Interview with Benoît Verdier of Ex Nihilo

Before trying Ex Nihilo fragrances I checked all available information about the brand—thank God, their website is exhaustively informative. Usually we are ready to find out that our vision of some brand and its perfumes, based on some image,  differs from reality, but this time—for the first time in my personal history—the first impression was totally true. by: Evgeniya Chudakova

The brand's image, its positionning, bottles design, stores interiors etc.—all that easily forms an entire image. And the fragrances also fit this range. After trying them I can finally say what I see behind the golden lettering of Ex Nihilo and in the deep cobalt blue of its signature color. All of the brand's fragrances are modern, but not glossy; accurately and precisely done (almost each of them)—forming an even aromatic tissue, without any weak spot. They are amazingly intelligent and free of any tawdriness. Such scents I could easily recommend to Stanford postgrads or a European Centre for Nuclear Research employee for their unintrusive, but exquisite character. 

About all that I talked to one of Ex Nihilo brand founders, Benoît Verdier

Evgeniya: Hello Benoît, nice to see you here. So, tell me, how have you and your friends created such an impressive brand, with a clear image, very intelligent positioning and quality modern scents?

Benoît: Our brand is a new one—we launched it just a year ago and we are trying to do our best in creating the entire image of the brand that corresponds to the character of fragrances. The idea was to make something quite new with the real experience based on fragrances ... I'm not a perfumer—I was working in advertising, but I've decided to leave my job as I always wanted to do something for myself. With my two partners and friends we've started working on a new brand. Olivier Royère is Swedish, Sylvie Loday is American, I'm French—we are an international team. The word "niche" doesn't mean anything to us. We wanted to create a cool mess of everything we love. I love innovations, I find my inspiration in terms of IT-technologies, in terms of  philosophy. Sylvie was working for Givaudan several years ago and she made a connection between Givaudan and us. We wanted to be super-contemporary, sophisticated ... you know, not like Café Poushkine or something like this, but like the Pyramide du Louvre [smiling]. Ex Nihilo is about French avant-garde, scent personalization and collaboration with artists.

Olivier, Sylvie and Benoît  - founders of the brand

Evgeniya: Yes, surfing your website I saw many different projects ...

Benoît: We want to make something dynamic, to do a lot of things also related to contemporary art; we have a special collaboration with hotels; we work with Christophe Pillet, our designer; we work with the noses, young perfumers; also we are planning to do a collaboration with a guy—a glass-blower, who works with Brad Pitt, with Calvin Klein ... to make a limited number of artistic bottles.

Evgeniya: Like Agonist?

Benoît: Yes, more or less like Agonist ... we want it to be from one to five pieces—a real piece of art. Then Quentin Bisch, who made Fleur Narcotique, he was doing theatre studies before ... So, I want to bring this kind of people to the luxury universe, to mix the things they do. I like the people with crazy stories. That's why besides perfumes we deal with a lot with architects, with designers, with photographers, etc. That could bring the new kind of freshness. But with the juice we wanted to do something timeless, something persistent. The juice is the most important thing anyway.

And we have our web-site that's idea is to bring some new content—like, for example in the 80s rockstars and designers were on top, now we have cooks as superstars, maybe the next ones will be perfumers. And what is very frustrating for them now that they are just working-working-working especially for L'Oréal or LVMH where the briefs don't give them the opportunity to use the best materials  and that restricts their creativity. What about us—I write my briefs, I give our noses the mood-boards and they give me an olfactive interpretation of it. And on our website we put this content with videos, interviews, photos of the boutiques etc. We have nine or ten perfumers who work with us constantly and I want to promote their work, to show the backstage side of doing fragrance, to show how do they work, etc..

Fragrances made for Peugeot

We love collaborations, now, for example, we have something special with Peugeot: they have a concept car division and they asked us to do a special fragrance with the special packaging for two super-cars in Paris... there are 20 or 25 such cars in the world for Presidents or some VIPs and this was the fragrance for these cars. We love the idea of special editions—for Moscow I thing about something special maybe for GUM, maybe for TSUM as I know that Françis Kurkdjian made Ciel de GUM that is beautiful but very classic. I think to do maybe something more trendy.

Evgeniya: You have a very young image, I should say. This modern and dynamic twist that I used to imagine belonging to young and modern scientific society. And the first idea that came to me when I saw you was, "wow, he really knows what he wants."

Benoît: Yes, of course. We wanted to be super impactful. You know, I really likeByredo, because Ben, he's not a perfumer, he was basketball player—of course he was like a changer, the but perfume industry is rather conservative. And we wanted also to respect the savoir faire while creating something new.

In fact we've started with eight fragrances, number nine—Venenum Kiss is up to appear shortly [it's already was presented by now] and to create the whole family of fragrances to have something floral, something woody, something fresh etc., to give people the choice. In future we are going to work with fougère notes, will create something like a chypre. And when you've chosen yours, you have a possibility to personalize it. If you come to Paris, you'll have a chance to live the entire experience offered by Ex Nihilo brand—with the machine that individualizes any scent you choose. We have a store in Paris, we have a store in London, next one will be in New York. In each store we have this display to try the fragrances and the system for personalization of the scents. It's very difficult to bring the whole system to foreign countries, that's why in many corners people can find just fragrances, not the full experience. But in the main stores we have the hall with perfumes and an upper store to bring people in for a personal interview to discuss for one or two hours—there is no time limit—about the fragrance. Now we have such machines in Paris and in London.

Evgeniya: By the way, about your stores: this amazing blue color that you use in the boutique design reminds me some of Malevich's suprematist works with its' clarity and depth at the same time.

Benoît: And this blue colour also comes from YSL—in the mid-60s Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Berger visited Morocco and fell in love with the blue house of Majorelle, that they later bought—and this cobalt blue seemed us to be perfect to express the idea of something fresh and far from something barocco like Marie Antoinette style, etc.

Villa Majorelle, Morocco

Kasimir Malevich,  Suprematism (with Blue Triangle and Blac Rectangle)

Evgeniya: And you were talking before about the customization of the scents. Can you tell me more about it?

Benoît:  It may seem rather simple, but in reality it appeared to be very difficult as when you want to play on intensity most of the people say "let's just add less alcohol" and do like something super-concentrated. But in fact the perfume is more like an art, not only technique, so it was very difficult for the nose to express some new landscape of the perfume with raw materials. That's why we can propose only three variants of changing perfume. Because your brain is saturated by so many options—you don't know exactly what you want finally. So we have to give you this advice according to your mood, according to your background in fragrances—we could propose a scent to be maybe more fresh, more creative etc. And for the machines we use in our laboratories, here you have water, here you have alcohol and here we have raw materials. And we have a little computer inside that weights materials and mixes them. Normally it's all refrigerated ... we have a fridge here. But the machine is just a result of the long talk together about what customers want. The consultant tries to find with you what is your inspiration, what is your mood, to make you discover the fragrance we can propose you and then we make it for you and you see all the process of making perfume. In London in Harrods we have a smaller machine with the same functions. Everything works on wi-fi ... we have a database in the iPad and we discuss together, we smell the raw materials like absolute of iris, absolute of rose—by the way, it's also a good chance to smell expensive raw materials, iris for example, that costs €60 000 per kilo. During this discussion the sales person marks your preferences in the database and all that then goes to the computer in the machine. And after smelling the raw materials we make them smell our perfume collection where we have already some options to choose like Hesperidees for those who want something fresh, also we have same options based on vanilla bourbon, on sandalwood that give more enveloping and comforting touch. So the process looks like this: we talk together and also we do a blind test—it's interesting to make people smell something without knowing a name or components. Like for example a man never wears rose because it supposed to be gay or feminine, but when you don't tell that it's rose—he could love it. After discussing and creating the scent you try it on your skin and after you validate it, we make it for you.

Store interior and scent personalization machine

Evgeniya: And for personalized scent do customers pay for some amount of perfume or they pay for the formula?

Benoît: Normally we offer 100 ml bottle, then you have your personal number that refers to your formula. When you are out of your perfume we can refill it for you with the same scent. In terms of intellectual property the paradox is that you can copyright a name, but you can't copyright a formula. It's a first step to complete bespoke that usually cost about 30 or 40 000 euros. It's a semi-bespoke that means that you start from a base and then we can optimize a scent for you.

Evgeniya: It's like a construction.

Benoît: Yes, like a construction. And in the terms of price—as several raw materials are very expensive, like iris or rose de mai, you'd pay 20 or 30 euros more if you use it. As rose, for example, it's hard to get it as it comes from Grasse and big houses like Guerlain or Chanel buy it ... we have to go by night to steal the rose [laughing]. So, let's try our scents.

Evgeniya: I've approached Ex Nihilo scents just once in GUM and there I tried this high-end spraying system you use—it works very well. What is that?

Benoît: It's a technical system that helps not to saturate your brain. So, this is what you saw here. It's a dry technology—small cartridges with fragrance where we spray air to smell it;  we change them each three months. Here we don't use alcohol because it overloads your senses. We wanted to do something non-intrusive, something soft. It smells only while you push the button. It's a vertical spray, closed from four sides and that's why it doesn't mix with others. Because usually when you spray in the air it's impossible to understand how it smells in a few minutes.

Spray system

Evgeniya: What I find useful in it is that it gives you the general idea of the scent from the very beginning. You don't receive just opening notes first, but the core of the fragrance. It gives the opportunity to understand at once the character of the scent.

Benoît: Yes, it's definitely the core of the perfume. The next step of course is to try it on the skin. In my dream—I want to make something to simulate the sillage, but the sillage is the mix between the scent, skin, temperature etc ... for now it's impossible to make.

Evgeniya: Oh, yeah. So, the fragrances... The first scent I tried was Oud Vendôme. It interested me, though I don't really like oud.

Benoît: Because it's not real oud [laughing].

Evgeniya: The Galbanum touch in it is very nice here. It gives some kind of tart surgical transparency to oud, but at the same time, melting to ginger, musk and later, incense, it creates even a sweet powdery touch.

Benoît: In terms of olfaction we call it Western Oud—it means that it's not a classic oud—super strong and animalic. The idea was to create an accord of "oud," based on sandalwood and patchouli, something very woody, of course with the touch of oud, but the idea of Ex Nihilo is not to compete with these guys from Qatar, from the Middle East. It was evident that we'd make something from oud. Maybe for tactical reason I'm gonna do something super-concentrated in a shiny black box to sell in Harrods, but it's not the brand's purpose. By the way, Musc Infini is rather similar to Oud Vendôme in the terms of family but without this woody side.

Evgeniya: Musc Infini is really a kind of old fried for me—something we know very well, something comforting and safe. But as for my favorite, I really like your Jasmine— Jasmine Fauve. It's strange and wonderful dirty lily of the valley at the beginning and then greeny-earthy-creamy and at the same time rainy-wet white flowers with an amazing leather-suede base!

Benoît: We wanted to make clean and dirty jasmine at the same time, with an animalic touch. ou know this one is a very short formula. The first impression is something light floral and on skin it gets more and more animalic

Evgeniya: I think it's the most carnal thing of the Ex Nihilo collection.

Benoît: Exactly, but we are very shy ... the first option made by Aurélien Guichardwas much more animalc. I loved that version, but I'm not the only one to decide and we made it more  civilized.

Evgeniya: You see, maybe you have reason, because being more polite it matches better the whole image of the brand. As I really admire how you work with so many perfumers and still have the fragrances that have the same stature, the same twist. By the way, all the scents, except Cologne 352 andFleur Narcotique, seem to me very well balanced and having rather clear structure. Cologne 352 and Fleur Narcotique appeared to be quite unbalanced and messy for me. But to be true, after several hours I smelled the blotted with Fleur Narcotique and it was rather interesting then.

Benoît: Fleur Narcotique is a quite exceptional thing as we work with a synthetic that simulates peony. We've decided to overdose it, to make it a bit kitsch. It's not dry, it even has something metallic. It's, for example, my girlfriend's favorite. Me personally, I prefer Vetiver Moloko ... and Cologne, that is not actually a cologne. I understand what you mean calling it "messy." Maybe it's because we wanted it to appeal to everybody, maybe we very too shy to make it more detailed and straightforward.

Raw materials concentrates for scent personalization

Evgeniya: What's with Rose Hubris? I remember it was a ery subtle and delicate one.

Benoît: The idea of the Rose Hubris was not to do something too "granny" as in France rose also has such a connotation sometimes—something very old, powdery, like a grandmother fragrance. And we thought with Olivier Pescheux to do something more contemporary, to work with Rose Centifolia, to make something that would be more sophisticated keeping this kind of freshness, without being too voluptuous, but to keep the volume of the fragrance.

Evgeniya: What I personally like about your fragrances is this kind of freshness—an airy one that is opposite to watery freshness. This airy touch pierces the structure of the scent without dissolving it. And here you keep a balance that sometimes fresh scents lack.

Benoît: One of our purposes was to create something not aggressive. Then we haveBois d'Hiver and Vetiver Moloko. For Bois d'Hiver we used sandalwood from Australia. Of course it's unisex but maybe just a bit on the male side. We wanted something dry and getting softer and softer with time.

Evgeniya: Wood here has also some cool and windy touch, as Winter Wood is supposed to be [smiling].

Benoît: And then we have Vetiver Moloko—love this very much!

Evgeniya: Milky dry vetiver ... beautiful. Have you tried ELDO Fat Electrician?Vetiver Moloko recalls it somehow—the idea is the same. Maybe yours is more delicate.

Benoît: No, I never tried this one. [pause] So, I hope that in future we'll have not only our perfume collection in Russia, but also a personalization system. By the way, next time I'm going to St.Petersburg, to see the city, to see the people there ...

Evgeniya: Something tells me that they'd love your concept there. Good luck, Benoit and thank you for the amazing conversation.