The unisex perfume, Soie Malaquais, launched by Dries Van Noten in 2022, has been specially packaged in five unique bottles by the Belgian artist Bouke de Vries, on sale at the designer’s London and New York stores. The scent, developed by Marie Salamagne after a visit to Van Noten’s garden (an impressive one, surrounding an equally impressive château), is a warm mix of chestnut, rose, blackcurrant and cardamom.
Porcelain perfume bottles, often elaborately decorated, are part of the history of refinement, from the 18th century onwards, though De Vries’s versions rather subvert the genre. Known for work in which he reassembles broken china fragments into dynamic objects—including flowers and vessels—his designs for Van Noten share this energy.
“The bottles respond to the fragrance’s beauty: elegant but not entirely well-behaved,” says De Vries, who works on his own in a shed in his garden in Shepherd’s Bush and initially worked in ceramic restoration.
“My poetry lies in the little object, reimagined after the trauma of accidental breakage. The scale of a perfume bottle felt entirely natural.” The scale of the purchase: £6,000. A limited-edition series is also available online.