“A little love goes a long way.” That’s the fitting tagline for Une Amourette, Roland Mouret’s first fragrance, which he created in partnership with French perfume house Etat Libre d’Orange to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his fashion line. “Une Amourette can be with anything—you can have une amourette with a wine and you fall in love with it or your best friend,” explains Mouret. “It’s between a crush and a fling. It lasts a moment of your life and you never forget it. The smell of someone on your skin lasts the time of the smell, but you never forget that smell in your mind and I really wanted to have something to capture that.” The scent is just as sultry and sophisticated as his clothing. Mouret emphasizes that the perfume isn’t unisex, but designed so that men can wear it as well. The blend of neroli essence, cardamom, pink peppercorn, patchouli oil and vanilla create a deep, sweet yet spicy potion. Mouret tells us all about his first perfume.
Why did you decide to launch a fragrance now? I’ve known Etienne (de Swardt, the creative director of Etat Libre d’Orange) for 10 years. We were having a glass of red wine like French people do, and I said I’m 20 years in my career and he says, ‘why don’t we do a perfume to celebrate it?’ I think it’s amazing to be so organic and emotional on a project because the perfume world is quite a massive business and it’s something that as a fashion designer you have to approach as a moneymaker. Etienne was the opposite—he said just be emotional, give yourself to the project, be open to the situation and there was no blueprint of expectations. Twenty years ago I started in my kitchen not knowing how to make clothes, not knowing anything about the kind of journey I would have in fashion, it was amazing that 20 years later with the perfume it was the same position. I didn’t know anything at all about smell, but one thing I know about is skin, because my work is around skin. I understand contact of skin, I understand touching skin, because as a son of a butcher, I know the balance between the muscle, the bones and the fat. I take it as a whole, and when two skin touch, that was the amazing point.
How involved were you with development of fragrance? I am a control freak. I am a Virgo. That’s the beauty of Etat Libre d’Orange. That was not at all what Etienne wanted. The other was to have a female as a nose—I didn’t want to have a guy—because I think that by not being trained to be a perfumer, for me working with a woman is my contradiction which obliges me all the time to analyze my decision. When I met Daniela (Andrier, the perfumer) I said I don’t want to work with a paper tester. Can we work with your skin and my skin for everything? And the fact that she is a woman and I am a guy and she is a nose and I’m a fashion designer, that was a good amount of character in the room. We started to really work in a weird memory, smell, male-female relationship. When you talk about smell you have an image coming into your brain. We talked about ingredients I love and my childhood living in Lourdes, which is a religious city. We lived near the factory that produced all the candles for the church, so the smell of the wax and incense was there. On Easter Sunday when they (made a traditional) pastry, when you came out of church straight away there was that smell of orange blossom in the village. I know myself and my contradiction and I even wanted to put a smell I hate in the perfume. I hate patchouli because in the 70s all the girls would come in wearing the worst patchouli to school. When she asked me what are the smells you remember, patchouli was one of them that in my mind was like, I hate it, but it should be part of it because I understand that when you love it you hate it.
As a fashion designer, how did you put the aesthetic of your designs into a bottle? I think everybody does it their own way. For me, yes, I was going to talk about sexuality, but I was not going to talk about sexuality that sells sex. I didn’t want that kind of the naked young thing trying to sell an erotic scent. I wanted to sell a more mature, emotional attitude of sexuality. I wanted to sell sexuality to people who have sex, who have the best sex of their life with their partner. I want to sell to people who are so happy in their sexuality and they understand when you are happy with yourself how much you are driving your life. I am attracted to these people, women who will never be a top model but they put on a dress and it works and they control a situation; they are happy with themselves.
What do you think makes a good fragrance? That you can smell it. That’s the first thing. Call me old fashioned but for me fashion is about the stories of the past. I love the stories of Chanel doing No. 5 for women who wear fur and smoke cigarettes because those two things were absorbing a lot of smell, so she made No.5 to go over it. I really think perfume has to show an animal side of us—people smell us and react to our identity from the smell.
Do you think a lot of men will actually wear Une Amourette? I do. I think it’s the transfer of smell because there is a kind of alchemy—it’s not the same on different skin and that is the beauty of it. The way Daniela and I worked on the two skins, we knew the ingredients we chose will move with the pH of the skin. If there is one thing that is completely related to my clothes is I’m never finished until they are on the skin. Some designers will finish on the hanger and when you put them on you don’t want them on. Mine are nice on the hanger, but when you put them on that’s when the transformation happens. I feel the pH of the skin is the last ingredient of that solution.
