Celebrity Life
In Conversation with Fabrice Pellegrin, the Grasse-native Perfumer Behind Penhaligon’s Racquets
There’s no doubt Alex Lam inherited his musical talent from his parents, his father being Cantopop legend George Lam Chi-Cheung, and his mother, Sally Yeh. Still, the singer-songwriter and actor hasn’t let privilege get to his head — he’s not afraid to explore other paths, from a stint in Los Angeles to discover yoga and becoming a yoga teacher, to dipping his toes in fashion.
Lam met Hiro Yoshikawa, founder and designer of Washi Jeans, a Japanese denim brand, a couple years back and was intrigued by the designer’s backstory. Now based in Hong Kong, Yoshikawa is the 18th generation of a revered sake maker in Okayama, Japan, and the first to leave the family business to pursue his own passion in denim-making. By chance, Yoshikawa had found an old document that charted out his family’s history, written on washi paper. Inspired by this, he developed and patented the Washi No. 6 paper yarn, which he utilizes in his first solo collection launching this month.
Lam, who has always had an eye for detail, quickly became an ambassador and muse for Yoshikawa, and took it upon himself to bring the recognition Yoshikawa deserves by helping him stage his upcoming solo debut.
We sit down with Alex Lam and Hiro Yoshikawa at Washi Jean's studio to talk about style and the upcoming debut of Yoshikawa's solo collection Life on Earth.
Can you describe your style? What are your wardrobe essentials?
AL: My style has always been inspired by musicians. I grew up watching some of my favourite bands like The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and today, I'm inspired by singers like Drake. For me, my summer essentials include a sleeveless vest, a good multi-functional blazer and a pair of high-quality designer jeans.
Have you always been passionate about fashion and did you want to work in fashion?
AL: I have always cared about how I look and my outfits since I was a kid. I remember there was one time when the collar of my t-shirt wasn't right and I wouldn’t wear it out until my parents fixed it for me. Having friends who are in the fashion industry allows me to execute and experiment my ideas during workshops, like the ‘marshmallow’ colourway of the t-shirt I’m wearing right now.
How did the both of you meet?
AL: I met Hiro-san thought some of our mutual friends.
HY: have been making jeans for other brands for the past 30 years and it has always been my dream to have my own denim brand. I have always hung out with people from the fashion industry, and meeting Alex from the music and acting world has made my life more fun and exciting.
Can you tell us a bit about your project with Hiro-san?
AL: I was hanging out with a group of producers and we often talk about fashion shows, designer brands’ videos, installation art and music. Once we found out Hiro-san wanted to launch his own denim brand this year, we decided to catch this opportunity and put our ideas together. We are organising a VIP launch event with a fashion show on June 11, 2021.
What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome with this project?
AL: I think the rules of the game changed after Covid started last year. We looked at online fashion shows last year, without the tradition styles, and we knew our team needed to do it in a cleverer way. The restriction for event gathering is 30 persons at the moment, so we were not able to invite too many friends and make the event as big as before. Plus the campaign and fashion show video shoot all in one day, that’s the biggest challenge in this project.
HY: We have been staying in our studio almost every day is the past few months, meeting different parties like our PR team, models, videographers and producers.
What else are you up to this year that you can share with us?
AL: I have released a new song and I just finished a music video for another song. I have also been working on my YouTube channel and created a few series, but it’s been slightly slowed down because I was focusing in this project.
Has the pandemic affected the way you work or changed your priorities?
AL: Before Covid, I was busy working with clients, who often prepared everything. With changes and restrictions during this period, I am able to organise and create more content by myself.
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Alex Lam -
Alex Lam with Hiro Yoshikawa at his studio -
A pair of Washi Jeans on display
What are you currently inspired by?
AL: There are many indie musicians and young kids out there who are doing their music in their unique styles. I admire them a lot as they can release songs as long as they think it sounds good. I used think good music requires the best studio and recording equipment, but turned out a lot of indie musicians are producing high quality songs just by working at home.
You have a YouTube channel, you're into fashion, music as well as classic cars. How did you get into each of those passions and how do you balance it all?
AL: Project by project. I’m now focusing more on quantity over quality and I'll keep learning from the progress and mistakes.
Do you have a motto you live by?
Stay healthy. As I was a yoga teacher, I still practice yoga for two to three hours each day. It’s a good way to reflect on myself and find peace.
The post In Conversation with Fabrice Pellegrin, the Grasse-native Perfumer Behind Penhaligon’s Racquets appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
Kilian Hennessy’s Uncommon Scents
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Kilian Hennessy may hail from one of France’s most famous families, but any success he’s had is entirely his own.[/caption]
“The fusion between Moët-Hennessy and Louis Vuitton was in 1987; I was 15 years old,” Hennessy recalls when we meet at Upper House during his stopover in Hong Kong. “At that point it wasn’t completely a family group any more. And to be honest, I never wanted to work for the group. Number one, I hated the idea of working for my father. And more importantly I wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror and feel that what I’d done with my life was entirely due to what I’ve done and not due to help I received.”
