NARS Audacious Perfume bottle by Clayton©

There are plenty of fun ways to celebrate a 25th birthday. For cosmetic giant NARS, it was the launch of its first ever signature scent. The brand’s founder, François Nars created his eponymous brand back in 1994, as a frustrated make-up artist who saw a gap in the market. NARS has since become something of a cult-classic, with bold but wearable cosmetics. I know our editor-in-chief Michelyn Camen is a long-time fan of NARS Audacious lipsticks. The Audacious moniker has been around since 2014 and now NARS have applied it to fragrance. To shepherd the brand forward into this new area, François Nars called upon French perfumer Olivia Giacobetti to create NARS first fragrance called Audacious. Giacobetti was an audacious choice on a number of levels but it shows NARS commitment to creating a fragrance with a point of difference.

Olivia Giacobetti in 2013

Olivia Giacobetti is a true master of her craft, but she is far from prolific, authoring new work once every few years. Audacious comes less than a year since after she added Talc to her own IUNX collection, a brand that is almost as elusive as Giacobetti; until recently IUNX fragrances were only sold from a small boutique adjoining the Hotel Costes in Paris. Before this, her most recent new work was a fragrance for Diptyque  in 2015 (a reformulation of her Ôponé from 2001 according to editor Ermano Picco).

What makes a Giacobetti fragrance so unique is her charmed ability to create transparent textures. Her fragrances almost haunt the skin they inhabit with an eloquent beauty. A good example of this style is a fragrance she created for L’Artisan Parfumeur Passage d’Enfer in 1999. The fragrance has an incense theme and her use of clean white musks and transparent woody notes gives the fragrance a sense of weightlessness and modernity. Smell it today and you wouldn’t guess it is now 20 years old. Within Giacobetti’s own collection, L’Ether de IUNX (2003) again showcases her talent for creating evocative skin scents.

I mention these two fragrances because, for me,  Nars Audacious Perfume feels related. It’s a study of light and dark, odours natural and man-made, flowers and smoke, it is a fragrance filled with contrasts with no tangible landmarks. In a sense it’s entirely abstract.

NARS Audacious Perfume opens with spicy floral notes of ylang ylang, frangipani, and tiare flower. Perfumers often play up the creamy facets of these tropical white floral notes but Audacious takes a different route. The floral notes are presented with a water-colour painterly effect. The ylang ylang is waxy, even a little bit leathery like narcissus flower. As the floral notes settle, the woody notes build dominance. A clean, cedarwood note is rounded by sandalwood and like Giacobetti’s other work, there is a soft oriental glow of incense in the background. A signature of her style is the way she works with musk. Nars Audacious Perfume is very musky but the musks Giacobetti uses and the transparency she is able to create in her compositions avoids any feeling that the fragrance is too cloying. Instead Audacious works like a veil of smoky woods and delicate petals over clean skin.

In addition to Giacobetti’s creation, the fragrance’s packaging is equally as considered. Playing on this theme of contrasts and abstraction, the packaging for NARS Audacious perfume is a mix of high gloss and matte surfaces, different textures, black and transparent glass with subtle branding.

Fans of Giacobetti’s previous work are likely to enjoy Audacious and will take comfort in its familiarity. It will be interesting to see how fans of NARS cosmetics for whom this is a first introduction to Olivia GIacobetti’s work receive Audacious. Personally, I can’t wait to see what comes next if more fragrances are being planned. Happy Birthday NARS!

Disclosure:   Clayton received his from @meccacosmetica in Australia,  opinions his own

Clayton Ilolahia, Guest Contributor, Editor of What Men Should Smell Like and Communication and Evaulation for Fragrances of the World

@cafleurebon @clayton_wmssl and @narcissist