RENDEZ-VOUS!

Eau de Parfum

Rendez-Vous! is one of the most fascinating and sensual perfumes in recent years, a collaboration between Master Perfumer and olfactive mischief maker Antoine Lie and French photographer Sonia Sieff, daughter of the legendary JeanLoup Sieff.

Perfumer Antoine Lie is one of the most charismatic figures in contemporary perfumery. His creations range from commercial successes like Armani Code, Romance for Men by Ralph Lauren and Crystal Noir by Versace, to the punk and avant-garde perfumes of Etat Libre d'Orange Sécrétions Magnifique and Comme des Garçons Wonderwood. What they all have in common is being unforgettable.

While there are subtle references to Lie's unique oeuvre, Rendez-Vous! smells neoteric and erotic. It is essentially a portrait of a metallic iris; rhizome, stigma, anthers, signals, falls and petals. The initial violent overture of powder and musks smells of shattered flowers and twisted metal. The beautiful flacon is a deep burgundy colour, but the perfume is one pale bruise blues and mauve, albeit tinted with the rust red of dried blood.

The most unusual note mentioned in Rendez-Vous! is gunpowder. There is often a mingling of olfactive imaginings, the smell of gunpowder and gun smoke, which are different, but we tend to think of them as one and the same, a bitter-fumed mix of steely black pepper, singed charcoal, sometimes a whiff of brimstone, white steam and an undertone of sour green.

In Rendez-Vous! Antoine has used its associations and effects to act like a hearth fire in a blood red room filled with peonies, poached rhubarb and the romantic skin-dust bloom of orris. The gunpowder is less of a note than a mood, something to push at our memory larder and then work its magic throughout the composition. Everyone will interpret it differently.

Rhubarb has been used to add a succulent blush and tartness to Rendez-Vous! There is juiciness and an odour profile that smells of acidic strawberry, sugared saffron and rainbows. It counterpoints the lingering sky traces of fireworks implied by the gunpowder.

Sonia and Antoine have created something ambiguous and daring. It is a thin line between thoughtful art and uncomfortable pretension. Rendez-Vous! is a hugely alluring and secretive perfume, smouldering with enigma and materials that rise and fall like piqued desire. It is difficult to think of anything else like it except perhaps buried in the DNA of Antoine’s work to date. He is asking us to rethink how materials, both natural and cyborg, function as veils of protection and intimate rapture. Sonia Sieff gives us beauty and yearning, an opportunity to gaze and consider the masculine form, while Antoine mirrors and augments the viewing with a perfect perfume that floods the senses with craven flame.

Composition:

• Gunpowder, Rhubarb
• Peony, Orris
• Guaiac wood, Benzoin resinoid

Perfumer: Antoine Lie, 2024

inci list: alcohol denat., fragrance (parfum), water (aqua), alpha-isomethyl ionone, coumarin, linalool, geraniol, citronellol, citral, benzyl benzoate