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Old World Gets Fresh in Latest from Frederic Malle, Geranium pour Monsieur

A floral-based scent for men? Geranium pour Monsieur, the latest fragrance installment launching in May from specialty perfume brand Editions de Parfums , is exactly that, though it’s not as radical as one might think.

“There have been many florals for men,” said Frederic Malle in New York on Tuesday, March 23. Malle’s luxury fragrance collection has a cult following for its provocative scents. “Geoffrey Beene made a fragrance called Grey Flannel, which was a violet for men. Sophisticated men were used to wearing toiletries that were floral. I didn’t invent floral for men, but I’m just bringing it back.”

Inspired by old world toiletries of Malle’s youth – soap, mouthwash, shaving cream – the idea for Geranium pour Monsieur came when Malle created his soap for men, Anterenea. Together with Dominique Ropion, one of France’s top perfumers and a long-time collaborator, they came up with a fresh take on a classic floral for men, sprinkled with bright notes of mint and anise, rounded out with cinnamon and clove oil and layered over a bed of musks, leaving a velvety, long-wearing finish.

If all that sounds heavy and complex, rest assured, it’s not. Instead, the modern version of the familiar, heady, old world scent is given a high tech facelift via precise molecular distillation of the essences of these ingredients. “It’s the Photoshop version,” said Malle. “You cut it like a salami and take the slice that you want.” This process leaves only the brightest, lightest parts of each essence.

Geranium pour Monsieur took about 18 months to develop. The first “sketch” was a combination of all the ingredients Ropion and Malle wanted to use followed by the fine-tuning process. In creating a new perfume, there’s an intuitive playing with the proportions of each component, ultimately taking off things that seem too thick at any point.

“We wanted it to be more fresh,” said Malle. The perfumers keep every version along the way. “I would send Dominique emails describing everything I’ve smelled at very precise times,” explained Malle. But there was no one fixed solution that he was looking for. “I just use my gut feeling to smell. Dominique has a saying in French, which roughly translates to ‘I smell like an idiot,’ meaning I smell like someone who can’t smell.”

Malle said he used to do the same job for his mother, also a perfumer, when she worked at Dior. Now, Malle’s own children help him with the testing process today.

“I try out the most interesting versions on my 17-year-old son to see how it diffuses. It has to last at least four hours,” he said. “People have to have something for their money.” (A 1.7 ounce spray bottle costs $135, while a 3.4 ounce bottle is $200).

The key, said Malle, is to create a scent that is very “linear, not up or down.” With some scents “you think it’s gone, but it’s just sleeping. But sometimes when it comes back, it’s like a bad acid trip.”

To understand how a scent diffuses over time is one of the reasons Malle invented his signature smelling booths, which are installed at his Paris stores and at Barneys New York stores in the U.S. They are wide glass cylinders that customers step up to where they can smell the scent through a nose-level opening on the side, isolating the fragrance from any outside influences.

“It’s the closest thing to smelling a fragrance on someone else,” he said. “Like following a trail.”

Malle was the first luxury perfumer to highlight the perfumers, the “authors” who create each fragrance for Editions de Parfums. Dominique Ropion, for example, the nose behind Geranium, has also created Amarige for Givenchy, Pure Poison for Dior and Euphoria for Calvin Klein. But his star pupils are his fragrances for Editions de Parfums: Carnal Flower, Vetiver Extraordinaire and Une Fleur de Cassie. The artistic quality of these perfumes is one of the reasons customers find Editions de Parfums so appealing.

“People have a sentimental rapport with me,” he said. “And in this economic environment, they appreciate something that is candid and honest, and creative and of good quality.”

Eventually, said Malle, he may introduce a full line of toiletries based on Geranium pour Monsiuer. “I work upside down, or the old-fashioned way,” he said. “The fragrance first, then the product.”

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