Maison Margiela couture fragrance review: a whiff of the iconic label’s first ever couture Scentsorium Collection perfume.
It’s couture, honey! But what does it smell like? In the world of Maison Margiela, it’s beautiful human imperfection. It’s raw emotion. It’s six new scents that elicit surprise, shock, despair, anger, folly, joy, despair, awe, fury, defiance, and maybe even tenderness.
A quick spritz of Fit of Folly from Maison Margiela’s new genderless Sensorium collection, inspired by the label’s Artisanal haute couture fashion line, releases its wearer on a scented journey that feels like an impassioned homecoming. A sort of uneasy, unsure, salt of the earth patchouli that is suddenly thwarted by a sweet, soothing musk. Saccharine sanity rings out: it’s irrationally interesting. Both comforting and confrontational. It’s an artful representation of feeling by way of aromatic inhalation. That’s the quiet manifesto of Maison Margiela’s new Sensorium collection.
Inspired by an antique flacon, the bottle is a beautiful glass object, decorated with a couture label and the signature Margiela four stitches; with a visible deconstructed crack on back. Of the six new scents in the lineup, Fit of Folly might just be the most spellbinding. The years-long project spanned multiple creative directors at the brand.
Martin Margiela is one of the godfathers of conceptual fashion and deconstruction, and the Scentsorium fragrances mirrors the minimalist masterpiece framework of the fashion house’s Artisanal fashion line. Sets of ingredients were effectively dissected, interrogated and remixed for the purpose of creating dualities that reveal newness. Maison Margiela calls it a “continued interest in exposing the mechanisms of creation.”
Beyond Fit of Folly, other scents in the Sensorium collection include five other emotional options, that we have done our best to decode: Blaze Of Stillness (the hopefulness and stillness of youth), Silent Fury (the sweet release of growing up), Anguish and Awe (the beautiful tension of living well), Tender Defiance (the stunning duality of becoming oneself) and Delight in Despair (the joy of reckoning with contentedness). Consider Fit of Folly the ecstatic rapture. Together, the Sensorium fragrances represent a sort of walk of life journey of all the complex emotions humans experience.
“We meticulously captured the unfabricated truth of our most profound emotions – their intricate complexity, their opulent richness, and their visceral intensity – by applying the rigorous precision of haute couture to raw ingredients,” Sandrine Groslier, Global President, Luxe Fragrance Brands wrote in a statement for the launch. “This radical artistry in craftsmanship defines our entry into Haute Parfumerie, a landmark for the Maison designed to resonate with a discerning generation of connoisseurs who seek luxury in authenticity and profound depth.”
If you know, you know, Maison Margiela’s fragrances are consistently some of the most unique scents on the market–without being overly niche, trite or inaccessible. For years, the Replica Line took the idea of scent memory and bottled it up, through concepts like Jazz Club, Beach Walk, Bubble Bath and By the Fireplace. The Scentsorium Collection, also created in partnership with L’Oréal Group, only pushes those boundaries further.
We live in an increasingly digital-first world and we all want to feel something. Welcome to a new era of emotional fragrance.
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