Nomenclature Iri Del
Why Shen Loves It: The perfumer: Patricia Choux
Iris aldehyde
With its cucumber-cool, earthy, slightly skin-like facets contrasting with bright, clean, lined-dried linen effects, this modern, powerful organic compound comes as close as you can get to orris butter without tearing an iris field out by its roots and waiting six years for it to yield its fragrance.
The scent: Urban iris
In iri_del, Patricia Choux gives iris a contemporary twist by blowing off its aristocratic powdered wig and dressing it up in a slim, sharply-tailored suit. Bolstered by iris concrete and irone alpha (the main molecule of the natural ingredient), the iris accord is stretched over an angular structure of crackling woody-ambery notes. Bergamot and ambrette – a vegetal musk with crystalline rose, pear and iris facets – shed their radiance on the trim, dry blend. This is iris gone urban: spare, fierce and sexy.
The flacon and packaging (patent pending):
Like the lab-designed molecules that inspired the fragrances, Nomenclature’s packaging offers elegant solutions to a series of practical problems. Namely: protecting the bottle; showcasing the scent; expressing the concept. The result is a statement of design and modernity: spare, beautifully functional, and unique in the world of fragrance.
The flacon is inspired by the pure, simple lines of the classic Erlenmeyer flask, as a tribute to the chemistry labs where aromatic compounds are designed. As the bottle moves, stunning hologram-like effects rise from the “impossible molecule” patterns embossed at the bottom.
To keep the overall design as spare as possible, there is no cap: the brushed stainless steel sprayer is equipped with a coil spring that prevents it from being pressed by accident. The sprayer can be unscrewed, so that the bottle may be repurposed.
Conceived as a 360° cradle that protects the bottle while displaying it, the box (patent pending) is made up of a white cardboard “shell” that folds around the bottle like origami, held together by a white paper sleeve. No ink, no colors: only essential white. The sleeve is adorned with a metallic logo. To add a tactile experience, both shell and sleeve are blind-debossed with an “impossible molecule” design.
Nomenclature's Impossible Molecules:
The patterns adorning the box and bottle are “impossible molecules” that follow none of the laws of chemistry. These were designed to avoid referring to any specific ingredient, while conjuring the elegant, evocative abstraction of molecular diagrams.
