Angelo Orazio Pregoni Initiates Surrealist Perfume Salon

by: Suzy Nightingale

Never a shrinking violet, the controversial Angelo Orazio Pregoni of O’DRIU Parfumsis in London to launch the initial Perfume Salon – an event held in a converted crypt decorated with surrealist wall paintings—to gather already passionate perfumistas and curious onlookers alike. Together, we are here to see him talk about his extraordinary fragrances, discuss our reactions to perfume in general and listen to music-hall style songs from a talented young musician waxing lyrical on the theme of this scented spectacle.

‘Created and hosted by Perfumista Anna Katz THE PERFUME SALON will fuse fragrance with music.

THE PERFUME SALON will present a series of events which feature both perfumers and musicians with an audience of fragrance fans ('fumeheads'), music aficionados and the merely downright curious.

For many emerging perfumers THE PERFUME SALON will be their first visit to the UK and aims to offer a unique opportunity for them to showcase their wares to prospective agents, outlets and perfume enthusiasts. Similarly for young and unsigned musicians, these events will provide an opportunity to perform to a new and curious audience in interesting and often unusual venues.

Together, these two esoteric elements are designed to create an enjoyable and eclectic evening of entertainment.

HOST :   ANNA KATZ

With an Art college background and reputable history of curating bespoke collections of niche fragrances, consulting on fragrance and design, Anna is your host extraordinaire in her alter ego of ‘Ada Odour’.  Having lived in New York, Manchester, Bristol and London, her time is now split equally between London and the Dordogne.

THE PERFUMER:   ANGELO ORAZIO PREGONI  -  O'DRIU. www.odriu.eu

Angelo hails from Milan. This will be his inaugural appearance in the UK.  His creation O'Driu is a brand which aims to deconstruct ideals and predictions expected from the perfume world. Noted for his experimental compositions and 'stopping you in your tracks' presentation, Pregoni impales the audience with interest and intrigue.   Angelo Orazio Pregoni brings us olfactory theatre!

Take note of this unconventional perfumer—we believe he is set to create a big impression!

THE MUSICIAN :    OTIS COULTER

With a three-octave range and lyrics covering topics as farfetched as murder, disembowelment and olfactory orgasm, singer-songwriter Otis Coulter's piano melodies and unconventional vocal performances should provide a suitable backdrop for O'Driu's renegade perfume showcase. Currently a student at Goldsmiths College, Otis hails from a highly notable and prolific family of musicians and performers.

THE VENUE:    VOUT-O-REENEES vout-o-reenees.com

Vout-O-Reenee’s is a new private members arts club and art gallery set up by writer, poet and artist Sophie Parkin and her husband Jan Vink.  This fabulous new venue is the secret of the East End of London with its hand painted walls and floors, it is a very special place and perfect for THE PERFUME SALON.  Vout-O-Reenees is close to Tower Hill and Aldgate East tube in the crypt beneath the Pugin Church, 30 Prescot Street, London, E1 8BB.’
 

An intriguing chap of the darkly brooding variety; I grabbed the opportunity to interview Angelo exclusively for Fragrantica before the evening began, and thus we snatched up a glass of wine and disappeared behind a colorful curtain as the crowds began arriving and taking their places. Angelo speaks far better English than I do Italian, but an interpreter was on hand to ensure we understood each other perfectly, and so having settled at a long table in a small ante-room decorated to look as though you have stepped right inside a Monet painting (had Monet been taking LSD), I began tentatively asking him questions and building up to the ever-pressing question of peeing in perfumes. Yes, really.

Angelo Orazio Pregoni & Suzy Nightingale

Suzy Nightingale: So Angelo, can you tell me a little about what we can expect this evening, and why you wanted to talk about your perfumes at a Perfume Salon?

Angelo Orazio Pregoni: “Well, it is a great occasion in which to introduce my perfumes from the O’DRIU line and also to introduce myself to the public.”

Suzy: Why do you like working in the medium of fragrance, why does perfume particularly inspire you?

Angelo: “Before, I used to work in the arts world, and I always thought how art could fit into the perfume world. In 1996 I started making perfumes and developed my own concept and finally launched my own brand in order to accomplish this dream.”

Suzy: Is there perhaps something in your childhood that triggered this love of perfume or made you think about using fragrance in a particular way?

