Contre-Jour by Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle isn't for everyone, and it's incredible
Like staring into the sun, but in bottle form
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IN THE LEXICON of photography, contre-jour is the technique of shooting directly into the light – leaving the subject rendered by shadow, as opposed to the clear illumination of light. You could argue that this technique defines the subject by what surrounds it rather than what falls upon it.
As the title for the latest fragrance to come from French perfume house Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, it tells you something about how Annick Ménardo thinks about perfume.
“The idea was to create tension,” she tells Esquire.
“Light against shadow, softness against something rougher and more unexpected.”
Light against shadow, the softness of rose against the rough texture of immortelle – Contre-Jour is, in many ways, a play at contradictions. A contrapposto, even, where it doesn’t easily fit a specific category and shifts its foot into spicy, floral or woody and back again.
Contre-Jour by Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle
Not your regular rose, but a scorched one filled with spices.
To dip into metaphor, it’s the olfactory equivalent of watching a solar flare appear from behind an eclipse. Or like watching a piece of burning coal, with its warm amber edges and cooler, black heart.
Contre-Jour begins with a bright, burning opening that is centred around a dance between notes of rose and immortelle, also known as Mediterranean Everlasting Flower (helichrysum) a material that can often divide opinion before it even dries on skin.
To some, immortelle carries a curry-like spice; to others, it’s sticky and burnt; to a third group, it’s a faintly caramelised experience. Personally, immortelle veers between the first two. Which I feel works for the better, given that rose notes can often take the off-ramp into Turkish Delight territory when not bolstered by more structured notes. Here, Ménardo’s use of immortelle means you experience the thorns of the flower, while feeling the sunshine from the garden and a touch of the soil it grew in. As the fragrance evolves, the green tobacco-like note of narcissus brings into play a more herbal body before additional woodiness from the sandalwood carries it into the dry down, all still floating on the faintest pillow of rose and immortelle…
Ménardo says she was drawn to this note for exactly this slipperiness.
“It’s a material with a very strong personality,” she says, “and I was interested in exploring it in a territory where it hadn’t really been used before, especially alongside florals and in a more feminine expression.” She knew from the start what she wanted beside it. “From the very beginning, I knew I wanted to contrast the Everlasting flower with rose and sandalwood.”
This wouldn’t be the first time that Ménardo has put a fragrance out into the world that deliberately pushed the boundary of aesthetic niceties. Back in 1998, she created Bvlgari Black, a leather, tea and vanilla construct that had the distinct aroma of burnt rubber to it, served up in a circular, hockey-puck-like bottle.
Then there was Lolita Lempicka Au Masculin, a licorice-laden cologne structure with a violet and rum heart that was simultaneously bitter and sweet. And her most divisive: Amouage’s ferocious Figment Man. Now a collector’s item, it could, at the time of its release, clear a room with its animalic, urine and wet earth scent profile. I thought it was fantastic.
But she was also the hand behind what are arguably some of the biggest commercial releases of each decade, too. Dior’s Hypnotic Poison, the amaretto-vanilla sister to the original Poison, and Bois D’Argent, Dior’s incredible honeyed resin release from 2004. And of course, Giorgio Armani’s Acqua Di Gio, which is still their best-selling fragrance for men today.
Contre-Jour also arrives at an unusually charged moment for Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle. It marks the first release since Frédéric Malle’s departure from the brand, straddling the pre- and post-Malle intervention. Ménardo is careful about what that means.
“Although Contre-Jour was released after Frédéric’s departure, it was developed with him,” she says.
“So it naturally carries part of that original vision while opening a new chapter at the same time.” A bridge, then, between two eras of one of perfumery’s most uncompromising houses.
Asked to name a favourite from across her entire career, Ménardo isn’t as nostalgic as you might suspect.
“It’s actually Contre-Jour,” she says. “It represents something very personal to me.”
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