Miuccia Prada and her trusted perfumer Daniela Andrier are flipping the fragrance industry’s well-rehearsed script with a new collection that celebrates the spirit of free association. Rather than familiar flower names or signature numbers that can dictate how we perceive perfume, the ten unisex eaux in Prada’s new Olfactories range are named for pop songs and movies of decades past, selected as triggers for the imagination. Some—like the Motown hit “Heat Wave” or the New Wave single “Tainted Love”—come with immediate, emotion-conjuring recognition; while others, like “Nue au Soleil,” the title of a forgotten (to most of us) Brigitte Bardot hit from 1970, may take a little more detective work. What exactly you’re smelling may, too.
Andrier is deliberately evasive about what notes are included in each watercolor-hued offering as a means of leaving that decision up to the wearer. “The most beautiful idea in this age of overinformation is that [fragrance] should be left to everyone’s personal description,” she deadpans. “It smells like what you find it smells like.”
Still, you wouldn’t be wrong in picking up a whiff of incense alongside that iris in Purple Rain. The lipstick note in Tainted Love is also hard to miss, as is a twist of orange blossom lurking in the exotic and earthy Nue au Soleil. Coordinating graphic silk pouches pulled from the Prada archive provide another tactile clue to each perfume puzzle, an evasiveness that pays off in the bottles’ ability to transcend a mere spritz behind the ear. Instead, they land somewhere more ineffable where personal memory resides. “That makes [them] meaningful,” Andrier elaborates. “Not just another trend.”
The Prada Olfactories fragrances are currently available at select Prada boutiques, $300 each.
The post Why Prada’s New Perfume Collection Is a Pop Culture Fanatic’s Dream appeared first on Vogue.
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