Les Abstraits
Les Abstraits is a collection of three sumptuous memory scents, Belle Âme, Des Cendres and La Douleur Exquise created by master perfumer Antoine Lie for vlogger and perfume obsessee Eugen Nizic.
The move from writer, vlogger, and critic to creating perfumes is a fraught one. There is a certain scepticism about this critic-to-maker style of perfumery, but often, these adaptable creators produce compositions of intelligent leftfield beauty. Eugen has a penchant for the past, vintage perfumes that open memory-doors to past experiences, loves, people and places.
Les Abstraits is a trio of deeply felt sensual compositions, reminding us that perfumery of this emotional precision should still be taken as a serious part of our lives, a veil of wistful nostalgia and modernist ambition.
‘My position as a perfumer is closer to what an artist is feeling and wants to express, avoiding what the commercial market is expecting.’ Antoine Lie
This quote, taken from the Les Abstraits website is a glimpse into how Lie views his processes and place in the perfume world. Brands have their own claims, secrets, definitions, strengths, and obfuscation. Most of it is smoke and mirrors, the glass corrupted and dull. The smoke vapid and overly familiar. But there are of course extraordinary brands appearing serendipitously to lift us up and make us feel inordinately special. When formulations present originality, comfort, sensuality, and innovation; we feel chosen and understood.
Eugen and Antoine are using perfumes as a romantic yet rigorous lens to look back through time at vintage classics but also looking forward at how these lost and romanticised formulae can be reinterpreted and offered up to a contemporary audience. They have been gorgeously successful in this endeavour, and each of the Les Abstraits trio, Belle Âme, Des Cendres and La Douleur Exquise is incredibly beautiful, with dreamscapes of thought-provoking materials that make tremulous and addictive weather on skin.
Les Abstraits is a name to watch in perfumery; it takes rare imagination and obsession with detailed effect to launch a new brand in the capricious world of fragrance. There is seduction and wonder in wearing Les Abstraits, a trio of experimental nostalgic compositions that smell sublime and tug gently at loose memory threads.