If anyone in London would like to smell like a summertime boat trip down the Seine, a drive around Beverly Hills in a Rolls Royce, or a hedonistic night at Parisian club, then we suggest you make your way down to Harrods, because Celine Parfumerie has just opened a dedicated space in the heart of the superstore’s beauty hall. The new installation is a small, olfactory wunderkammer containing all of the brand’s eleven fragrances, as well as candles and perfume accessories.
Creative director Hedi Slimane launched the line of fragrances in 2019 as a kind of sensory diary. Each of the unisex scents chronicles, through scent, a memory from his past and attempts to reconstruct the ambiance of that moment. There’s the aforementioned Dans Paris, inspired by Simone's youthful trips down the Seine with his friends ‘while listening to the Velvet Underground on a scratchy amplifier’; his ode to the ten years he spent in California, Eau de Californie; as well as the cigarette and vanilla scented Nightclubbing. There’s also the ever popular, Parade; a bergamot, neroli and vetiver scent inspired by, in Slimane’s words, ‘the nonchalant and glittering ballet of my male and female models parading under the golden lights’; and Slimane’s own fragrance Bois Dormant, which captures his time searching Saville Row for the perfect suit. Underpinning all of the fragrances is a powdery blend of rose, tree moss and iris that draws from vintage Parisian parfums of the 60s and 70s and gives each scent a recognizable Celine signature.
At the Harrod’s space, all of the fragrances are displayed, in their Art Deco style bottles, along a mirrored, staircase-like shelf that creates a seemingly endless ‘hall of mirrors’ illusion. It is an entracing effect, complemented by the space’s white-veined black marble and reflective gold surfaces (both interior hallmarks of the Celine stores).
Whether you are a fragrance lover or not, it is hard not to be delighted by the ‘Maison Celine’ objects also on display. These range from a mini gold perfume bottle that is worn like a necklace, a tortoise-shell hair clip in the classic Celine double-C, a leather vanity case, and more. Perhaps best of all is a new collection of octagonal bar soaps, launched in conjunction with the Harrods opening, that come with their own gold or silver travel cases.
