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If ever there were a context most suitable to the phrase ‘reeks of money’, it would be the VIP preview of a global art fair — Art Basel, for example. Care for a whiff? Well, for that, you’ll have to head to Paris next week, where the freshly rebranded Art Basel Paris opens on 16 October at the refurbished Grand Palais. We aren’t speaking figuratively, though. This year, the art fair behemoth has attempted to distill the event’s essence into a limited-edition scent by Parisian perfume house Guerlain.
The world’s first art fair-branded fragrance, the 2,000-bottle run of Guerlain’s Œillet Pourpre, will be available exclusively via the Art Basel Shop, the itinerant retail concept curated by Sarah Andelman, which debuted back in June at the fair’s Basel edition. The scent — “a daring, ultra-elegant yet sultry fragrance that can be worn by all genders”, Ann-Caroline Prazan, Guerlain’s director of art, culture and heritage, explains — will be presented in a flask and box designed by French painter Julie Beaufils, an artist collaboratively selected by both partners.
While, to some, the notion of an art fair-branded fragrance may seem an eccentric proposal, the fragrance is in fact an extension of what was already an entrenched partnership. “We’ve been partnering with Guerlain in Paris since the first edition of Paris+ par Art Basel in 2022,” Art Basel CEO Noah Horowitz says over Zoom. “So this grew organically out of that relationship with the house, and our discussions about doing something more ambitious.”
The idea for the fragrance was born out of conversations addressing the new possible frontiers of exploration for Art Basel Shop, a pillar of which is the site-specific curation and commissioning of limited-edition artist collaborations for each version of the store. “We won’t be bringing what we have in Basel [Switzerland] to Paris, Miami or Hong Kong,” Andelman told Vogue Business upon its launch in June. “Each product will be totally bespoke to the particular week and city.” As such, the decision to work with a brand with such an evocative link to the French capital — where Guerlain was founded in 1828 — offered the possibility to “create a totally new way of engaging our audiences, particularly in Paris”, Horowitz notes.
Fragrance as art
So why fragrance? While a booming sector of the beauty industry, competition is notoriously fierce, with well-attested saturation among heritage players such as Guerlain. As the strictly limited run of the fragrance would imply, though, the launch speaks less to Art Basel’s ambitions to establish itself as a competitor within the fragrance market, and more to its aims to reframe perceptions of the fair as a forum for cultural experience, rather than solely for the art trade.
“The sense of time, place and experience is something that is very important to a business such as ours — which is as much, of course, about the buying and selling of art as it is about creating relationships, memories and also platforms for engagement and connectivity,” Horowitz says. “The sight and smell of a place, and the memories that conjures. And it’s a nice additional touchpoint, as well as a high note, to hit with the debut of the Art Basel Shop at the Grand Palais next week.”
From Guerlain’s perspective, the “collaboration with Art Basel reflects our desire to bring the worlds of visual art and perfumery even closer together”, Prazan notes. “L’Art et La Matière, to which Art Basel by Guerlain belongs, is a collection of olfactory masterpieces, inspired by the world of art, and signed by our Guerlain artist perfumers. Our fragrances are vehicles for artistic expression and experience.”
The target consumer
With the price disparity between Guerlain’s original edition of Œillet Pourpre (priced at €295 for 100ml) and the Art Basel edition of the fragrance (priced at €390 for 100ml), questions around the latter’s target consumer are well founded. “Well, I think that’s something we’re going to learn,” Noah responds. “I’d expect some from our core audiences that come to a lot of our Basel shows and are down-the-middle Art Basel VIPs, but also members of the public and others that are coming and looking at the fair for the first time. Maybe they’ve not been to the Grand Palais before, or they’ve been for other events over the years and they’re excited to have a vestige of their time there. What we’re finding with our Art Basel shop experience, but also generally, as we look at the shifting sands of collecting interest at a global level, is that we’re seeing a lot of new audiences come to the table.”
Indeed, a noteworthy avenue that Art Basel Shop has created is the possibility to cater to a broader audience of potential collectors that may not yet have the disposable income to invest in the works of artists they admire. In one of Art Basel’s booths, the price of a painting by Julie Beaufils — an artist represented by galleries Balice Hertling in Paris and Matthew Brown in New York and Los Angeles — would be strictly by request (and if you need to request, don’t bother), but her collaboration with Art Basel and Guerlain offers a physical touchpoint to her practice for both existing and future collectors of her work.
A shifting audience
The launch also speaks to Art Basel’s recognition of a shift in who it attracts, with its former near-exclusive remit of art disciples and insiders broadening to include a more lifestyle-conscious audience. “They don’t all necessarily spend their weekends, like their forebears did, going to galleries in Mayfair, the Marais, or Chelsea,” Horowitz notes. “They’re consumers. They’re spending a lot of time online. They’re spending a lot of money and interest on fashion, on luxury, and also on eating out and travelling.”
It’s a shift reflected in the planning around this year’s fair, which includes a restaurant pop-up in collaboration with German artist Carsten Höller and We Are Ona, the Paris-based culinary studio helmed by chef Luca Pronzato. “I would situate them in a similar lens,” Horowitz says. “They seek to achieve many of the same ends.”
“The art fair is the engine that drives everything that we do, but to truly power artists’ careers — and create connections for galleries, collectors and art lovers — we need to think outside of the box more and more. The world is changing, and we, as a business and a brand, are evolving. Now, with four fairs globally, a very engaged 365 editorial platform, and with a real focus on making sure that we are as relevant, if not even more relevant, for art lovers and collectors of the future, it’s really incumbent upon us to to think broadly, and to think of more adjacent areas as well, like fashion, lifestyle and luxury,” he continues. “It’s about creating touchpoints with new audiences, and making sure that the barriers to entry to experience and really be part of the Art Basel journey are far wider than they’ve been up until now.”
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