Olfactive Studio: Flash Back

Hello from Brazil! I’m visiting this gorgeous country for the next few weeks with a group of amazing individuals and professors on a Study Abroad program!!  I wanted to share my experience with all of you and what better way to do this than write about my fragrance of choice for this new adventure!

Before I left Montreal for the summer I made a quick visit to my favourite boutique, Etiket, to pick up a few products for my trip. In the process, I explored another new line of fragrances that was recently brought in, called Olfactive Studio. This is a unique hybrid photo-and-perfume-design project launched by Céline Verleure, a fragrance-industry insider and avid photography lover. The project launched a series of unsex scents that were originally sparked from images.

  

The creative process is quite unconventional. Verleure, first selected a clever name that was suggested by fans and then searched far and wide for a complementary image. Once she had the two together, she paired a photographer with a perfumer to translate the emotions evoked by the visual into a scent.

The five unique eau de parfums that have been created so far are called Autoportrait, Still Life, Chambre Noire, Lumiére Blanche and my personal favourite – Flash Back. The beautiful image by Laurent Segretier evokes many different emotions and the tangy combination of rhubarb, grapefruit and amber is very fresh and warm.

A flash back is a highly expressive and desirable material. We would like that face unaltered by digital smoothing to be ours; that face inhabited by serene thoughts, free of the stigma of digital cosmetics, enlivened by the joy of the pixels chosen by the artist. It freezes a suspended moment, a memory zone that profoundly imprints itself on the retina and brings back a distant memory, perhaps a déjà vu of a face, a body, or a feeling that becomes a presence.

This photo-fragrance combination shows the past making a sudden appearance in the present. Click here to see the accompanying video. You can also learn about the perfumer and the photographer that were chosen for the Flash Back Fragrance.

Flash Back by Laurent Segretier

During her journey, Verleure has connected with some of the world’s most talented photographers such as: Luc Lapôtre, Clémence René-Bazin, Frédéric Lebain, Massimo Vitali, and Laurent Segretier. For more information on Olfactive Studio visit their website and read Vanity Fair’s article here.