Elements

View original article at Fragrantica

By: Sandra Raičević Petrović

Ulrich Lang New York is a niche house founded in 2002 and has introduced three editions so far: anvers, anvers2 and Nightscape. The house is based on Ulrich Lang’s great love for art, contemporary photography, and perfumes, of course. Today we are talking to Ulrich Lang, founder and owner of the niche line, about his work and creativity, new creations and fragrances generally.

Please tell us more about you. About your childhood, education and your first business experiences.

Ulrich Lang: I grew up in the South of Germany and studied business (marketing and Business French). During my studies I did internships in creative fields such as Music Industry and Fragrance Industry. One of those internship was with Estee Lauder’s Aramis brand in the UK. They launched a fragrance called New West at that time. Maybe that was an early hint of things to come!

How did perfumes come into your life?

Ulrich Lang: Early on, my grandmother had a beauty salon with a little perfumery in the South of Germany and I grew up amongst lotions and potions. I was able to name fragrances people wore at a very, very early age. It was the perfect education.

Your work in Aramis in UK and in L’Oreal had a strong influence on you before you started your niche line. Please tell us more about your work and experience there.

Ulrich Lang: Aramis, as I mentioned before, was a great first foray into the world of Fragrance and Estee Lauder was a much smaller company at that time. You could tell that it was family-run, everything had a personal touch. It was a great experience. I turned down en initial offer to work for L’Oreal in my native Germany because I wanted to move to New York. Temporarily only. When Brant Publications (Interview Magazine, Art in America, Antiques Magazine) offered me a job I stayed. I accepted a job in Product Management with L’Oreal later.

How does art infuence your work and your line?

Ulrich Lang: I have always been interested in Contemporary Photography and started visiting Art Basel in Switzerland at an early age. I think I have been going there for over 20 years – every year in June. I left L’Oreal in 1998 to build the Contemporary business for New York-based artnet.com (my former boss who had moved on from Brant to artnet.com hired me back).

During that time I visited hundreds of contemporary galleries worldwide and had the best visual training imaginable. During that time I also started to collect contemporary photography. Most artists I “discovered” at that time are now famous.

It could be said that every piece of art is a small part of revolution. Tell us more about your fragrant Revolution.

Ulrich Lang: Lisa Kirk is a curator and artist and a friend of mine. She told me years ago that she was working on a fragrance (with perfumer Patricia Choux, at that time at Symrise). The fragrance is based on the scent of Revolution and she asked ten living revolutionaries how Revolution smelled. Clearly not of freshly picked roses – but of tear gas, burned rubber, sweat, blood, etc.

Patricia Choux captured the essence of rebellion in a fragrance that contains birch tar oil, wood, animalic amber, leather, musk and everlasting absolute and other dirty spicy elements.

Later, Kirk created a vessel for the perfume in the form of a pipe bomb made of silver, gold and platinum in limited editions. They range from $4,000 to $40,000. I wanted to include her in a speech at the Fragrance Fair in Florence, Fragranze, in 2009 and she told me about a new video she had created for the fragrance.

I loved it and convinced her to do a more commercial edition in a lab bottle which was also created in cooperation Patricia Choux who is now with Takasago. This little bottle was launched at Project No 8’s store “8a” in the ACE Hotel and retails for $50 (12ml). The video is shown in the hotel’s guest rooms – Lisa Kirk  Revolution Perfume at No.8a/Ace Hotel

Ulrich Lang: As you can already tell from the packaging – my line is a fusion of my passions for fragrance and contemporary photography. A new artist interprets each fragrance visually on the box. I created my first fragrance anvers in 2003 when there were not as many niche / entrepreneurial lines as there are today. The fragrance contains some of my favorite notes (Mint, Basil, Leather, Precious Woods). It is subtle and very contemporary, something I look for in a fragrance for today’s complex personalities. During my time at artnet.com I met Antwerp-based gallerist Roger Szmulewicz of Fitfy One Fine Art Photography .

I admired his program (Malick Sidibe, Seidou Keita, Elinor Carucci, William Klein…) and we became friends. Roger is very quiet and introspective and he looks interesting. I decided to do some test shots in New York (with Steven Klein’s former assistant Erik Swain). They looked great and I decided to put his face on the box. Roger serves as model and muse for my “anvers” line (anvers, anvers 2).

