What is more personal than a fragrance? Nobody wants to wear the same fragrance than one’s neighbour, boss or best friend. We tend to believe a fragrance is part of our invisible fingerprint, our personality. So when we enter into a perfumery chain store or a perfumery area inside a Department store, we might feel a little lost. Each year, there are more than 300 perfumes launched in the world and unfortunately they are not all masterpieces. The segmentation of the perfumery market and the increase amount of launches dilute the creativity of perfumers and brands become more and more low profiles. Most of the time, perfumery brands think they have too much at stake to risk being out of the box of conservatism. So, where is real creation? Well, since the 90’s people started getting interested on what we called “niche brands”. Names like Joe Malone, Fresh, Serge Lutens, Comme des Garçons or latelly By Killian, made their way inside an international industry dominated by groups like L’Oréal, LVMH or P&G. For the past 10 years we assume the launch of 100 niche brands per year and often, they disappear in the sands of failure after 3 years. The reason? Well, most of these forgotten brands placed creation more on the marketing/PR side rather than in the Products. Fortunately a new kind of Brands appeared. I would not call them niche, as this descriptor would link them to a kind of elitism, but I would rather prefer “Alternative Perfumery”. This means that if you do not wish to wear a “mainstream” fragrance, you might want to discover different alternatives born in the heart of passionate people.
I decided to talk about INEKE perfumes. When I started my apprenticeship in one of the most creative Fragrance houses in Paris, I was lucky to share an office with a creative perfumer called Ineke Rühland. I do not know if she still remember me as our “office sharing” was quite short but what is sure is that I followed her during all these years. Ineke, after her studies at the prestigious Institute of Perfumery – ISIPCA, worked for this Fragrance House for 3 years. After this period, she moved to San Francisco where she founded her company and started to create her own fragrances in 2006. Her aim is to recover the elegant beauty of Artisan Perfumery. According to Ineke, her fragrance line is refreshing and imaginative, provoking
y our senses with its mixed-media stories. Cleverly packaged with a keen attention to detail, each eau de parfum introduces its own scented vignette through photos, art, snippets of verse, and the fragrance itself. Using lyrical titles that evoke stories of romance, nature, chemistry and courage, Ineke fragrances are rooted in her perfumery education and apprenticeship in France.
Her main inspiration is taken from: her beautiful garden and her sensitiveness as an accomplished artist. Lilac, Angels trumpets or Japanese white lilies are a great source of olfactive creation. Her Fragrance collection is called an “Alphabetical collection of Perfumes”; In french: Un Abécédaire de Parfums. It is a very original name for a fragrance range. It reveals the aim for these fragrances to be, in a way, simple to be understood and yet interesting storytellers. By clicking on each Perfume, you can discover more about it. Try and get into a poetic journey in a magical garden.
A – After my own Heart
B – Balmy Days & Sundays
C – Chemical Bonding
D – Derring-Do for Men
E – Evening Edged in Gold
F – Field Notes from Paris
G – Gilded Lily
Here are my preferred pictures of some of the incredible flowers that inspire Ineke creations:
If you want to know more about Ineke’s Fragrance collection, please visit the website here.
Watch a nice video with Ineke here below.
Ready for an elegant and subtle adventure?
LA
all images, courtesy of Ineke.com.
