacknowledged and lost to history. This situation is something that I have worked to redress since I created The Dinner Party, 1974–79. Without Catherine’s decades of work to preserve Christian’s legacy, the House of Dior would not be what it is today.

How did craft shape the visual language of this tribute?

The perfume bottle is encircled by a hand-embroidered bow, which conveys Catherine’s courageous attitude towards life after her imprisonment. In contrast to many Holocaust survivors who were deeply embittered by their experiences, Catherine’s motto became “Aime la vie”—“Love life.” When I was working on The Dinner Party, I realized that needle work is—like many creative activities associated with women—undervalued, something I wanted to challenge by demonstrating that thread could be like a brushstroke.

Walk us through the experience of folding your artistic practice into the story of this collection.

When I began collaborating with Dior, I wondered if it would be possible to introduce personal meaning into the world of fashion. This was the task I set for myself on all my projects with them, one that I hope I have achieved through the Catherine Dior trunk.

How would you interpret Catherine Dior’s credo of “Aime la vie” today?

It embodies an attitude towards life that I have also tried to embrace, also expressed in the motto “Choose Life,” which is a Jewish mandate (both my husband Donald and I are Jewish). Even in the darkest of times, one must choose hope, something that seems more important now at this moment in history than ever before.

When Saul Bellow wrote that life is a series of “unexpected intrusions of beauty,” he wasn’t talking about Mrs. Meyer’s Snowdrop dish soap or Marvis minty toothpaste. But the sentiment still holds: According to many of the world’s top perfumers, inspiration is regularly derived from the humblest of places. Here, a few of our favorite noses share the everyday scents that alight their senses, and keep them feeling cozy, energized, and refreshed.

Ben Esposito, Perfumer and Founder, House of Mammoth

“I love what Mrs. Meyer’s has done with their scenting, showcasing a wide range of smells not typically used in cleaning products. I hoard their Iowa Pine over the holidays (the best Christmas tree scent) and I’m clinging to my last few ounces of Snowdrop, a fresh floral and a touch fruity, pure ’90s nostalgia. I’ll probably grab Dandelion or the classic Basil next for the warmer weather. Tip: a lot of the scent names are more vibes than realism, so don’t just go by the name.”

SHOP NOW: Mrs. Meyer’s (price varies)
SHOP SIMILAR: The Laundress surface cleaner ($16), Blueland multi-surface cleaner starter set ($21), and Diptyque la droguerie multi-surfce cleaner with vinegar ($48)

Rodrigo Flores-Roux, Perfumer, Givaudan

“For me, it’s an imprinted scent of a product I love, and that I use everyday: Maja de Myrurgia soap, redolent of lavender, geranium, cloves, vetiver and coumarin… a typical fougère! It’s rumored that historically, the actual soap paste is prepared with the addition of vetiver essence in it. It’s of Spanish origin and dates from the 1930s, but it’s still produced in Mexico.”

SHOP NOW: Maja de Myrurgia ($11.35)
SHOP SIMILAR: Compagne de Provence authentic Marseille cube soap ($13.50), Jo Malone lime basil and mandarine soap ($35), and Flamingo Estate manuka soap brick ($58.00)

Alexis Grugeon, Perfumer, Givaudan 

“The Aesop Aromatique Reverence hand soap, which contains lots of vetiver (one of my favorite ingredients) and is quite unexpected for a hand wash. Along with the vetiver, I love the freshness coming from the citruses: bergamot, grapefruit, and bitter orange. Those notes give me a smile and a boost of energy every time I wash my hands. It is the perfect combo of efficiency, pleasure, and luxury.

The Tokyo Candle by Diptyque is another. It’s a limited edition to the Tokyo store, but I am obsessed with this scent of incense, cypress, pepper, and clean, aldehydic freshness. It reminds me of the traditional Papier d’Armenie but brings more facets to it, similar to the smell of the temples in Japan. It brings me peace and calm every night; it’s also an amazing air cleanser after cooking.”

SHOP NOW: Aesop Aromatique Reverence hand soap ($46) and Diptyque Tokyo – classic candle ($86)
SHOP SIMILAR: Diptyque l’papier candle ($74), Dior Eden-Roc candle ($100), and Trudon Versailles classic scented candle ($260)

Mathilde Laurent, Perfumer, Cartier

“A sip of hot tea. A true perfume to swallow and contemplate sensorially. [Laurent prefers a custom-blended oolong green tea created by nunshen exclusively for Cartier.]”

