The Letter No. 3 — the artists

Hi Fragrant Friend 👋

If you're new here, a warm welcome. Some of you are joining from my old Scently Speaking letters, and I'm glad you came along. The short version: New Niche is building its first collection of fragrances, and this is the letter where they take shape.

Last time I told you there wouldn't be one new fragrance, but two. Anyone who has followed New Niche since the very first release knows that every scent we make is carried and interpreted by an artist. So now that you've met Mansour Osman, our second perfumer, it's only right that the two artists step into the light as well.

There's a reason we're working with one perfumer and two artists this time. The two fragrances come from completely different places, and they move in completely different directions. And Mansour himself, very differently from Chester, is an artist of linear, almost avant-garde compositions, scents that hold one clear line instead of unfolding into a story. One nose, two worlds.

The Artists

Before I tell you how they turned out, a word on how we work. None of what follows is just my verdict. From early on there's been a small group of us smelling and arguing over initial versions: Damjan, Petra, Anna and me. You all know I'm no fragrance critic, and I've probably smelled fewer scents than most of you reading this. So take the next lines as our shared first impression, four people trying to put words to something that mostly resists them.

The first fragrance (#2), interpreted by Sophia Toschka with a work from her Traces series, is the more extroverted of the two. We kept reaching past the notes for a feeling instead: something grassy and green, a bite of grapefruit, a nutty warmth sitting underneath it all. Mansour built it almost like a remix. It began with a fragrance by his mentor, Christophe Laudamiel, and he ran it through his own DNA until it became something entirely his.

The second, interpreted by Stephanie Saeta (#3), a Brazilian artist living here in Berlin, with a work from her Whispers series, was harder for any of us to put down. It's a sensual play between light and dry wood, the light breaking through the wood over and over. Of everything we smelled, it was the one we most wanted to crawl inside and stay in. And for all its linearity, there's a solar contrast that keeps flashing through, something that makes it feel open and mysterious at the very same time.

One More Thing

But that isn't all. This time we're taking the idea of multidisciplinary art a step further. The artworks will of course live on the packaging, as they always have. But very soon they'll also be something you can experience in person, here in Berlin, at a Pop-Up, standing right next to the fragrances themselves. More on that in the coming issues.

Working this way, two fragrances at once, two artists and one perfumer, brings a whole new kind of complexity. But it's a complexity I feel ready for. Having worked my way through every part of it with the first fragrance, I now have people I trust, the one-time groundwork is behind me, and I can build on systems that already exist. It's good to know they're there.

More soon.