Verge; Paul and his Perfumed Sound

In the UK now there are apparently over 800 different niche perfume brands, so, wow that is an awful lot of choice. The market has exploded in the past few years, and to be fair, the perfume consumer is lapping it up. Why? because it gives the consumer a much better quality fragrance alongside a far more exquisite way in which to explore scent. With the many options on the market, fragrance lovers are looking for new paths they can take to explore more and fully accentuate their scent experiences. What draws them much of the time (and you will find many makers fit into this category) are many perfume makers come from non-traditional perfume producing backgrounds. Take for example Paul Schütze, an artist and musician who has had his work described as “perfumed sound”.

As an artist and composer, Paul’s multi sensory work has focused upon the sensory and the sensual for decades. His work often hallucinatory, dream-like and rich in exotic details which makes it ripe for fragrance interpretation. As his practice expanded into installations involving film and photography, a universe of very particular, strange beauty began to emerge. In 2012, he began to experiment with olfaction, creating his first perfume In Libro De Tenebris which was impregnated into the body of a large, entirely black book at the centre of an exhibition of prints. The perfume captured the imagination of all who smelt it.

In 2015 he went a step further and created three fragrances for the Sir John Soane Museum in London, which were diffused into the building during a nocturnal candlelit event. This echoed a series of moonlit photographs the artist had made in the same spaces a couple of years earlier. The perfumes roamed and mingled in the museum and for that one night it was as if the spaces were inhabited by the fragrances.

2015,  saw Schütze develop his first three wearable aromatic perfumes, artworks that just happen if you like to also be wearable scents, meaning he was now able to bottle and sell his fragrances with the birth of Paul Schütze Perfume. An intuitive creative approach goes without saying, being of course a creative who stands alone (as all true creatives do) with his olfactory creations reflecting ideas of location, beauty, and mystery, all of which are subjects he visits across all his working facets.  Each scent is a recollection from the artists mind and heart which create for a unique combination of scents.  This is why now, finding a unique approach to niche perfume is proving so successful, those that tread a new path will always create new pathways.

2018 seems two more fragrances added to the range Cuadra and Villa M and of these two new launches he says:

Cuadra is all about invoking the modernist masterpiece of Mexican architect Luis Barragan, Cuadra San Cristobal, Cuadra is at once exotic and intimate, open yet embracing. It is passion contained and refined. A rich orchestration of sensuous, elemental materials, enveloping and swooningly hypnotic.

Although he chooses not to follow a traditional perfume pyramid rather utilising a more layered building of scent, Paul is good at understanding and sharing  the important key notes . So for Cuadra, there is Bay, Bergamot, Coffee, Eaglewood, Hay, Jasmine, Oak Moss Sandalwood and Tobacco.

Villa M his second is described as being inspired by Curzio Malaparte’s astonishing cliff top home on the island of Capri.  Villa M situates the wearer on the sun drenched terrace watching the sea and sky kiss at an azure horizon A marine breeze shaded with island foliage and the glint of mimosa.  The notes present are Ambergris, Cedar, Cylclamen, Hay Mimosa Pink Pepper and Seaweed.

A measure of the respect the brand have , find it for sale at Roullier white one of the most exquisite of stores in London or at the  Paul Schütze Website

Image Jason Yates