SHOP NOW:  nunshen green passion bio ($16.29)
SHOP SIMILAR: Harney & Sons ali son oolong ($35), Rishi green tea mint ($49.50), and Palais De Thés long jing pre-qingming ($55)

Pia Long, Head Perfumer and Director, Olfiction Limited

“The first thing I do with a book is sniff. I bury my face between the pages and huff books—always have done. It is the most comforting, grounding, soothing smell I know. Of course, the variety is huge. Old books eked out from tall piles with questionable structural integrity smell sweet, powdery, dusty, a little like vanilla, and some may have a hint of Miss Havisham’s decaying dresser. New books smell of fresh printing and ink. There are specific comic books from my Finnish childhood that I wish I could bottle the smell of. Ever since I started creating fragrances, I have been searching for a magic way to capture the pure joy that books bring to me. Some sandalwood and iris qualities have a papery aroma, and vetiver has been used as an ink additive, so these materials can evoke part of the experience.”

SHOP NOW: Thrift Books
SHOP SIMILAR: Barnes and Noble, Taschen, and Assouline

Luca Maffei, Perfumer and CEO, Atelier Fragranze Milano

“Every choice we make in our daily rituals reflects who we are. For me, even something as simple as brushing my teeth is an experience that deserves attention. That’s why I’ve chosen Marvis Aquatic Mint. The flavor is crisp, invigorating, and perfectly balanced, with that touch of freshness that wakes up the senses without overwhelming them. What draws me in, beyond the performance, is the design. That iconic metallic tube, the bold lettering, the vintage-meets-modern aesthetic—there’s something incredibly satisfying about using a product that speaks the language of beauty and function so fluently.

Moving into my new home in the heart of Milan, I wanted to create a space that felt entirely mine—a place of calm, privacy, and quiet elegance. For me, scent is at the core of that feeling. That’s why I’ve chosen Nuncas Zagara Pavimenti Profumati for something as simple, and yet essential, as cleaning my floors. That burst of citrus blossom, fresh and luminous, gently fills the space without being overpowering. When I walk through the door and breathe in that familiar, floral note, I feel at peace. I feel at home.”

SHOP NOW: Marvis Aquatic Mint ($10.50) and Nuncas Zagara Pavimenti Profumati ($7.44)
SHOP SIMILAR: Aesop toothpaste ($19), Selahatin amorist whitening toothpaste ($19), and Homecourt neroli leaf surface cleanser ($25)

Adriana Medina, Perfumer, Givaudan

“For me, it is the imprinting smell of Fabuloso. It reminds me of my mom cleaning on Saturdays and the smell of lavender all over the house, listening to all her Spanish ballads and Salsa songs in the morning. I love that smell!”

SHOP NOW: Fabuloso ($9.89)
SHOP SIMILAR: L’Avant Collective mulit-purpose surface cleaner ($14), Flamingo Estate roma heirloom tomato surface cleanser ($28), and Primally Pure warm citrus spice home collection ($120)

Erwan Raguenes, Perfumer, dsm-firmenich

Mrs. Meyer’s Pet Odor Eliminator in Coconut Leaf is my favorite scent because it strikes the perfect balance between freshness and comfort. The watery, dewy green leafy notes instantly make the space feel clean and airy, like opening windows on a spring morning. Then it softens into a creamy, musky coconut that feels unexpectedly cozy and cocooning.”

SHOP NOW: Mrs. Meyer’s Pet Odor Eliminator in Coconut Leaf  ($12.98)
SHOP SIMILAR: Pura juicy acai ($15.99), Clean Coats deodorizing conditioning spray ($19.61), and Santa Maria Novella rose scented spray for pets ($20)

Dana Schmitt, Perfumer, Givaudan

“I love the smell of Dove bar soap! Its clean fragrance is so beautiful, and I admire the work of the perfumer who did it. Every time I use it, the smell puts a smile on my face. I have never gotten tired of it, even after so many years. I hope to one day have a product like this on the market—something that people connect with and imprints on them and their families.”

SHOP NOW: Dove beauty bar soap for women ($1.50)
SHOP SIMILAR: Cerave foaming cleaning bar ($8.79), Drunk Elephant peekee bar ($28), Soft Services green banana buffing bar ($30)

Berenice Watteau, Perfumer, dsm-firmenich

“The scent of a fireplace holds one of my dearest childhood memories. It takes me straight back to our cozy living room in France, to chilly Sunday afternoons wrapped in warmth, surrounded by family. We’d talk for hours, play games, laugh, and sometimes roast chestnuts or caramelize bananas over the open fire—the whole room filled with enveloping, smoky comfort. Those moments were simple, but filled with so much joy. That smell, for me, is the essence of warmth and nostalgia. It’s a note I often return to when creating fragrance—familiar, grounding, and deeply emotional. I may not have a fireplace in my New York apartment, but there’s always a Feu de Bois candle from Diptyque burning—it brings a little piece of home with me, wherever I am.”

SHOP NOW: AllModern howland round fire pit ($93) and Diptyque feu de bois classic candle ($76)
SHOP SIMILAR: Burberry ivy and sandalwood candle ($280), Frontgate classic copper fire pit ($599.25), and Nest Indian jasmine decorative luxury candle ($225)