Ricky Chapman and Parker Manis- Founders of ES-84 Parfums

Profile: I (Parker Manis) was born and raised in Columbus, GA, moved to the Lehigh Valley, PA, when I was 13, and attended the Rhode Island School of Design, where I received my BFA in Industrial Design. Since then, I have lived in Milan, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, where I’ve been for the past 10 years. Over the last decade, I’ve worked in the field of customer-focused retail design, from mega corporate to small boutiques, and as a visual artist. Along the way I picked up via osmosis, the appreciation and passion for the more unique experiences and products that you didn’t see every day. Well executed concept, through physical and emotional user interface, became a welcome boon in a sea of the mundane. My business partner, and best friend, Ricky was born in Brighton, England, and at a fairly young age had opportunities to travel around the world, from the jungles of the Amazon in Peru to the streets of Manila. These early experiences expanded his appreciation of visual, cultural, and human expression; which has defined and been a characteristic of his approach to his career and work as an artist.

Self-taught, Ricky Chapman has an entrepreneurial mindset and has honed his sharp set of skills on the ground, in both independent and corporate contexts. He is as comfortable as a graphic and interaction focused designer as he is as a technical, fine art photographer. Similar to myself, he has spent close to ten years in the retail design world, specializing in beauty and fragrance brands. We’ve collaborated on countless projects since we first met 15 years ago; including work with Ralph Lauren, and other major brands, and in that time have developed a personal and professional rapport few achieve in a lifetime.

About 6 years ago, when Ricky and I were both working on the store design innovation team at a corporate brand, we overheard a meeting in the background discussing Eau de Toilette, Eau de Cologne, and Eau de Parfum. Given that we’d (Ricky and myself) developed our own language through friendship fueled by inference, one of us drew the natural concluding statement of “Eau Shit” and we laughed initially at the absurdity of it, then immediately realized – there’s an opportunity there if we actually ran with it as its own label.

We were reaching that point of being just jaded enough through years of corporate consulting to follow our intuition and it was then that we decided to set the stage for the beginning of ES-84 with people who were of the same dispositions as us in leaving the safe / predictable. We researched noses we respected, learned the more commercial side of the fragrance industry, mainstream and niche. Commercial isn’t bad by any stretch, however, we wanted to pursue the uniqueness that only comes from asking “what if”, “why not”, and “If this is pushing it too far, is there a connective thread that renders also accessible enough to a mainstream audience?”.

Opening method of  ES-84 Moment Total showing the glass vial housed in the plaster sleeve

Having researched and contacting noses, we booked flights to Paris. Second to last night in Paris we were at a well-stocked fragrance boutique smelling everything we’d never heard of or seen before and came across a scent that smelled unique, odd, beautiful, full spectrum, and made you (the user) actually do the mental work to wrap your head around what exactly it was that made this so appealing on a visceral level. Did a little digging that night and came to find that the noses for some fragrances for Aether were based in Paris, and they’d taken on this project which required the exclusive use of synthetics to create the profiles. Late night email exchange set a meeting with the noses of Flair Paris (olfactively led by Anne-Sophie Behaghel and Amelie Bourgeois) the next day. In these two master perfumers we met a match. They were hungry to push into the conceptual, and their method of working together was unlike anything else we’d come across before and ES-84 was born. They both design to the brief, do not tell you who did which iteration, and let you choose what direction you want to work in. Funny enough, we still don’t know for sure who’s initial translations we went with.

Ricky engaging with customer about the concept and experience of Moment Total

We launched in-store with UNION Los Angeles on October 31st 2019 with an experiential event that, by intention, allowed us to work more in media that creates real interaction: scent, sound, interplay of space, roles and relationships of different ‘characters’ with guests. We had staff and a few local friends dress the part, and pushed the connective aesthetic lines between Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner – including enough humor / quirk as to not be off puttingly self-serious, but deliver enough of the brutalist aspects of a dystopian architecture mimicking the profile of the product packaging itself.

