Eau de Californie, Celine: Hedi Slimane’s home in Beverly Hills
Hedi Slimane pays homage to his love affair with California: summers on the beaches of San Clemente and San Onofre, the scent of Connolly leather on a Rolls Royce Corniche
California in Monochrome: a picturesque intensity
A darkened room, a young woman with a tattooed torso lies on the ground, face partly obscured by her black hair; a basketball court and a topless youth turns his chiselled back to the camera; a man leans against a piano, holding a guitar, smoke swirling around him. This is California but not as you imagine it. It is a dark, intense world that is far removed from the polished veneer that is so frequently associated with the Golden State.
It is a step away from the flashing lights and forms of Hollywood of today and a move towards the currents that simmer below the surface and the memory of the 1950s and 1960s where individuals such as Steve McQueen and Marlon Brando represented a counterculture that captivated. For those who seek it, it can be found in dark alleys, in the heat of the desert and along the coastline where the waves crash on the shore as much as it can be along the palm lined avenues and in the heights of Beverly Hills.
MOCA in Los Angeles, 2011
Expressing this aspect of California through the visual means of photography was until now the best-known testimony to Hedi Slimane’s decade spent in the state. The series of black and white photographs that he took during this time, and which were exhibited at MOCA in Los Angeles in 2011, are defined by a chiaroscuro that lends these scenes a picturesque intensity.
The images show a range of characters from skaters to surfers to musicians, united by a haunting intensity to their guise and the way they situate themselves in the environments that they inhabit. Befitting the exhibition’s title ‘California Song’ there is an acoustic element and a haunting sense of melody. Movement is transformed; long shadows contrast with lights and forms are almost abstracted through the angle of the photographer’s lens. There is a certain cinematic element to these images, but not that of the idealized world of today’s Hollywood.
In visual form, this gritty nature is entirely at one with the androgyny and rawness that Hedi Slimane communicates through his fashion designs, whether at Dior Homme, Yves Saint Laurent or at Celine. This is an edginess to the sharp tailoring, monochrome colouring and metallic detailing that is consistent with the photographs that make up Slimane’s ‘California Song’.
Fragrance as Memory
Slimane’s most recent creative expression is through perfume. The range of nine fragrances of which Eau de Californie forms part of, is the first to be released by the French house of Celine in the past fifty years. They are in part a natural complement to Slimane’s visual and textural creativity for he is the creative force behind their essence and their impact. Eau de Californie is a particularly personal one for Slimane for it was directly inspired by his time spent in California and in specific notes that reflect on a formative period in Slimane’s career.
[envira-gallery id=”120587″]
A prolonged affair with a geographic area
These memories of his California Period find a different outlet through the medium of fragrance to that communicated in fashion or in photography. Where visual images connect to a specific place or time or aesthetic, sensorial images evoke a range of memories that cannot be tied to a specific place, but instead to emotions and sensations. This is partly because the parts of our brain that process scent are adjacent to the areas where memories are stored. Combining scent and memory allows for a means to communicate experiences in an intangible way that can surprise in its intensity, subtlety and immediacy.
How then does this fragrance capture the essence of California? Or how do you reduce a state such as California, to whom so many have a personal or idealised connection to one that is connected to personal memories? Whether that is a connection to a single memory or to a prolonged affair with a geographic area or with a city, or with a single place that makes memories come flooding back?
From California to Paris
The central tone around which Eau de Californie revolves is Palo Santo. A wood native to South America, and to Peru, it is one of the most fragrant woods in the world but has other qualities that go beyond scent and are less tangible. On combustion, the smoke that the wood emits is believed to have spiritual qualities that aid in the removal of negative energy, spiritual cleansing and inspiring a greater connection with the divine. When the flame is lit and the wood continues to smoulder, smoke spirals through the air, casting the space into a haze.
These tendrils evoke that of cigarette smoke, yet the scent is headier and intoxicating than that of tobacco. For Slimane this note was key to capturing his memories of California. It was a regular ritual for him to set a flame to a stick of Palo Santo at his house in Beverly Hills and to let the fragrance diffuse through his house and so evokes days and nights enveloped in the intoxicating smell.
Summer for Slimane: the beaches of San Clemente
It is from this departure point that the Eau de Californie develops. The poudré note of patchouli and the notes of bergamot are partly inspired by Californian flowers while the white orris softens this mélange. In turn, this creates a lighter, more carefree fragrance to that of the intensity of Palo Santo. For the Golden State is as much about its rugged nature as it is the urbane grit. The spray of the sea and the invigoration of the tides that surfers seek to catch. Summer for Slimane is tied to memories of time spent on the beaches of San Clemente. The scent of the salt on the sea breeze; the crust of salt on the skin: all of these elements are encapsulated through the overarching freshness of the perfume, despite its resinous and smoky heart.
Finally, it is the top notes that connect this fragrance to Slimane’s present and to the past of Celine. Elements of Iris and moss are more subtle than that of Palo Santo and have a restrained elegance to them. In this respect, the perfume reminds one of those traditionally associated with a Parisian Couture House, and therefore the essence of Celine. This heritage is further emphasized through the design of the bottle: solid glass with black lacquered cork and decorated with seventeenth-century white shapes, and the lid with its engraving of the Celine crest Triomphe.
Slimane’s life and how his experiences will shape the face of Celine
In California, and for Slimane, it is an ode that is expressed in multiple languages yet in a single scent. That is to say that the way that Slimane expresses his experience of California is a strikingly personal one that goes beyond the mirage. Instead, there is a certain intimacy that speaks to a connection not only with California, but also with Slimane’s life and how his experiences will shape the face of Celine. It is this unique purview that is as much affected by Slimane’s California Period as it is his engagement and view on the world around him.
Celine Haute Parfumerie
Celine’s Haute Parfum collection has been released in 2019, commissioned by Hedi Slimane, who also designed the Haute Parfum collection for Maison Dior in 2004. Each perfume reflects the French brand’s style codes: without gender, it subtly combines traditionally masculine and feminine notes.
