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SCENTS AND THE CITY1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Itinerary | Home
At Estnation, I steer clear of the fragrance display for cutting-edge Japanese brand Comme des Garçons since I’m still reeling from a few sniffs at the brand’s aggressively cool Aoyama store. I don’t even know if I’d call this perfume; raunchy Odeur 53 reminds me of burnt rubber, Odeur 71, raw rhubarb. Weirder still is the Elite of Parfum series by another Japanese fragrance house, Antianti. I spend most of the afternoon trying to eradicate one drop from a small $1,200 bottle of Elite of Gardenia (or Eau de Funeral, as I dub its sickening sweetness) from my wrist. Then again, I will never forget that smell, and who said art is supposed to be only beautiful and not disturbing? While I was in Tokyo, Japanese designer Kenzo launched a men’s fragrance called – wait for it – Tokyo. According to the press release, it’s meant to evoke “Tokyo experienced by a Westerner, dazed by jet lag and ready to lose himself in a limitless city with a real human dimension.” In other words, me. Even though I’m not a man, I happily wear the scent – citrus and spice, dry and woody – all week in Tokyo. I meet package designer Kashiwa Sato, a lifelong Tokyoite, at his Roppongi-area office. Sato is a design star, the Karim Rashid of Japan, and I’m nervous. In the true mould of a dazed Westerner, I arrive a little late and feeling awkward, bungling the formal two-handed upside-down business card pass. The spike-haired, black-suited Sato does not look amused. As an interpreter and I sombrely sit across a long boardroom table from him, steaming cups of his own bespoke tea are brought in, transforming the room into a peach orchard. Everyone relaxes and I launch into my first question, a drawn-out affair on the theme of scent and memory, of smell as possibly the last great unexplored frontier of marketing, and, as a designer, what did he think of all that? There is a long interpretation by the smiling translator. Then an even longer response in Japanese from the intense, gesticulating Sato. Then a Lost in Translation moment as the interpreter turns to me and says, “He agrees.” It turns out that the photographic inspiration for the package’s light-streaked nightscape was taken from these very office windows. The image’s streaks of yellow evoke the scent’s bright ginger and grapefruit notes; vibrant red embodies pink pepper and bitter orange; darkness is cedar and nutmeg. |