Associates in character at UNION Los Angeles launch event

This was critical because the packaging, both primary and secondary, are equally as important as the scent in our vision for ES-84 overall. The main thing at the beginning of ES-84 was to do our best to deliver the full-spectrum experience to the customer.

Visual display w fixtures referencing the packaging of Moment Total post launch at UNION Los Angeles

The packaging for this initial travel size release, as with all of our packaging still in development, is unique, specific to this scent, and developed in tandem with the bottle as part of a complete, essential statement. The material: hydrocal plaster is a structural material, as well as a fragile one, and its duality is the reason for its use in the secondary of Moment Totál. A sensory response to both of those aspects, the durable and the delicate, is triggered the instant the plaster sleeve meets the hand. It is meant to reflect those transformative “eau shit” moments in life that often arrive with hardness, have the capacity to shatter, and yet also, when responded to with intentionality, can produce beautiful, precious things. This is further underlined in the plaster sleeve’s shape and aesthetic, referencing both the brutalist and atmospheric – an intangible balance that rests between the eyes and the hands.

Ricky in Mexico City meeting with local designers and gallery directors to build a relationship network that spans beyond the US

On American Perfumery: Starting ES-84 Parfums has been a bear to be honest. With everything we’re developing being proprietary, there are endless iterations of every aspect in the design and production process. Having traditional vendors telling us over and over again “No one does it like that. You should just do this, or use this” has fallen on deaf ears in the pursuit of something larger and more human in its intention. We were fortunate that there are believers such as AEDES de Venustus, one of the world’s most respected destinations for niche perfumery.

Parker in Venice on his way to tour the Murano-based glass factory, Venini, to discuss alternative processes within the material

ES-84 Parfums by default, is as independent as you can get. All our plaster sleeves are hand poured by artisans in Long Island City, and the full size EDP which we’ll be releasing soon (targeting Spring 2021) will have bottles produced with a proprietary technique that’s been 3 years in the making with specialists down in Mexico.

Parker and Ricky at glass factory in Mexico City working with team on QC and packaging testing

As people, we are wired to appreciate beauty and meaning on a deeper level than the mass marketing of trends and status quo. As a company, we are compelled to create fragrance products that engage on that level. We seek to affirm, to encourage, to challenge, and to celebrate the human experience, via passionately designed, and thoughtfully beautiful products that are dynamic in the full spectrum of scent, bottle, packaging, and marketing.

Michael Heizer ‘City” via wikipedia   a mile and a half long sculpture

Favorite American Artist: Michael Heizer – one of the pioneers in the Earthworks movement who has developed far beyond that. He’s not a ‘one thing’ guy and has this ability to play with the language of dimensionality both in 2D and 3D. From the scale, to the intricacy of detail in what he’s produced, he’s also been able to imbue his works with an unspoken, understood level of spirituality that moves you. His work gets through you to where you’re affected in a tangible, emotionally resonant way. Less about being objectively pretty, and more about forcing the viewer into a sense of reverence as he channels between this world and a seemingly ancient one.

– Parker Manis & Ricky Chapman Founders and Co-Creative Directors of of ES-84 Parfums

 ES-84 ‘Eau Shit” Moment Totál 

 Notes: Head/Top: Fresh Ginger, Dmbc Acetate (Herbal Note); Heart/Middle: Patchouli, Smokey Woods, Base/Bottom: Ambergris, Vetiver, Karanal (Metalic Woods)

Thanks to ES-84 Parfums we have a of 1 7.5 ml parfum Moment Total ($65) for a registered reader  ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.  To enter the draw, you must be a registered reader. Please leave a comment with what you found fascinating about Parker Manis and Ricky Chapman’s path to perfumery and where you live Draw closes August 26, 2020

Parker Manis and Ricky Chapman are our 154th  in our American perfumer series, which officially began in 2001 with Dawn Spencer Hurwitz of DSH Perfumes.

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