Diptyque | Paris Perfumed Environments: The Design of the Fragranced Retail Experience
To every product, there is a story, to every story, there is a telling — and in every telling, there is a person that offers that tale. In this sequence of blogs, the notations have been about the nature of the selling of scent in a “place.” As I’ve noted, the idea of perfume in space is a complex and delicate affair. The challenge of course is that scent is a entirely personal notation [love it, hate it, ignore it] and the idea of an environment that might be suffused in fragrance is a serious, dislocating, a gross impingement for many.
The nature of these elements, whether shopfront, manufacturing and craft space, materials lab or high end sophistication and salon-like environments — each of these can frame that quality. We’ve written about the dynamics of scent in place — scent design and mnemonic context –ranging from the spiritual to the specially retail, retold. Others comment, Chandler Burr, for example. There are the principles of delicacy and restraint, or the emboldened super spritz of retail. Or toxic.
• There is the brand, the passionate fire — and its story.
• There is the nature and complexity of the perfumes, their vaporous nature [how do you manage it?] — what are they “saying,” what is the character of their “notation.”
• There is the spirit of the brand expression and their relationship to the founding visioning — who created the scent, art directed their making, to those characteristics, what design language might emerge?
• There is scale, light, materials, “volume,” spatial planning.
To each, their own story.
In studying the range of scent spaces — places for selling fragrance — and working on designing for them, there is a link between the brand, the story, and how that place could be envisioned.
Diptyque is a brand with a story, a kind of charming brand storytelling — and the designer of their most recent outpost, in London — Christopher Jenner‘s newest offering, which is described, by Mr. Jenner, as a kind of experiential storytelling.
His sense of brand coding and detailing is complex — and infused in the layering of Diptyque’s styling.
Interestingly, the design of an environment for the sale of scents is often better suited to the layering of story — an expression that will be richly sensate — not unlike the packaging that contains the perfume.
And, the legends holds sway, in the making of place.
TIM | PIKE PLACE STUDIOS | GIRVIN
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EXPERIENCE DESIGN
STRATEGIES | BRAND, STORY & SCENT
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