What does conspicuous consumption smell like? On a December afternoon in 2013, the Parisian perfumer Francis Kurkdjian was scheduled to meet with the renowned French crystal manufacturer Baccarat at the company’s chandelier-crammed headquarters, near the Arc de Triomphe. The C.E.O. at the time, Daniela Riccardi, had commissioned Kurkdjian to create a limited-edition fragrance to mark the company’s two-hundred-andfiftieth anniversary. Baccarat planned to produce two hundred and f ifty diamond-cut crystal flacons of the new perfume, priced at three thousand euros each, and wanted the scent to reflect the quality and opulence of its vessel.
Kurkdjian (pronounced “cur-zsan”) is a fifty-five-year-old of Armenian descent, with close-cropped hair, smooth manicured hands, and Clooneyesque salt-and-pepper stubble. During three decades in the luxury-fragrance industry, he has created such hits as Narciso Rodriguez for Her, Burberry Her, and Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male. He is the head of his own perfume company, Maison Francis Kurkdjian, and since 2021 has also served as the perfumecreation director for the fashion house Christian Dior, a job that involves reinventing such storied scents as J’Adore and Miss Dior. (Both Dior and Maison Francis Kurkdjian are subsidiaries of the luxury conglomerate L.V.M.H.) For Baccarat, Kurkdjian had designed three samples riffing on scents that were popular at the time when Baccarat was founded. But he’d begun to have misgivings. “I was not happy about what I created,” he recalled recently. “I felt it was too old-fashioned.” As he was about to leave his office, he opened a drawer where he keeps what he calls his “hidden treasures”—perfumes he’s created that have never been bottled—and picked up a vial labelled “HEVA.”
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 23, 2024 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 23, 2024 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