Ulrich Lang: My follow up fragrance, anvers 2, was inspired by a photo of Roger taken by american artist Katy Grannan. It showed him in a forest wearing a formal coat and sneakers. I loved the image – Katy is such an amazing artist – and when I asked her at the opening of her gallery show in Antwerp a few years ago, she offered to photograph the visual for anvers 2, a floral oriental.

Ulrich Lang: My third fragrance, nightscape, which came out in late 2009 is a departure from the anvers series. I wanted to work with Patchouli as a key ingredient, a very modern Patchouli, not the kind you associate with the 60s and 70s…The result is a fragrance that starts fresh with Bergamot and Geen Notes, a heart of Jasmin, Cedarwood and Geranium and a base of Tonka Bean, Soft Leather, Amber, Musk and lots of Patchouli. It’s mysterious. I gave a lab sample to young photographer Matt Licari who shot the visual for nightscape in New York City. It’s a city at night, glittering, mysterious, seen from a new perspective. Pretty much a reflection of a new time.

How do other perfumes affect you? Please share with us your favorite perfumes that you love to wear.

Ulrich Lang: Growing up in Germany I was clearly influenced by two highly successful lines at the time, Jil Sander and Joop! They were omnipresent and beautifully designed, with fabulous campaigns. I came to New York City for the first time in 1987 and discovered Halston’s Z-14. I brought it home to Germany and wore it for a decade. Few people in Germany wore it since it had no distribution there at the time. It was like a niche fragrance on that market at the time! My other favorite (which led me to work with Patchouli) remains Caron’s Yatagan.

We met you in Mougins, France this year. It was a very nice niche expo, we all had a wonderful time out there. Tell us where else  you presented your collection this year.

Ulrich Lang: I do few international fairs per year. I have been attending Pitti Fragranze in Florence since their first edition and I still love going there. Esxence in Milan and Global Art of Perfumery in Duesseldorf are newer but also very focused and present many niche brands. They both ran at the same time this year so I had to choose one – luckily they picked different dates from each other for 2011.

Very important for you and your work is ELEMENTS, exhibition that awaits us January 30-31, 2011 in NY. Introduce our readers to “the new experience for established and emerging visionares in the art of fragrance design”, and your part of work for Elements expo .

Ulrich Lang: Elements is the brain child of Frederick Bouchardy of Joya, and myself. I met Frederick earlier this year. He is a very dynamic and a very creative fragrance entrepreneur. Our products are in similar distribution. We came up with Elements because we felt there was no focused showcase in the US for the “game changers” in fragrance. Our third partner in Elements is Jeffrey Lawson, an upscale art fair producer, who will ensure that our showcase will have a clean and elegant aesthetic. We did not want to do another “fair” and we feel that Elements will be very different from the current fragrance fairs. That’s why we called it showcase.

Feedback has been amazing and the first edition of Elements will feature brands such as Santa Maria Novella, Keiko Mecheri, Nasomatto, Baxter of California, Dayna Decker, Lubin, Lorenzo Villoresi, Carthusia, Nejma, Ineke, Eau d’Italie, Etat Libre d’Orange, DS&Durga, DL & Co, Carner Barcelona and Anthousa. It’s a showcase by fragrance designers for fragrance designers. The buyers we got confirmed include the best of the best, such as Barneys New York, Opening Ceremony, OAK, Project No.8, Anthropologie and others. We will also have buyers from Europe and Japan. We partnered up with New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology and students in Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing will present a fragrance project during the showcase.

Holidays bring good feelings and happiness every year. How will you spend your holidays and where?

Ulrich Lang: I hardly ever spend the Holidays in New York but travel to the South of Germany to be with my family.

If you could express holidays with some fragrance, which would you choose? It could be any scent that reminds you of Christmas.

Ulrich Lang: The scent of mulled wine which reminds me of a traditional Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) in Germany. Cinnamon, oranges and cloves, too.

What are your holiday gifts this year?

Ulrich Lang: My presents this year will be scented candles by design firm Bureau TM, the creative geniuses behind graphics for LCD Soundsystem and several beauty brands. I helped coordinate the scent development with Takasago perfumers Laurence Fanuel and Patricia Choux and the result is a smoky, earthy fragrance with notes of clay sage, spicy nutmeg, fig leaves, incense, leather, patchouli, cedarwood and sandalwood. The candle will be available in selective distribution in 2011 and I am sure Fragrantica will report about it first!!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, everyone!!!