From the window of his wood-clad Milan office, we can see the Alps in the background and the cranes responsible for hoisting the infrastructure for the next Winter Olympic Games. Far from the great chaos of the world and fashion, Matthieu Blazy, creative director of Bottega Veneta, brings together his ideas in this place which is more like an apartment than a work space. With the happy nonchalance that characterizes him, he takes obvious pleasure in talking about the new playground he has chosen: perfume.
It is on his initiative that the Italian house presents a collection of five fragrances. The creator speaks with accuracy and intelligence about this new profession, never trying to adopt an expert discourse or to shine by brandishing learned names of raw materials. Noses from the German company Symrise accompanied him on the adventure: Alexandra Carlin, Aliénor Massenet and Pierre Guéros.
The Franco-Belgian stylist, who attended the National School of Visual Arts of La Cambre, in Brussels, tells how the ideas were born. To the ingredient discourse and inspiration boards that fashion has the secret to, Matthieu Blazy preferred the evocation of physical sensations. “I talked to them a lot about skin, that which is caressed by the sun or by a loving embrace,” he says, smiling. Skin that he sees as the ultimate ingredient in the formula.
Materials of natural origin
Whether they appear in Italian, French or English, the names chosen aim neither at functionality nor at figurative form: Already midnight, Colpo di Sole (“sunburn”), Alchemie, Acqua Sale and Come with me. Despite his lack of knowledge of the art of smell, the artistic director of the Italian house had some strong convictions: “I didn’t want overly flowery scents and I wanted the noses to work exclusively with materials of natural origin. » An important technical constraint when we know that synthetic molecules allow the fragrance to diffuse its trail in the air and last a long time on the skin.
The just forty-year-old with a cheerful look holds out strips of paper on which the scents have been sprayed. First observation: the compositions, very fluid, do not succumb to any of the tics of the moment such as the power of amber woods, ingredients which inject testosterone into fashionable fragrances. He who wondered, during his spring-summer fashion show 2025, if we could “find power in gentleness”, already provides an olfactory response.
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