Editorial

by Delphine de Malherbe & Olivia Bransbourg

Money has no smell. The essence of fragrance itself resides within elegance. Knowing how to imprint one’s identity by wearing a perfume that is as unique as the person using it, verges on achieving a state of grace. Where a scent makes the heart beat faster, it speaks of intelligence, a desire, absence, a flaw. So is the past reinvented, the future dreamed into being and thought conveyed. It only takes breathing in the scent of a flower for feelings for someone to be felt again and then you remember...

A man, a woman, are the exhalations of their childhoods. They adorn themselves
 with a perfume and so remember the smell of freshly cut grass, salt air or wet leaves on the forest floor. A grandfather sporting EAU D'ORANGE VERTE, a grandmother wearing FLEURS DE ROCAILLE, a first love wreathed in eau sauvage; these scents are indelible markers in the history of each. Then comes the time for a MITSOUKO, long before AMBRE SULTAN, PRELUDE TO LOVE and DANS TES BRAS.

ICONOfly felt impelled to pay tribute to perfume. After bags, watches, glasses, boots and bracelets, this issue celebrates La Belle Parfumerie at PRINTEMPS, giving carte blanche to many artists, scientific experts and great perfumers who know about the seven ways in which perfume gilds a person: the dream, beauty, surprise, alchemy, knowledge, heritage and the future. In fact, we hope that every reader will be inspired by this issue with its multitude of riches wafting from within, and will feel nurtured by the lasting memories that surface as a result. The perfume that haunts these pages is hypnotic; it makes a person, place or a landscape very endearing.After all, a fragrance is the essence of being.