High art and fine fragrance have a well-established relationship, with artists as famous as Dalí having created covetable perfume bottles. We bring you our pick of today’s most sought-after masterpieces...
Elevating fragrance to the status of a work of art feels like a very modern ploy to tap into our collective fatigue for mass-produced 'eau de celebrity' and our quest for scents that are uniquely ours (on TikTok, the #gatekeepfragrance hashtag has had tens of millions of views). But fragrance and art have long been intertwined, and collaborations (before the term "collab" even entered the vernacular) go way back.
The worlds of art and fragrance collided spectacularly in 1946, when Elsa Schiaparelli commissioned Salvador Dalí to design the bottle for her Le Roi Soleil fragrance. But it was René Lalique – one of the most influential artists in glass-making of the art nouveau and art deco movements – who really nailed the creative melding of art and fragrance.
Apt, then, that Lalique and fragrance house Brioni have joined forces to bring forth the objet d'art pictured below – the crystal embodiment of extraordinary craftsmanship, reflected in its £33,500 price tag.
Available in a limited series of 18 numbered and hand-signed pieces, to be made available exclusively from August, the flacon is created using an ancient lost-wax technique revived by Lalique’s master glassmakers so that each of these collectors’ items is a singular work of art.
The silver-hued perfume, meanwhile, centres around opulent iris butter, revealing the powdery elegance of violet at its heart, enhanced by a fusion of cedar wood, moss and dry amber base notes, all crafted meticulously over seven years. And for slightly more affordable art? Behold our fragrant gallery...