by: John Biebel
Recently I was very fortunate to have a conversation with Vincent Micotti, perfumer and founder of YS-UZAC, the cutting-edge Swiss perfume brand that has brought us such modern classics as Pohadka, Immortal Beloved, and Oud Ankaa. Vincent and I spoke between Lausanne, Switzerland and Boston, Massachusetts, US on a cold and snowy day (in both our respective countries), managing however to conjure up the rich color of perfumed creativity. Mr. Micotti’s newest creations have been reviewed here on Fragrantica, and YS-UZAC will be represented at Esxence 2015.
Vincent Micotti and Vera Yeoh, founders of YS-UZAC
John Biebel: Mr. Micotti, can you tell me something about your background as a perfumer? How did you come to work in perfume?
Vincent Micotti: Perfume has always been around me, as my family was closely befriended with someone in the perfume industry already. This made me aware of this as a job from a very young age. So the passion for scents, and my artistic background (I made two Doctor of Musical Arts degrees) took me almost by force, and I got deep into the creation of perfumes.
JB: Could you tell me some more about your background in Music?
VM: Yes, well perfume has been an interest forever, but I had another interest, which is cello, classical music. I studied this instrument very seriously in Europe first in Switzerland and then in Germany. It’s been a big part of my life, and I was very happy that I could study with great, incredible and famous teachers in music now.
JB: And did you start to play very young? Did you begin your studies at a young age?
VM: Children start to play very young, of course. I started to really work and study heavily, very constantly in my formative years, so I spent many years of my life on this instrument.
JB: I’m sure this must have had a very big influence on you in the creation of perfumes—there must be a lot of connections for you.
VM: Obviously creativity starts in your mind, in your head, in your everyday life, however you need some way to express that creativity, through paint or through music—and I did this so much with music. It makes it all more obvious for me when I started mixing in perfume, to imagine what this or that could smell like, what it could react like with something else; it was what I was doing for many, many years with music.
JB: Mediums like music or scent, when you see them in your mind, they are both time-based (they have a beginning, an end; they have a duration.) What do you think of time-based media? One thing about painting is that it’s not time based, which is both good and bad (a painting just kind of sits there.) Do you find this an important part of the media? Is it important that it come to an end?
VM: The creation of music … of perfume—I can’t just write exactly what I’m doing or thinking—I can’t just stop at one point and just pick up exactly where I was the next day. Music you can stop and record it and go back and replay it, and you could have done it magnificently well. That is one major difference between music and perfume. It is a fact that there is a beginning, a middle and an end, as opposed to painting, which can be appreciated as it is for a longer time. But depending on your mood, this type of expression will change. If you put on a perfume on a morning, if you’re happy that day—or depressed that day, because of bad weather or something bad that happened to you, the music you’re listening to, it will be different depending on your mood. So the experience will change based on your point of view.
JB: One thing I love about YS-UZAC scents is that they have a very distinct “flavor” to them—and I think it has to do with the combination of citrus and fruits with unusual base notes. This makes the perfumes a bit melancholic, but very modern, almost urban. What can you say that is distinct about YS-UZAC perfumes?
VM: The idea behind YS-UZAC was to bring different ideas, mostly more personal views, to perfumery. The market is literally flooded by perfumes that are very straightforward and that follow the usual bestsellers. Artistic perfumery often comes from very innovative ideas, and we want to be an active part of the creative few by proposing new olfactive families, for example. I also love to discover rare ingredients, and introduce them into my perfumes.
JB: Dragon Tattoo, one of your newest perfumes, is a great example of contradictions—sharp but smooth, sparkling but solid. What can you tell me about Dragon Tattoo and what you achieved with this perfume?
VM: Dragon Tattoo started with a question: What does skin smell like to you? My thoughts went immediately to a modern type of skin, rather than the usual poetic point of view. I wanted to work on the smell of a tattooed skin, preferably of an insolent and dirty party girl. The mixture between ink, sweat, and chewing gum, was a wonderful way to start. I finally got a magnetic scent, something that draws everyone to smell it over and over. I like to classify this as an animalic-gourmand, which is obviously not a classic family. The formulation is focused, and I used some raw ingredients that are very uncommon.
We proposed with YS-UZAC very contemporary perfumes since its debut, with the green leather Pohadka for an example, or more recently with truly unique perfumes such as Dragon Tattoo or the Sacre du Printemps. Now, the image we worked on needed to be as rich in details as possible—as rich as the facets of the fragrances are themselves, clearly.
JB: Speaking of Pohadka, this perfume is a particular love of mine. Can you tell me a bit more about Pohadka? What were some of your ideas behind this, what were you thinking when you wanted to make it, what was your goal, and is there something about the final product that you’d like to share?
