Love Potion No. 9

April 20, 2009  |  No Comments

From the dress, to the meal, to the band, to the receiving line where hands meet old friends’ hands and lips touch relatives’ cheeks, great weddings capture the attention of everyone’s imagination and make a memorable impact by harnessing and delighting their sensory faculties.

Beyond flower selection, there isn’t much that typically goes into tantalizing anyone’s nose, however, even though scent is a

powerful memory trigger. It isn’t advisable to offer competing scents and tastes, but there are plenty of opportunities for brides and grooms to create olfactory experiences for themselves and for their guests before and after eating, one way is to select a perfume especially for that day.

Discovering the scent you want to express yourself with is an experience in itself, and a particularly fun perspective to look at your wedding from, because it’s an opportunity to try something new and treat yourself to something very personal.

Scents are as sensual as they are powerful says Fabrice Penot. Penot is a co-founder and co-creative director of Le Labo (“The Lab”), a company he describes as an indi-brand that has boutiques around the world. It’s a place where clients have the opportunity to watch and learn as their scent is blended from scratch and their custom label is created on the spot.

When it comes to deciding what perfume best represents you and your wedding day, Penot says to “smell from your gut,” the right scent will literally smell like the future you want. A scent is also “a trick to make your memory clear,” he says, which will have the effect of instantly returning you to your wedding day long after the last morsel of cake has been eaten.

A little more about Le Labo

The goal: simply to make life better, to return perfume production to the realm of fine art by providing clients with glorious scents along with a unique understanding of the impact of scent. Le Labo de-genders perfume, which was divided into men’s and women’s fragrances as an invention for packaging, according to Penot.

The wedding connection: Le Labo’s first foray into the wedding world was when the Beauty Editor of W Magazine ordered 200 of one of their signature candles to burn at her wedding, and also to send home with each guest at the end of the night, providing a “souvenir of the experience” as the Italian-born Penot says.

The product: The short list of signature scents Le Labo offers aren’t for the weak of heart, or unsophisticated sniffer. To say they are a complex blend of elements is a weak explaination for their extraordinary effect. Santal 26, for example, is designed to re-create the smell of the Gramercy Hotel in New York, which is famous for the original art pieces on the walls.

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