Manuel Mathieu Parfums
Why ever?
I was sent (unsolicited) three fragrances allegedly art-directed by a Haiti-born sculptor named Manuel Mathieu. They are called Ile du Désir, Ecco and Ile Noire. The website is full of the usual guff: Manuel Mathieu is “shaping a new paradigm of beauty," i.e. trying to make a buck by following someone’s foolish suggestion. I cannot comment on the bottles inspired by his sculptures, because the fragrances came in IFF sprays.
They are fine examples of the Chemical Rococo style currently infecting the big oil houses. Unless art-directed with an iron hand, perfumers these days will try to flog you the result of a vast number of cut-and-paste operations on existing compositions. Some years ago I did an experiment using translation software, going from French to English back and forth twenty or thirty times. The idea was to see whether the text would eventually converge to a stable version or instead diverge to complete insanity. It did converge to a pastel colored blandness, and these testers reminded me of it.
It's telling that anyone who has the funding and will to create a perfume brand does so, and deems themselves qualified to direct the fragrance development. We don't see this for other industries, not without getting on board many experts, and it goes to show that perfumery is still a second class art or craft in the minds of most, for if it were respected there would be far fewer brands.
"The chemical rococo style currently infecting the big oil houses" seems to be the new definition of the category between Chypre and Hesperidic and...
Categorisation helps me avoid certain types of perfumes, for example "Gourmand". If new brands describe their perfumes by category in the right way, I could expand my Black List and that's it. My world will be better...