VM: The initial idea behind Pohadka was to put a few elements I really appreciated together, such as the Shiso leaf, inside a perfume. It is an ingredient which is incredibly famous in Japan, but not well known outside of that part of Asia. It took years for it to become better known. It’s just one of the elements I wanted to use. Some other brands have tried to use this element but don’t really use it too well. I thought that working on a green, leathery, smoky perfume would be quite an interesting challenge; It’s not usually leather perfumes’ power (green), for most people do not think of grass or wild grass in a green perfume, which is a completely different shade of green, so this was another inspiration for that. Most people don’t think of fresh cut grass as part of leather perfume. The name comes from Czech and means “tale” or “fairy tale,” from an old story that our grandmother had told us, and it comes from a vision of autumn light—a big bunch of interesting ideas that come together.
JB: That’s wonderful, that description. It’s quite beautiful. When you mention the green—I know many of the green notes in perfumes are quite tricky to create, since many of the natural elements that give off that green smell have to be man-made, and sometimes they smell very medicinal or grassy (in not such a nice way) …
VM: You have a good example in painting; green can mean absolutely everything in painting. If you look at a master, you can see how many different colors there actually are inside the green. It takes many different colors to make a green become nice-looking.
JB: Switzerland has not been known as a perfume center before—what do you think a Swiss perspective gives to your perfumes?
VM: This is an interesting question, as Switzerland and Swiss products are within almost every perfume on earth, through research and development of incredibly famous synthetic molecules. Don’t forget that both Givaudan and Firmenich are Swiss companies. Current headspace technology has been brought to its current state by Swiss researchers, too. However, as only a few star perfumers live and work in Switzerland, the digital world doesn’t hear much about this country. But no perfumer today could create perfumes without the Swiss perfume industry. My country, however, gives me the luxury of living in a city that is both modern (really at the heart of modern) and yet just five minutes away from nature.
JB: I sense something very playful about your perfumes, as well as serious. I've read that you value imagination as an important resource. Can you talk about how the imagination helps guide your creations?
VM: I believe that the capacity of smelling the perfume before mixing is a key, just as I need to hear a tone before playing it. M. Rostropovich, one of the most brilliant cellists ever, and my cello teacher’s mentor, said once that he wanted to live in a fairy tale, as this world is too serious. How much fairy tale, and how much seriousness do we need?
JB: I’ve now sampled all your scents with the exception of one; I have to say I find something interesting in each of them. I also wanted to ask you specifically about Monodie, mostly because of the rhubarb accord inside it. Where I come from, the climate here supports rhubarb very well, so it grows into huge bushes. It’s a very common smell here in the early spring. But in your perfume, it’s in this beautiful combination of many things. I was fascinated by the brightness of the scent. What were some of your thoughts behind this one?
VM: When I created the first series of four perfumes, I felt one of them had to be kind of younger and sparkling like champagne, and I really wanted to create an accord of a small yellow plum. There is a plum called Mirabelle, which is about an inch long, and it’s incredibly sweet, and it’s a plum you find everywhere in Europe. It has a light scent, and I wanted this perfume to stay light, and didn’t want the fruit to be too ripe. With rhubarb, as you know, you have the big rhubarb, or the light, small British rhubarb that can grow in darkness. I liked this rhubarb—it has a lot of acidic notes. I had to recreate this acidic feeling with other products, and in Monodie, it came out very cool!
JB: The sparkling effect of it is very surprising—it’s almost a physical “feel.”
VM: I’m quite happy the way it went—it worked well. A very lovely perfume.
JB: I was so excited to see the most recent perfumes, they’re so different from what you’ve been doing before. They have some similarities, but at the same time, very different themes besides the packaging being very different. It’s as though you opened a new door into another room of what you’re going to create, and I thought, “They’re going to be doing some very different things.” Like, you took this very dramatic turn …
VM: [laughs]
JB: … into these dark, reactionary, almost primal perfumes. What do you think led you there?
VM: Well, remember there was quite a lot of work between the last two of the last series of perfumes and the new three. I had a lot of work that I’d done for different people in between, and bespoke work as well, and this work did help to open some new doors that I wouldn’t have thought of myself without some of this influence. First of all, this urge was very clear with the Stravinsky perfume palette—there is such a power in this music, in this palette, and I found some new smells, new oils. These new products allowed me to have a bit more freedom: smaller batches, smaller output, so a freer way … The Oud perfume was influenced by some work that I did for one customer. The amount of real oud oil inside there (Oud Ankaa) is extremely high. It’s much higher than is usual in most commercial perfumes; they could never afford to use that much—it’s really strong. And of course it works, because the output is very small, the customers who want to buy this product are also a smaller customer audience, so therefore I could go to this extent to create this perfume, to develop it this far.
JB: This is something I’m beginning to understand better about the smaller niche perfume companies. Because you’re able to make these smaller, personal batches of perfume, this is rather liberating, isn’t it? You’re able to change your model and work with some of the rarer and more expensive materials in your work?
VM: It is exactly that. It’s impossible to invest money in perfume and hope to keep it at a very fair price—this is a key to understanding what we are able or not able to do. It’s exactly the same as for food. You cannot use the same ingredients in family restaurants as you would for fast food. This is the key for smaller restaurants, compared to restaurants with larger distribution.
JB: It starts to make sense now. Initially I was trying to understand the model; when you look at the large perfume houses, economically, and how they have to invest so much in their advertising in order to make their sales, the model starts to makes sense. But it seems that your brand is doing quite well. I’m seeing more and more people who recognize the name of your company, and know the perfumes.