Angelo: “When I was a kid I remember that I always preferred cooking rather than playing with toy cars or anything like that. One of the memories that really sticks in my mind is my mother’s milk, I have a very clear memory of the taste of breast milk. I think that because taste and smell are so connected, this early memory has stayed with me all these years and it is definitely something I focus on and have been inspired by, this link.”

Suzy: Have there been any perfumes you have found difficult to develop from their initial inspiration to how you wanted them to smell?

Angelo: “I have never really had any problems going from the inspiration to the actuality of a perfume. What I do is choose a theme and then build the inspiration around that, I develop it that way based on the differing fragrances that can spring from that. Something that shouldn’t happen in artistic perfumery of the truest kind is anything that keeps you from achieving this, it should be a clear vision that leads you. The concept always comes first, and the closer it is to my feelings the easier it is to convey and therefore to make.”

Suzy: Do you think perfume as an art form is being taken more seriously now? In the past if you mentioned perfume and art together, many people seemed quite disparaging and to laugh at the very idea.

Angelo: “Well to tell the truth I don’t think there is any form of art in artistic perfumery, because there is no artist. Very often it’s multinational companies, who dress themselves up as ‘niche’, and then there are artisans who do produce great perfumes but still they have no artistic content in themselves. The perfume itself is not artistic, what is artistic is the thought and the performance behind it, and this is what connects the artisan and the final recipient. So, it is important to understand the reaction to your perfume, the only connection should be the concept and the understanding of the person who uses the perfume – you are the person who makes it art if it can be artistic at all, it is your reaction which is the artistic performance of the original idea.”

Suzy: And do you have input throughout the creative stages of the perfume – do you design the bottles, too? They are such interesting shapes and I wondered what significance they have to you.

Angelo: “Yes, I design the bottles, Peety was the first one and I wanted it to be like a fetish version of a Samurai dress, the clothing of a monk. It is furthering the idea of becoming a magician, everything about Peety is a ‘fetish’ perfume because of this concept. You put something of yourself inside the bottle, literally you pee into it, and this little part of you transforms it into a spell, almost, it becomes connected to you.”

Suzy: How have people taken to this idea, do you find they are reluctant and so you have to explain Peety more to them so they get what you are trying to do?

Angelo: “Oh yes, definitely I have to explain, because I think the world of perfumery is 50 years behind the world of fashion and 100 years behind the world of art. I think there are still loads of stereotypes in the world of perfume, and the people do not always considerate as alchemy and a journey as it should be, they are used to speaking only about ingredients and not understand the true measure of a perfume is to be original. Often critics speak about perfume and how it resembles a famous or classic perfume of the past. If that happened in the fashion field the designer would not be considered original, they would be laughed at. Instead, in perfumery, it is very common to continually cite something that happened in the past and only be proud of that, which is very strange.”

Suzy: If that’s true, why do you think perfumers cling to the past so much, what in your opinion are they afraid of?

Angelo: “It’s mainly I think an overpoweringly strong marketing division that smothers them this way. What I do with my perfume is make the names sound French and then make them sound stupid, because I think that France is the donkey of the perfume world. This slows down the creativity of the other people trying to do something original.”

Suzy: It’s strange, because at the time many of the perfumes that are now considered classics were first released, they were then considered shocking to the public – they were very different to anything that had gone before. Do you think people just hark back to those all the time and prevent themselves moving forward, then?

Angelo: “Yes absolutely, and we realized this at a performance I did during the last Pitti Fragranze. We made a fragrance that we called ‘Pee Chanel’, but translated into Italian it meant ‘to pee into the Chanel’. I think that Chanel No. 5 was in fact the last invention in perfumery, and Coco Chanel wasn’t even a perfumer herself, she was a fashion designer, and it was all about being a synthetic fragrance that was then shocking. So, what we did was to empty some Chanel bottles and fill it with our fragrance, and then we peed in it to make people understand that they have to move forward from this.”

Suzy: So was this to shatter the sacred image of Chanel No. 5?

Angelo: “No, I have total and utter respect for Coco Chanel and her fragrances, in fact I think if she were alive today she would be making something like Peety, trying to do something new still and not look backwards. All perfumery is the same to me, Chanel No. 5 represents a block in the market and so we need to understand not to only copy the past, you have to be original. This year is strange because I read all the interviews, even with some perfumers who call themselves ‘niche’, and the press releases of perfumes, and they still seem to only be interested in copying. To me this kind of perfume it is like creating a fake designer handbag, it has exactly the same lack of merit.”