After enduring resentful looks during a brief internship with Dior’s perfumes division – whose president at the time, Maurice Roger, had been hired by Hennessy’s grandfather – the young Hennessy was determined to work for every luxury group except LVMH. After graduating from university, he did stints at Puig (working on Paco Rabanne), Gucci (“that created a big chaos because at that time Gucci and LVMH were in this humongous lawsuit”), Alexander McQueen (as marketing director) and L’Oréal (as marketing director for Giorgio Armani perfumes).
“I really made my whole career outside of the group,” he says. Indeed, Hennessy was involved in creating some of the most commercially successful fragrances of the time, often in direct competition with LVMH. But after negotiating all the elements that go into launching a mass product – from the designer’s vision to the packaging and print advertising – he found himself at a crossroads.
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Woman in Gold holds notes of rose, vanilla absolute and Akigalawood.[/caption]
“I was losing faith in myself, losing faith in the industry in general,” Hennessy says. “In 10 years of creating scents for fashion designers, I had never put out a product that was completely the product I would have wanted to do.”
At the urging of a headhunter, he spoke to several top designers about going back into fashion. But it was a dinner at the Baccarat restaurant at Paris that would decide his next move. “At the end of the dinner I stopped by the museum – it’s a tiny museum – and they were exhibiting one century of Baccarat perfume bottles,” he says. “Life is funny.”
“I looked at those gorgeous bottles and coffrets. I stayed two hours in that tiny museum and by the end my faith in perfume was back. I thought, this is exactly what I want to do. What if I would actually go out on my own and create a collection that would look, feel and smell exactly the way I think it should? And put perfume back on its pedestal in the same way it was back in the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries?”
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His approach to fragrance encapsulates exquisite wood coffrets.[/caption]
Soon Hennessy was putting his hours of study at “nose school” to use creating his first collection of 10 scents, L’Oeuvre Noire. He also dreamed up a bottle and coffret worthy of display in the Baccarat museum. “It’s very much reminiscent of what I witnessed that night: a beautiful wood coffret with several coats of lacquering and satin bedding inside; the coffret opens and closes with a key; the bottle is carved on the side with a shield motif; the names are not on a sticker but on a real metal plaque and filled manually by syringe with a black enamel.”
Having created such a precious work of art, Hennessy “suddenly realised there was a contradiction between creating a luxury product that would be a disposable product”. Again, he looked to the past and recalled how his grandmother had a personalised perfume bottle that she would take to the shop to be refilled once the fragrance ran out.
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The fragrances are personalised and refillable.[/caption]
“So I made the decision to make every bottle refillable. So the bottle you buy is the bottle you keep all your life,” Hennessy says. “And I made all the satin bedding removable, so you can reuse the case as a jewellery coffret if you want. I was creating what I call an eco-luxury product. Because in a way the best product for the environment is the product that creates no waste.”
Once Hennessy convinced suppliers to take a chance on his completely bespoke coffret, Kilian the brand was born.
In the 11 years since, Hennessy and his perfumer Calice Becker have created dozens of fragrances in categories such as The Fresh, The Smokes, The Cellars and The Narcotics.
“The way I think of creation is in terms of olfactive books, where every scent is a chapter of the book,” he explains. “At one point the book is over. So every collection has a certain amount of scents. L’Oeuvre Noire, my first collection, was from day one a collection of 10 scents. And four of the 10 are still alive and among our top sellers.”
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The new collection, From Dusk till Dawn, is inspired by secessionist artist Gustav Klimt.[/caption]
Hennessy’s newest collection, From Dusk Till Dawn, is an homage to Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. “What I love the most is his Byzantine period, playing with gold leaf and the contrast between light and darkness,” he says. “We have two scents in this collection: Woman in Gold, which is inspired by the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, and Gold Knight, which is a reference to the knight in golden armour in Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze.”
Hennessy and Becker created the scents by focusing only on ingredients that expressed to them darkness or shimmering gold. “The ingredients that express shiny gold for me were bergamot, honey, yellow roses, anise,” he says. “For darkness, it was black ingredients like black pepper, black vanilla, patchouli, leather. In a way it’s as if I shrunk the amount of raw ingredients available to express the same contrast as Klimt tried to express through his paintings.”
Besides traditional perfumes, Kilian has also expanded into a variety of products designed to “give women beautiful attributes of seduction and protection”. These include a collaboration with Fleur du Mal on scented lingerie and Hennessy’s new shower-gel and body-lotion line. Another popular collection has been Kilian jewellery, created with Lanvin jewellery designer Elie Top and featuring ceramic inserts that release scent as the wearer moves.
“I think our job is really to surprise the customer. Frankly, there are so many scents that I’ve created,” Hennessy says, laughing softly, “that you have to push the boundaries very far today to really come up with true creation.”
The post Kilian Hennessy’s Uncommon Scents appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
Bulgari’s unveils its first high perfumery collection for men, the Le Gemme collection
Gemstones adorn this collection from the Italian jewellers.
The post Bulgari’s unveils its first high perfumery collection for men, the Le Gemme collection appeared first on The Peak Magazine.
Bulgari’s unveils its first high perfumery collection for men, the Le Gemme collection
Gemstones adorn this collection from the Italian jewellers.
For more stories like this, visit www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg.