Sabotage is Great

To sabotage is deliberately acting to weaken, disrupt, or destruct something established. The English actually has its roots in the French word saboteur, which translates roughly as “bungle, botch, wreck or sabotage”; Yet disruption can be a good thing after all creativity comes when we break the cycle the way we usually do things so it can be just as powerful and good as it can be anything else. Find out more in Sabotage is Great here

So originally the word Sabotage is thought to have come from labour disputes when workers who wore wooden shoes, known as sabots, interrupted production. So the potentially apocryphal story is that poor workers in the Belgian city of Liège would throw a wooden sabot into the machines to disrupt production.

But disruption as we know can be extremely positive. In Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, a new surge of artists is producing radical, unruly or even iconoclastic work that resists state violence, social conformity and the commodification of art.

The book Sabotage Art reveals how contemporary Latin American artists have resorted to sabotage strategies as a means to bridge the gap between aesthetics and politics.

‘Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.’

George Lois, renowned advertising creative

Take as another example the band the Beastie Boys who fused hip hop with heavy metal along with their renowned producer Rick Rubens bringing with it a new style of music; they even had their own track in 1994 called Sabotage.

So how does this positive disruption show itself in perfume?

Art de Perfum is the company to ask as it’s the name of their latest scent. As a brand, they very much sit with the disruptive niche perfumers who have totally reshaped the world of scent.

The term ‘niche perfume’ originated somewhere in the late 1980s and it grew from a reaction against large, commercial brands. Simply because the bottle, advertising campaign and the supermodel used to ‘sell’ the scent was becoming more important than the juice itself.

Perfumes were tried by ‘consumer panels’ which ended up creating scents that were ‘acceptable to all’ but nothing truly creative. With it came cheap synthetic notes and the loss of artisanal techniques.

So along came the new rule breakers, the new saboteurs who looked to return to the very essence of perfume, beautiful artisanal production, in the late 1980s with wonderful ingredients and creative freedom. Usually made in small quantities so no longer intended to please as many people as possible.

At the same time in the 1990s big experiments happened in mainstream perfumery, with a handful of truly strange, sometimes hard-to-understand scents being launched on the market. Think of launches like Thierry Mugler’s Angel, which brought gourmands to the market, Gucci Rush with a lactonic side, Patchouli and a Peach accord, and even things like Bvlgari Black with its rubber facet.

On top of that, we had the ‘skin’ perfumes, 90s-minimal style with the highly successful CK One as it gets. Then think of floral fruity fragrances like Tommy Girl by Tommy Hilfiger.

And so to Sabotage by Art de Parfum which opens like a disruptive, ironic but loveable play in the 90s. An opening rush of citrus notes makes you sit up and notice.

It opens with a cascade of bright fizzy notes that include delicious Pink Grapefruit, an almost spicy Bitter Orange, a slightly green note from Mandarin Orange and freshness from Mint. Pow! I’m here I’m alive and ready for life it says.

This settles deep into generous florals via the uber-sexy Tuberose, the delicate lady that is Petitgrain, alongside the green spice of Basil, fresh earthy Rhubarb and lush herbal bittersweet and rich Wormwood.

Its base holds the scent together with the softest White Musk and Cedarwood, alongside earthy Patchouli and dirty green Moss.

With nods to gourmand, citrus and floral scents, this is like a grown-up take on that rush of ’90s fragrances, not a cover but a remake. Upbeat, vivid, almost wild yet, at the same time as comes to be expected of this brand, elegant and almost dreamy as it settles on the skin.

As a niche brand, the very nature of Art De Parfum is to be a saboteur so now they have caught their very essence in a bottle.

To find out more and to buy the scent please visit artdeparfum.com here