At Esxence I picked up two little boxes of samples from a Singapore-based outfit called The Lab. I have no recollection of the stand or any of interaction with the people. While clearing out, I found the samples and decided to spray them on strips. No particular reason, other than the fact that no fraghead can resist pressing a spray pump.
It turns out that The Lab embodies pretty much everything that is wrong with niche fragrances. My comments below apply to dozens of other companies. I was initially reluctant to write about them —no shooting at ambulances, and all that— but smelling six of their perfumes and then going on their inane website made me so mad that I decided to go ahead.
The shtick of the outfit is “We tell only one story, that of our highest quality ingredients.” The fragrances have names of materials, e.g. Tuberose, Ginger, or binary Jo Malone names, i.e. Thing A + Thing B. The prose is vacuous: “We source ingredients from the most reputable suppliers across the globe. We investigate widely to source plant-based and laboratory-made ingredients, and very precisely select among them only those with a proven record of safety and efficacy.” Translated into plain English, that means they use an oil house to compose and compound their fragrances.
The funny part is that, unlike Jo Malone fragrances that mostly smell like what it says on the can, these dudes also take a hint from Le Labo and misdirect the punter, except they go way further. Ginger does not smell like ginger at all to me, Earl Grey bears little relation to the familiar tea, Tuberose and Bergamot & Musk ditto, and so on. The intent here is mysterious: are they clueless, lazy, or is this some arcane plan to throw people off the scent? Stupidity usually has greater explanatory power than dastardly plots, so I’ll go for that.
The opportunity cost of this asinine stuff is that it drowns out the really good niche fragrances. Companies like The Lab, which made up a good half of the outfits on display at Esxence, deserve to go bust as soon as is practical. I look forward to seeing fewer of them at the next Exsence. /end rant
Note: there is another outfit called The Lab Fragrances in Colombia whose fragrances I have not smelled. Thank you Karin in comments for pointing this out.
Please don’t ’end rant’! We’re relying on you telling us what to swerve as well as what to embrace.
Holy mother of fake Le Labo, from the name (I mean, seriously? The same thing but in English?) to the labels (bone dry Aesop minimalism complete with the “bottled for XYZ” shtick). I don’t think this enterprise could be a more blatant knockoff if it tried.