The time and place was mid-August 1969 at a dairy farm in Bethel, New York, where the masses gathered for a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Experience: 3 Days Of Peace and Music".
The pop culture epic Woodstock is celebrated in Maison Margiela's Music Festival fragrance from its Replica collection, recently launched in Thailand.
The eau de toilette is a mix of patchouli essence, tobacco and incense, wrapped with notes of cedar wood and cypress. Related to the 1960s hippie movement and the Woodstock summer concert, patchouli was used to mask the smell of marijuana and body odour.
The Paris-based fashion house enlisted top-notch perfumers in creating the Replica collection, which captures images, impressions, emotions and personal experiences in varying locations and periods.
Louise Turner's Lazy Sunday Morning recalls her stay at a hotel in Florence, Italy, back in 2003.
"In the beginning, there was colour: white -- luminous, virginal, immaculate. That was my challenge: how to convey the sensations of a colour in a scent," said the Givaudan perfumer-designer.
Jazz Club, Music Festival, Lazy Sunday Morning and Flower Market recall moments in a certain place and time. Photos courtesy of Maison Margiela
The consistency of this pure colour and the sheet of bright light veiling her skin as well as notions of well-being and serenity are translated in the heavy, enveloping floral fragrance, featuring notes of lily of the valley, patchouli, white abyss, white and creamy musk, and an aldehyde evoking freshly-washed laundry, dried-out in the blazing sunshine.
Turner also created At The Barber's, reminiscing the sliding of a shaving brush through soapsuds, the dry friction of a razor against a leather strap, the soft rustling of a white towel as well as the clean and fresh atmosphere of a barbershop in Madrid in 1992.
"I was inspired by the memory of my father getting ready in the morning. The aromatic notes of lavender mixed with the smell of soap bubbles in the gentle warmth of the bathroom," she said.
"I worked with lavender for its clean and aromatic freshness, transforming the scent with almond-like notes of tonka bean. A harmony of comforting white musks gave life to this quintessentially masculine scent, of which my Anglo-Saxon origins make me particularly fond."
Jacques Cavallier's compositions recall a stroll along the ocean in Calvi, Corsica, in 1972, and a visit to a Parisian flower market in 2011.
Beach Walk opens with the ocean freshness of bergamot, lemon and pink pepper, followed by sensual ylang ylang, and addictive scents of coconut milk, musk and heliotrope.
"Once united, these notes create an accord with an almost maternal softness," said Cavallier.
Flower Market brings to mind freshness of just-cut stems and flowers, wet petals, buckets and vases brimming with water, and leaves crushed on the floor. The fragrance features notes of freesia and Grasse rose petals dotted with water, enveloped by creamier notes of sambac jasmine and tuberose.
"It is a bouquet of textures, a harmony where no flower overpowers another and beneath which one detects a touch of cedar and moss," he said.
Beach Walk is inspired by a stroll along Calvi beach in 1972.
International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) master perfumer Carlos Benaim composed Promenade In The Gardens, as a floral scent built around the intense femininity of Turkish rose and woody heart of patchouli, allied with sandalwood and vetiver.
"I was walking in an English garden in Oxfordshire, in 1986," said Benaim, "and was dazzled by this idealised vision of nature. The calm waters of the lake, the bucolic lawns, groves and the fantastic aura of roses and jasmine. All my senses were captivated by this idyllic landscape."
The masculine Jazz Club, by another IFF perfumer Aliénor Massenet, transports wearers to a Brooklyn jazz club in 2013.
"What an incredible presence these New York jazz clubs have! Melting pots of masculine scents, as exhilarating as the aroma of cigars, leather, whisky and rum," said Massenet. "To illustrate this ambiance, I used a rum cocktail, vetiver, tobacco leaves and a vanilla pod."
The Replica collection further include Anne Flipo's Lipstick On, as an olfactory image of a woman finishing her make-up in her apartment in Chicago in 1952; and Marie Salamagne's By The Fireplace portraying a cosy fireplace in the midst of a snowy winter morning in Chamonix, France, in 1971.
Maison Margiela's Replica collection is available at Atelier de Prestige, G Floor, The Glass Quartier, EmQuartier.