VM: Exactly! I’m very happy about the way it’s developing. We keep small, because there’s no room to play the game wrong here, but I see the interest growing, and it makes me very happy.
JB: It’s exciting, I’ve seen your brand over the past few years—your perfumes manage to be modern without being unwearable.
VM: That’s right! I wouldn’t make something that myself, my wife, or my close friends wouldn’t want to wear!
JB: I’ve had some discussions with some friends and artists about the dangers of nostalgia. You can get dragged a bit into nostalgia, and there’s something to be said about creating modern things that look into the present and future, that look simply at “now” for their references. I’ve been interested in this idea. I think your work is very modern in this way, for all the good reasons. A few of your perfumes, when I smell them, I don’t make an association with the past but with the present.
VM: It’s interesting that you say that because we try (and I say “we” because I refer also to my wife, because we are creating things, doing things together,) the idea was to not create fake history. Our brand started with Pohadka in 2011, and it was a decision from the beginning to work this way. The brand doesn’t have a long history; we are not that type of brand. This is a decision from the beginning, and it reflects in the perfume as well. When you study the great masters of perfume, these masters were making extremely modern perfumes, they were using the newest molecules they could find, and they were excited to use any of them for the first time. It’s correct to say that not every luxury brand has a long history. Some are just very young and try very hard.
JB: I remember when I was looking into your company and looking at your site, there wasn’t a ton of information about you, and I thought, “this is interesting, they’re not overdoing the back-story” which is quite good. It created some mystery!
VM: My wife and I said to ourselves “let’s do this, and let’s do this in our own way and try to communicate in a different way and produce in our own way.”
JB: Your wife works primarily in your image, brand and creative and design aspects, correct?
VM: Yes, she is behind the visual design and all the ideas relative to the look of the brand. They are her ideas, her creations. By having that chance to make all things the way we want, it’s incredibly nice to have that kind of control over the finished product. And we only have our own product to work on. Doing what we want and the way we want, it presents more work—from creation to the finished product is a big gap, but we’re involved in the process the whole way.
JB: This must be very freeing for you, to hand this aspect off to someone to work on so that you can you be free to work on what you do best.
VM: It’s a question we always wonder about, because in the future when we are growing, and we can use people to do some of the production work, how much of that work do you want to give to somebody else? It’s a personal question, a difficult question.
JB: What are your plans for the next few years with YS-UZAC? Can you tell us what is coming ahead, without revealing any secrets?
VM: Some interesting projects are on my table right now, both for the bespoke clients and for our regular customers. The fact that our entire production is in-house, where formulation and mixing take place, allows me to be very flexible and develop projects for other customers or brands, too. Many clients visit us here, too. We will show one new product in Milano soon, it’s a very interesting perfume, a complex (but easy to wear) product, and it might be the beginning of a new collection, a new edition of products, a new step in design and image. The perfume itself is surprising: It comes from a new extraction method for some of the oils, some of the newest methods available now, and it will be a quite a different perfume (again), as you can expect of course.
YS-UZAC fragrances on display at Esxence 2013
JB: Some of the new extraction technologies are significantly changing the world of scent. This must be changing the palette of what’s available to you. It reminds me of a wonderful rose CO2 extraction I smelled a few years ago.
VM: Exactly, absolutely. Just four or five years ago, to make a rose extraction as you mention, even just a few years back, would be very heavy and expensive. Now it is mobile and closer to the fields, the process has become almost normal. Today some of the products that are on the market are so remarkable—even though they are expensive, they are still okay price-wise compared to the older processes, and it’s a joy to be mixing stuff today. There is a way to access almost everything, and different extraction methods for almost everything. Every time I meet a supplier, I’m excited to see some new things coming out from their world. It’s really great to be here now and experience this stuff.
JB: When you say that, it reinforces this idea I have that your perfumes are very much based in the present, and that you’re getting the most out of the technologies available today.
VM: It’s one of the advantages of being small. Because I don’t have to wonder if I can only buy 4 kilos of one product, when a big perfume house has to buy 400 kilos of that product.
JB: Do you have a strong scent memory from childhood, something that has stayed with you?
VM: The smell of the air before snow. This is—and remains—magic for me.
JB: Tell us something about your company name: YS-UZAC? What does it mean?
VM: This name was created to reflect our different direction towards perfumery, and our modern view on artistic creations. It is a sound, an attention-grabbing name, but first of all, 'YS' are my wife’s initials.
JB: What would you like your perfume wearers to know most about your creations?
VM: That the discovery of my perfumes is also the discovery of themselves.
JB: Who is the YS-UZAC customer?
VM: Our perfumes are not for everyone, and in the future of the brand we will see even more unique and personal products appear. We want to speak to passionate perfume lovers, who understand that perfume is above all a statement and a reflection of oneself.
Read John's recent review of the newest YS-UZAC perfumes and visit the official YS-UZAC website to find a local retailer or shop online.
Portrait and Esxence photo: Fragrantica. All other images: YS-UZAC
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