Fragrance Composer Frédéric Malle Creates New Scent: Music For A While

The fragrance maestro makes fragrant music for spring with his revered scent partner Carlos Benaïm.

by SunHee Grinnell

Wanting to create a balmy, amber perfume built around lavender, Frédéric Mallelooked to his long-time fragrance collaborator Carlos Benaïm to create Music For A While, which launches March 1st.

This scent is what the fragrance industry categorizes as an “oriental perfume”— composed around lavender and blended with alluring patchouli, amber, and vanilla notes. This warm but sharp composition alludes to life’s varied moments of impulse and seduction with Parisian sophistication intact, bien sur. And when asked what imagery came to his mind when creating this scent he says, “those who admire Helmut Newton’s photographs will be familiar with this perfume’s effect." Perhaps it’s the famed black and white image of Charlotte Rampling at Hotel Nord Pinus II in Arles, 1973, or Catherine Deneuve in a spaghetti strap slip gown in Paris, 1976, but no matter. The scent “speaks to the nature of music as something that unravels in time,” Malle explains further, and this new eau de parfum is a symphony indeed.

sunhee grinnell