At their couture comeback in January, Viktor & Rolf wrapped up the show with a surprise reveal of their spring fragrance launch. Above the catwalk appeared a supersized image of model Edita Vilkeviciute, shot by Inez & Vinoodh, wearing nothing but body paint, holding a bow-shaped bottle of Bonbon. “We liked that her skin was becoming clothing in a way,” said Viktor Horsting. “She’s nude but she’s not. She’s dressed in paint. Her skin becomes like a garment. It was a [conceptual] way of saying that perfume could be worn like a garment.” The body art alone took about twelve hours to apply. The couture collection likewise had blurred the lines between skin and clothes, with tattoo-like embellishments such as ruffles and bows hand-painted over flesh-tone latex dresses.
For their latest fragrance, V&R began with an icon from their own lexicon: the bow. “The thing is, a bow doesn’t smell,” noted Rolf Snoeren. “So we started thinking of candy wrappers and bonbons, because they are like bows. And they smell [good].”
To hit the right note, they began by literally raiding candy stores. Working alongside perfumers Serge Majoullier and Cécile Matton, the design duo brought every kind of candy they could get their hands on into the L’Oréal Paris headquarters. “That was a fun exercise. We tested chocolates, caramels—all kinds of sweets. But we immediately became addicted to a specific caramel note. The buttery note of caramel was very sexy,” said Snoeren. “Sweet but also sexy. Grown-up.”
Once Viktor & Rolf zeroed in on their “couture” accord, Matton and Majoullier spun the original idea of candy into an olfactory ode to pleasure. “There are so many directions you could go,” observed Horsting. “We wanted something luxurious. The name might suggest girliness, but it had to be grown-up. It’s not a game of seduction. The attitude is more about being at ease, about self-indulgence and empowerment.”
Although the fragrance at first seems nearly edible, it is anything but facile. “It was important to not just create caramel-à-porter,” explained Matton. “We took the gourmandise aspect to the extreme.” Adds Majoullier, “The tricky thing about caramel is that you have to dress it up without concealing it.”
The perfumers went about addressing the challenge by declining to use patchouli, for one thing. Said Matton, “We were inspired by variations in texture. The caramel changes as the perfume evolves: It’s crackly on top, creamier at the heart, and more concentrated at the base. There’s a clothes-like structure—it’s a representation.”
Ultimately, the Bonbon caramel ventured into a more woody, sensual terrain, rounded out by a sprinkling of fruity notes to break up its richness. The fragrance opens with sparkling notes of mandarin and “Paradise peach,” warming into a sunny jasmine and orange blossom heart before settling into a gently overcooked woody amber base with notes of gaic and cedar.
“Bonbon is not for any one woman,” offered Horsting. “[It’s the same with] Flowerbomb, which had such fantastic reach. We don’t want to create limits.”
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