You are viewing posts from:

Maggie Bullock

An Eau of Our Own

by   Maggie Bullock | 

Photo: Models: Gilles Bensimon; rose and jasmine: Getty Images; perfume bottle: Simon Belcher/Alamy; sandalwood: Wildlife/Alamy

Frederic Malle is sitting in the ELLE offices, surrounded on all sides by teetering stacks of magazines. He’s flipping slowly through them, mumbling as he goes: “Skin…beach…color.” Malle lingers, as any man would, on a shot from June 1986: leggy X-Men star Famke Janssen (long before Hollywood came calling) in Superwoman stance, a sunsoaked beach goddess in a sliver of tangerine Lycra, seemingly hitting the apex of postadolescent perfection at the exact moment of the camera’s click. “I know what to do,” he declares, thumping a mountain of magazines emphatically. “You need something very clear-cut with angles, colors. Very clean. Not a fur coat—a swimsuit.”

With that, he stands, smooths his suit, and prepares to exit. Wait…that’s it? In less than an hour, Malle—bona fide fragrance genius—has mentally distilled 25 years of ELLE into a two-sentence brief. This he will deliver to a perfumer, who will create “25,” a special-edition birthday eau that, Malle promises, will somehow sum up who we are—and more to the point, who you, our faithful readers, are—and where we’ve been, with a sly nod toward where we’re headed.

Read More»