A good fragrance is like a good lover, when you think about it. It caresses the skin of your neck, chest, and wrists. It adapts to your body chemistry. And above all, it charms those around you, making you a better version of yourself. “When you connect with a fragrance it’s a match made in heaven,” OC’s Humberto Leon observed recently. “It’s the ultimate relationship.”
Helmut Lang’s Eau de Cologne has long been Humberto's perfume paramour. In 2000, when it came out, the unisex scent was an instant cult hit. When it was discontinued just five years later, Humberto and other rabid collectors scoured the internet for unopened bottles. “I still have five left,” Humberto said of his “stash.” He only opens them on special occasions. “For the past 15 years, I've worn it to everything that's meant anything to me,” he recalled. “Every Met Ball, every awards ceremony, every first date, every dinner. I wore it to the opening of Opening Ceremony in 2002.”
Now, it’s having a homecoming. As of May 7, the smell of orange tree, rose, and musk will once again fill 33 Howard Street (as well as our other stores, physical and virtual). It's part of a relaunch of the Helmut Lang Parfums collection, the first since it was discontinued in 2005. Also back are the equally-cult Eau de Parfum and Cuiron, in the same olfactory family—like “the smell of sheets after a passionate night with my lover,” as Lang once put it.
In their early days, the fragrances were sold at another iconic downtown retail location: the Helmut Lang Parfumerie at 81 Greene Street. When it opened in 2000, the store sold just two products—Lang’s Eau de Cologne and Eau de Parfum. Yet it overflowed with his signature minimalism. The glass bottles were displayed on an austere black cabinet echoing a Richard Serra sculpture. Walking down a hallway, shoppers were greeted by artist Jenny Holzer's post-minimal LED installation.
In the '90s and early-'00s, Holzer—along with Louise Bourgeois, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Juergen Teller—was a frequent collaborator of Lang's. Before the ubiquity of artist collaborations, the Austrian designer, who in 2005 retired from fashion to pursue fine arts, built a brand on conceptual rigor. His stores resembled galleries, yes, and the ads that brought people to them appeared in Artforum and National Geographic rather than Vogue. In them, the dark, sensual clothes were sometimes an afterthought, sometimes absent, like in one spread displaying a 1975 Mapplethorpe self-portrait.
Helmut Lang’s fragrances originated in the art world, too. The Eau De Parfum was originally designed in 1996, as part of a scent installation created with Holzer for the art-and-fashion-themed Florence Biennale. Holzer mounted LED lights displaying poems to ceilings, while Lang designed a scent evoking “the smell a human being leaves behind either in a room or on a piece of clothing,” he put it in
Helmut Lang’s Eau de Cologne has long been Humberto's perfume paramour. In 2000, when it came out, the unisex scent was an instant cult hit. When it was discontinued just five years later, Humberto and other rabid collectors scoured the internet for unopened bottles. “I still have five left,” Humberto said of his “stash.” He only opens them on special occasions. “For the past 15 years, I've worn it to everything that's meant anything to me,” he recalled. “Every Met Ball, every awards ceremony, every first date, every dinner. I wore it to the opening of Opening Ceremony in 2002.”
Now, it’s having a homecoming. As of May 7, the smell of orange tree, rose, and musk will once again fill 33 Howard Street (as well as our other stores, physical and virtual). It's part of a relaunch of the Helmut Lang Parfums collection, the first since it was discontinued in 2005. Also back are the equally-cult Eau de Parfum and Cuiron, in the same olfactory family—like “the smell of sheets after a passionate night with my lover,” as Lang once put it.
In their early days, the fragrances were sold at another iconic downtown retail location: the Helmut Lang Parfumerie at 81 Greene Street. When it opened in 2000, the store sold just two products—Lang’s Eau de Cologne and Eau de Parfum. Yet it overflowed with his signature minimalism. The glass bottles were displayed on an austere black cabinet echoing a Richard Serra sculpture. Walking down a hallway, shoppers were greeted by artist Jenny Holzer's post-minimal LED installation.
In the '90s and early-'00s, Holzer—along with Louise Bourgeois, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Juergen Teller—was a frequent collaborator of Lang's. Before the ubiquity of artist collaborations, the Austrian designer, who in 2005 retired from fashion to pursue fine arts, built a brand on conceptual rigor. His stores resembled galleries, yes, and the ads that brought people to them appeared in Artforum and National Geographic rather than Vogue. In them, the dark, sensual clothes were sometimes an afterthought, sometimes absent, like in one spread displaying a 1975 Mapplethorpe self-portrait.
Helmut Lang’s fragrances originated in the art world, too. The Eau De Parfum was originally designed in 1996, as part of a scent installation created with Holzer for the art-and-fashion-themed Florence Biennale. Holzer mounted LED lights displaying poems to ceilings, while Lang designed a scent evoking “the smell a human being leaves behind either in a room or on a piece of clothing,” he put it in