Writer Rosa Girona
YSL imbues its L’Homme and L’Homme Nuit fragrances with art by Norwegian artist Gardar Eide Einarsson. Addicts of this fragrance will now enjoy a limited, unique and charismatic Edition Art.
So important is a bottle in the choice of perfume that YSL wanted to dress its l’Homme fragrance in art for the gift and delight of its followers. For this occasion, it has chosen the Norwegian artist Gardar Eide Einarsson, “recognized for his proteiform work (mural or canvas painting, installations, photography, as well as posters, flyers, etc.) and for altering the elements of Western counterculture (graffiti, comics, skateboarding, tattooing and punk music)” as YSL spokespersons explain to us.
La Nuit de L’Homme
Light and shadows. An incisive freshness and fiery warmth. A fragrance full of contrasts, with an explosive and fresh start -cardamom and bergamot- and an extremely sensual and enveloping oriental base -coumarin and vetiver-, which encloses a noble heart of cedar wood, vibrant and mysterious, which clouds the senses with its intoxicating aroma. A modern fragrance with character (100ml, 89€).
L’Homme
The woody elegance of an attractive and charismatic trail. The fragrance plays with unprecedented combinations that give it a greater mystery. Its opening burst, with a citron, bergamot and ginger accord, is followed by a floral and spicy heart, with violet leaf, basil flower and pepper, all accompanied by a warm and woody trail, dotted with notes of sandalwood, Virginia cedar, vetiver and tonka bean (100ml, €89).
On sale exclusively at El Corte Inglés.
THE INTERVIEW
Gardar Eide Einarsson: Born in Norway and works between New York and Tokyo. His works, most of them in black and white, play with the distance between social symbolism and artistic vocabulary.
With these limited editions, Yves Saint Laurent pays tribute to its two iconic men’s fragrances – L’Homme and La Nuit de L’Homme. This original creation, somewhere between a fragrance and a work of art, is a tribute to a passion that has reflected the soul of the Maison Saint Laurent since its origins.
It’s the first time you’ve collaborated with a beauty brand on a project in this category. Why did you decide to do it?For me, the incredible legacy of Yves Saint Laurent is a great source of inspiration. The way, for example, that Saint Laurent himself collected his artwork is really fabulous. When we see images of his private collection, it represents exactly the way artists want their works to be collected. So, coming from a brand like Yves Saint Laurent, there was something really special about this project that encouraged me to participate in it.
What were your main sources of inspiration to create the works for YSL?I was inspired by two different aspects. First of all, there was the notion of masculinity, so the main thing is to ask what masculinity is and how it can be represented. Also, I thought that a kind of parallelism could be drawn between perfume and a certain style of painting, that there were similarities between the way perfume and an abstract painting act as means of expression. That’s why I wanted to create some pictorial and, at the same time, abstract works. I always tried to keep the bottles close to me to determine which aspects I wanted to highlight in each work. I started with the fragrance L’Homme, trying to interpret the type of masculinity that this perfume represents for me. In this way it became the central axis of the creation process and I decided to position La Nuit de L’Homme as the opposite pole, another extreme of that central masculinity. So I wanted to give La Nuit de L’Homme a darker character, with more body, as if it were trapped in a spider’s web.
You also played with the hexagonal shape of the cap of the bottles. How did this detail inspire you? I think the cap is really the distinctive stroke of the bottles. It’s beautiful! Its hexagonal shape is so simple and powerful at the same time that it imposed itself as the main element of these works.
What feeling do you hope men will have when they purchase one of these bottles?I think these limited edition bottles can be considered as a fragrance and, at the same time, as an artistic creation. For most it will simply be their usual fragrance, although I think they can also offer a secondary function, as a kind of mini sculpture.
