Bogue Profumo OOOH x CaFleureBon by Antonio Gardoni
Bogue Profumo OOOH is the third in our CaFleureBon 10th anniversary bespoke fragrances and is the most ambitious; in many ways it is the very essence of CaFleureBon. Since 2010, our mission has been to create a “scented salon, where fragrance is presented through an artistic lens. Bogue Profumo OOOH is creative collaboration at its best, a fragrant metaphor that even during these dire times, art, beauty and love triumph.
Last March 2019 , I sent perfumer extraordinaire, Antonio Gardoni a photograph from our former editor and my friend Alex C. Musgrave aka“The Silver Fox”. The photo was a suggestion, not a brief. I hinted that mimosa and incense are ingredients I would love in our collaboration and mentioned the word “opulence”. 10 months later, Antonio sent me a mod of the yet to be named fragrance that became Bogue Profumo OOOH. Antonio is a true artist, and wanted to tweak the perfume he named “OOOH”. Once he did, Alex went through his photo archives and found a very different visual that truly brings OOOH to life. I asked artist Massimo Alfaioli (who also created our tenth anniversary banner) if he would be interested in illustrating the box and the inner wrapping paper of OOOH. He graciously accepted. Alex wrote the exquisite copy for the card that is included with each bottle of OOOH. I approached Franco Wright, co-owner of Luckyscent.com to be the exclusive retailer for OOOH and it was just this past week that Antonio suggested that a portion of the proceeds of OOOH be donated to help fight the insidious COVID-19.
photo by Antonio
Bogue Profumo OOOH is precious as it is the result of friendship, passion and dedication to the art of perfume, a tribute to CaFleureBon… to all our writers past and present and to our readers. If you are looking for a soundbite, I will borrow from the late Christian Dior…Bogue Profumo OOOH “smells like love”.-Michelyn Camen, Editor-in Chief
Antonio Gardoni of Bogue Profumo
“Something strange is happening and it’s something I always dreamed about it, a perfume that doesn’t really exist… you read reviews, you see it on social medias, you hear about it but you will probably never smell it (this will happen anyway even if we sell 10 bottles)… a ghost perfume, a mirage, an idea, a pure concept far from reality and business issues. Maybe it’s an opportunity for an extreme experimental approach…the formula I tried to create is based on the idea of multiple layers of dust, levels of powders that hide and shows reflections of smells. I mean I tried to express the powder quality of certain materials that are eventually not so obviously linked to the idea of dust/powder.
The dust of rose made of soil and wind
The obvious yellow pollen dust of mimosa on a busy road
The secret hearth dust of vetiver in a battlefield
The dust of my resins, the empty jar of benzoin in the desert
The dust of herbs, dried rosemary, sage, helichrysum, under the sun of a sexy afternoon
The dust of the aldehydes left on a waxed oak table
The dust of jasmine on a wet ground
The dust of all the citruses peels in a dirty cocktail glass
The dust of lavender leaves mixed with their roots
The dust that covers the idea of religion and its functional ritualistic incense– Antonio Gardoni
Alex’a photo is by Laura Meek
I was both honoured and intrigued to be asked by my friend Michelyn Camen at Cafleurebon if I could look at my photograph archive and choose some images I thought would fire the olfactive sparks of perfumers she hoped might consider working on a project to celebrate the upcoming decennial anniversary of Cafleurebon. I knew the perfumers she wanted to collaborate with, all of them talented and unique. One of them was the singular Antonio Gardoni, an Italian architect and designer who builds his dense, aromatic signature scents around tangled ruined landscapes of roses, oozing citruses, lavenders, shattered herbs and vetiver with the pungency of roaming rutting animals. There has always been an uneasy truce between decorum and libidinous rage in his work. I sense a wry humour as well, he is the loveliest of men, kind, generous and searchingly erudite. I spent days looking through the floral photographs I have taken since I abandoned fragrance journalism, worn out by the fickle perfume industry. I knew I had taken some images of pale-yellow baby roses, just on the edge of turning. I took over forty shots at night in a shuttered room using a variety of light sources. I don’t use filters of any sort. One worked for me, the blooms off kilter, blurred slightly as if shaken by their finality. I darkened a duplicate copy down slightly and created a double image, just shifting the images over each over and pulling the darker image to the fore. I got an echo of the petals, a before. I knew this was an image for my beloved Mr Gardoni and his complex perfumed mind of layers, cusps and souvenirs.
Alex’s baby yellow rose photograph
When Antonio sent me a bottle of OOOH I was overwhelmed by a scented image of my baby roses exploding into slo-mo xanthous dust over emptied roads, rusted cars and lush houses as a Scarlatti sonata plays in a fallen garden. As with all of his work time is needed to absorb strata and intentions and when this is complete OOOH made me very emotional. It is a fascinating thing to inhale an image and as always wear something exquisite by Bogue. –Alex C. Musgrave aka @everdandysilverfox
Massimo Alfaioli
I was very honored when Michelyn ask me to take part, through my illustration, to the project to celebrate the Cafleurebon 10th anniversary, a fragrance site that I admire so much and that I have been reading for many years.
Massimo’s illustration wraps the bottle
The project I worked on is in collaboration with the nose Antonio Gardoni and the writer and photographer Alex Musgrave under the creative direction of Michelyn. It was so emotional. When I received the sample of Oooh, Antonio’s perfume, I immediately realized that it was a perfume like no other. It’s doesn’t reveal itself immediately, you have to take a journey to arrive to it…
Bogue Profumo OOOH packaging Massimo Alfaioli
A wonderful journey. I created the illustration for the paper that wraps the perfume and I want it to reflect the perfume itself. The exterior decoration is dark… a tangle of dark leaves. You have to discard the box of the perfume to discover the yellow rose, like the one that Alex masterfully captured with the photo-Massimo Alfaioli
Bogue Profumo OOH is a 10 bottle limited edition 50 ml $530/.07 samples $16
6 bottles available online at Luckyscent.com UPDATE: sold out within 15 minutes but samples are available. https://www.luckyscent.com/product/669032/oooh-by-bogue-profumo
3 bottles will be available to purchase at the three Scent Bar locations (when they re-open in the near future)
1 bottle will be auctioned off on Ebay, https://www.ebay.com/itm/223966511475; 100% of sale proceeds will be donated to a local hospital in Italy – Fondazione comunita bresciana onlus