And with that, the show had to begin, so Angelo was whisked off to meet the public in the larger room beyond, and I shuffled through the curtain still clutching my glass of wine and took a seat beside two ladies who hadn’t tried his perfumes before and didn’t know very much about them, but were very interested in learning more. A young man sang in a bright clear tone and as the evening progressed, we certainly got to know more of Angelo, and of course the audience spent most of the evening talking about whether they could bring themselves to pee in Peety. Blotter strips of the fragrances were handed around and the reaction to them all was incredibly favourable. It was utterly fascinating to watch people’s faces sniff Peety in delight, exclaiming at how beautiful it was, and then to recoil slightly when the talk about peeing into it began. One man secreted in the corner started giggling somewhat nervously, some people looked rather askance at the whole idea while the majority seemed genuinely intrigued and it certainly provoked much heated discussion among the crowd. It struck me that this is exactly what a Salon of any kind should do – this was no mere sales demonstration of a latest launch, it was a shared and cerebral learning experience.

‘Peety™, the very first su misura for everyone. An exclusive pop perfume. A marvellous perfume triggered by ten drops of one’s own pee, to become unique. Peety™ is a veritable cultural and technical revolution in the perfumery world. Deranging by itself, once and for all, Peety™ draws the line between art and perfume, far outstripping each and every moral or ethical code, carrying towards a primitive olfactory communication. Sensuous as few other fragrances, Peety™ lives on the skin and in the mind of its user. Rose and jasmine tingle the nose, muffled by vague suspicions of tobacco and lichens. Then, mandarin and bitter orange hurl us in a liberty world, made of fine ambers, cinnamon and pink pepper. Rounded as the brown patchouli, elegant as sandalwood and Tonka bean are. A masterpiece of technique and suggestions, Peety™ gains its strength from sub-cultural taboos, to come out of the mass-market perfumery stereotypes and to become a pure emotional footprint of the one who has it on, unique!’

'Can you use any other bodily secretions?' piped up the musician, Otis Coulter.

Angelo: "No, I do not think that would be wise. Perhaps in the future! But pee is the best thing to use to produce the chemical reaction. At first it will go milky, so you can see something is happening, but it will then go clear again. There is 49ml of fragrance in each bottle, leaving room for 1 ml of your pee if you wish to personalize it. Then it becomes a 'fetish', it is magical to you, you have changed it even though the smell may not change, you will know each time someone asks you what perfume you are wearing, or remarks how lovely you smell—all time you will know, secretly, that you are wearing your own pee ... 70% of communication is through smell, 20% through body language and only 10% through words. It's important to know what you are saying through your smell, how people are reacting, personally, to you. Even if other people's noses can't smell it, their brain can."

Following this remark, there was much discussion about if the pee would alter the smell of the fragrance itself and that people may be reluctant to do that – apart from any other inhibition they may have about peeing in a bottle of perfume. The ladies next to me wondered if you would squat over the bottle to get it in, and I helpfully suggested that perhaps one might pee over a rather larger receptacle and use a funnel with which to transfer it.

Audience member: 'Can you use the other sex's wee in the perfume you wear?'

Angelo: "Yes I would love that! I love when that happens. People tell me they have peed in the Peety they have given to their loved one. They feel they want them to wear their smell. They feel they want them to be more loyal, perhaps? Art is not in the object but in the performance."

I should talk about the smell of Peety (undiluted) itself – I have to tell you that it is glorious. A sumptuous and opulent amber that immediately surrounds you with a suitably golden aura of carefully spiced mist, I fell for it completely and utterly. There is something entirely addictive about it which I couldn’t quite pin down, it smelled familiar in an exotic fog sort of a way, as though I had known it for a very long time and forgotten about it, and yet it is quite unlike anything else I can think of. Most peculiar. Everyone I have told about it has asked me the same question – as they will doubtless ask you if you decide to try it: ‘But Suzy’, they say, their eyebrows rising incredulously; ‘WOULD you wee in it?!’ Well, dear readers, I was given a sample vial to try and so the question was taken out of my hands, so to speak, but had I a (mostly) full bottle… you know what? I think I would. It somehow seems a terrible shame not to, and I would rather relish the shock if you chose to tell people. It could also be a wonderful way of ensuring people don’t keep stealing your perfumes.

How to follow an act like Peety? Well I’m not sure anything could, frankly, but the next couple of fragrances we tried certainly had a good stab at doing so.

