The launch of Commentary, a new Swedish niche fragrance brand, was at feted Dover Street Parfums Market on Friday night in tandem with Art Basel Paris.
“I just had this urge to create something real,” said Ludvig Goliath, founder and director of Commentary. “I think it was because of AI and what it did to the world, in a way.”
He wished to work with original ideas and craftsmanship. “My mind just kept going back to my days working in a perfume bar,” Goliath said. “That process is so real. I love the process — telling the stories of the perfumes and then having them have their unique experience.
“I wanted to create those stories, but I didn’t want to make conceptual stories just for the conceptuality of it,” he said, explaining instead the stories would be real. Goliath turns to artists for these.
“Artists are much better at creating these stories,” he continued. “They’re much more real and honest, and especially with conceptual art.”
Goliath said: “With perfume, you also wear the artwork. Tonight, I’m bringing it here, and tomorrow I’m bringing it on a flight to other people. That means you live with the questions that artwork asks and also the ideas it explores. That’s the uniqueness of it.”
Commentary launched Friday with a first collaboration, with Belgian American artist C.B. Evans, the first “olfactive artwork” called The Reckoner. It was developed with perfumer Mark Buxton and includes olfactive notes of geranium, cardamom, orange flower, incense oil, Bulgarian rose, cade, cedarwood, resins, sandalwood, amber, musk and incense.
Goliath contacted Evans after pondering how often worlds and atmospheres are created through video and sound, but not scent.
“I wanted to explore that,” Goliath said. “Therefore, I invited C.B., who is a world-builder in practice. This first scent is a memory in advance — like a scent from the future, from a world that C.B. imagines. When you wear it, it’s a shield against the old world, but it’s also a reminder that you are today creating this new world. You can sniff other people living in the new world out if they wear this perfume.”
Commentary, now available at DSPM and on commenatary.co, will launch its next scent in six months.
“We’ll build a portfolio of ‘olfactive artworks,’” Goliath said.