Agyness Deyn (l) is the face of Jean Paul Gaultier’s (r) newest fragrance, Ma Dame
In your line of fragrances, where does Ma Dame fit?
I have really built a family of perfumes: Classique is the mother, Le Male is
the father, the son is Fleur du Male, Fragile is sort of like the aunt, and now
here comes the daughter. She is energetic, modern, and young in attitude, and
that concludes the family.
What was the initial idea this time around?
With this one, I needed to figure out how to make it smell electric. I still
wanted musk, because I know musk is sensual. And sensuality is important
because perfume is like a dress: You can be totally nude, but you are dressed
by your perfume. [Fragrance] is very complimentary to fashion in this way—it's
another story about color and packaging and often gives me ideas for my
clothes. I did one dress in my couture collection in the pink from this
perfume.
Is this emphasis on electricity and energy what led you to the
unorthodox packaging approach you took with the box, insofar as you literally
have to rip it open in order to remove the bottle?
I have always been influenced by movements—they are very important; they show
who we are and how we feel and what we need. You have different ways to open
things, and this is a quite punk-y way to do it, and for fragrance, that's like
sacrilege! It's an attitude that says, "I do what I want."
How would you say this idea of independence is reflected in your
deliberate spelling of the fragrance's name, which could suggest a certain
possessiveness rather than a freedom?
The word "madame" is very bourgeois and old-fashioned. But "Ma
Dame" is completely different. It's my type of woman—at the same
time fragile and strong, like a tomboy that is a little androgynous in attitude
so, you know, she can cut her hair if she wants. It's a cliché that women have
to have long hair to seduce a man. But [cutting your hair] means something—an
independence, that women don't always have to seduce a man. They can seduce a
woman, if they want.
And is this character composite what led you to Agyness Deyn—in
all of her short-, spiky-haired glory—as the face of the fragrance?
I met [Deyn] in 2006, the year I was celebrating the 30th anniversary of my
company. I did a retrospective and she wore the first outfit at the show, which
was also the first look I did that was really different from what everyone else
was doing in 1976: It was a biker jacket like Marlon Brando but with a French
flag on the back and studs; a long tutu but with pockets in the back, like a
jeans tutu; and tennis shoes. She was ballerina and biker, so feminine and
masculine. It was a mix of my sensibility, and I knew she was completely the
one to represent it.
You've been somewhat of a champion of women in this way, bucking
convention with your clothes and, it would appear, with your fragrances as
well. Where does this sentiment come from?
I've always found a power and intelligence in women and thought it was a kind
of injustice that there were things that they couldn't do when I was first
starting in fashion—like women who were more clever than men weren't paid as
well as men. As they became more liberated, I tried to reflect this same
balance through my clothes, so I did [some looks] for two in my first
collection, where men could wear skirts and women could wear trousers. Then,
after the seventies, when some girls wanted to start wearing bras again—not
because they were obliged but because they wanted to play, to seduce—I was
doing a lot of corsets.
By Celia Ellenberg
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