Pathetique

‘Pathétique™ is much more than just a fragrance: it is a wonderful olfactory synthesis of the innovative art project. Angelo Orazio Pregoni chosen the name with great irony, as a sign of the critics to the current perfumery and its lack of novelty and innovation. In spite of its name, Pathétique™ is a great perfume, a masterpiece of the most creative Nose of the whole world of perfumery, an absolutely surprising fragrance that conquers senses, heart and mind as no other.

Angelo: "It's the opposite of marketing a perfume, this name. In it I am playing with stereotypes that you can get in the world of perfumes. I remember my mother wearing a tanning lotion which smelled of coconut and bergamot. I loved it, but it was actually quite trashy and obvious in a way. This is my translation of that into a smoother way of wearing it. It's been called a 'performance perfume' because it is in some ways based on characters I played with online, in social media. I find so many niche perfumers and people who profess to be experts in niche perfumery and talk about art and perfume... actually they don't know art at all, or perhaps they know a little bit about Picasso. They talk about art but they don't know what art is, sometimes, I think they get confused and also the public get confused. Otherwise we are talking about a niche perfume being labelled that merely because the person who produced it wants to be seen that way, rather than what is in the bottle being different to anything else. You should make art by being different even if you are criticized."

I found Pathétique to be a fully-rounded gourmand, plump and juicy coconut milk sweetened with vanilla dominates at first but softens to become milk infused with lemon balm and what seems like nutmeg and perhaps a touch of something aniseed-y. I actually like the idea of the name and think it would be incredibly amusing to have someone lean closer to ask what perfume you are wearing, and be able to say with a completely straight face: ‘Ah, Pathetique!’

Eva Kant

‘Eva Kant is the first fragrance invented and created for the Diabolik’s partner in life and crime.

Eva Kant, with its mechanism of reckless and charming notes, tells about the most elusive and seducing woman in the comic world: it represents a completely new way to style a perfume.

“EVA KANT il profumo” is like a captivating dark story: it’s introduced by the bitter and pungent grapefruit notes, then tamed by the gentler lavender ones, and then by damp woods. After the first feelings, one wants to get to the heart, but it needs to capitulate to Eva, to follow her, blinded and bonded, in her numberless coverts.

Only giving up to her, indulging in her lethal fascination, we can discovery another fragment of Eva’s obscure world: something exposed by mystical myrrh, hot sandalwood, spicy ginger. Magnolia and Ylang-Ylang hide themselves behind this alchemy. At last, our nose and our mind are spirited away by the roman chamomile, are inebriated and seduced by cardamom, entangled by the vanilla. Then, benzoin frees us from the blindfold, leaving us a magnificent “vision”.’

Angelo spoke a little less about Eva Kant than the previous perfumes, perhaps because we had all been so focused on the peeing escapades, as you might very well expect us to have been. Eva Kant is based on a comic book seductress character, and you definitely get that from the first blast—it’s all pure white flowers with evil intent. The top notes are gaspingly clear, edging towards strident in fact, before a softening muskiness releases the icy grip and it becomes soft and deadly as freshly fallen snow. The magnolia is really beautiful here, almost aquatic in nature, ethereal yet sleekly honed.

If you are still reeling from the idea of Peety, I would urge you to ignore the words behind the perfumes and even the concepts themselves—just as Angelo, in fact, is urging the perfume wearer to do. There is no doubt they are beautiful, each of them is quite unique and they stand—as all perfumes should—very much on their own. Personally I am amused by the way they are presented, I may not agree with all Angelo said, but I do think it is always a good idea to shake up the world every now and again to check we’re still awake. I adore the idea of The Perfume Salon—I think it works perfectly as a platform to explore and discuss the world of perfumery and those who are seeking to make their mark on it. The crowd around me all enjoyed themselves thoroughly, too—the venue of Vent-O-Reenees is a stunning location and made me feel I had been transported back to a more glamorous era when such salons would have occurred throughout the city several nights a week. On leaving, I was thrilled to learn The Perfume Salon will hopefully be a regular event.

"We already have a series of Perfume Salons planned for 2015, each Salon will feature different performers, our music acts will range from folk, blues to classical, making each Salon unique.

Save the date:…
Tuesday 3rd February 2015 at Vout-O-Reenes. Details of performers to be announced soon."

For further information, please contact the event organizer, Anna Katz:annakatz.theperfumesalon@gmail.com