Apartamento and Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle

Text by Apartamento
Photography by Carlos Chavarría

Click here to discover Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle!

How would you illustrate the emotional experience fragrance evokes in the home?

For a new series with Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, we invited three different artists to explore this question. Working with animation, we asked them to reflect on scent, memory, and the idea of home, visually interpreting the Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle home fragrance collection.

Orfeo Tagiuri, a longtime friend and contributor of Apartamento, and London-based visual artist working across animation, illustration, mixed media, and performance, captured the way the fragrance moved through his studio—dreamlike and gradual. French director, set designer, and fine artist Alix Bortoli drew parallels between fragrance and stop-motion animation, exploring their shared ability to transform reality and create surreal worlds. Working intuitively, Tokyo-based French graphic designer and illustrator Alexis Jamet allowed an imaginary journey of transformation to unfold, using a cat following a light as the guiding image.

In classic Apartamento style, we spoke with each artist to understand their personal relationship to fragrance and its role in their creative practice and understanding of home. Check out their animations and excerpts from our conversations below, alongside photography of each artist in their studio by Carlos Chavarría!

Orfeo Tagiuri

Visual artist

When I think of ‘home’ in a poetic sense I think of my childhood home, and therefore I think of lavender. My mother would always collect and dry lavender to sew into little fabric bags that perfumed our cupboards and bedrooms.

—Orfeo Tagiuri

Where did you draw inspiration for the animation you created for this project?

I actually most immediately thought of a movement. A kind of slow drifting, jellyfish-like, that I associated with the way in which the scents gradually filled my studio and my awareness.

Do you have any rituals or a routine that you do before you get started on a project?

I would say that often my projects take the form of rituals. I have collections and lists that I return to often. Gestures that are repeated. Making an animation requires twelve drawings per second. So there is something deeply rhythmic and repetitive in the process. That said, sleep, coffee, and exercise are vital for me to maintain my creative energy.

Alix Bortoli

Director, set designer & fine artist

Scent is deeply present in my work simply because it’s woven into the physical reality of my everyday process.

—Alix Bortoli

How did thinking about scent and fragrance influence your creative process for the piece?

Everything in the film stems directly from the sensory universe of Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle: the painted ingredients, the blooming flowers, and that deep, enveloping sense of home that defines so many of their fragrances.

What are the main pillars of your artistic practice?

The core pillars of my work are constant research and evolution. I’m endlessly inspired by design and traditional craft, particularly through working with textiles, wood, and metal.

Alexis Jamet

Graphic designer & illustrator

A smell brings back a place much faster than a photo, but only in fragments.

—Alexis Jamet

Was there a particular Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle fragrance, or something about the house’s philosophy, that you came back to while working on this project?

Not a specific fragrance, more the idea of the perfumer as an author. I tried to approach the film in the same way, as a personal interpretation rather than an illustration.

Does Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle’s idea of perfume as an art form resonate with you?

Yes, I can see similarities between the work of a perfumer, an artist, or an artisan. There’s a lot of experimentation and research involved.

Apartamento and Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle

Visual artist

Director, set designer & fine artist

Graphic designer & illustrator

Valentina Cameranesi

Armin Heinemann

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