OSMOZ - a new look at fragrance

Nicole Lambert

Designer Nicole Lambert devotes most of her time and energy to making life fun for children. She not only designs furniture and toys for prestigious brands like Petit Faune and Molli, but she is also author of the comic strip "Triplés", which she created 18 years ago. "Triplés", which recounts the adventures of three young triplets, appears weekly in "Madame Figaro" in France, "Femina" in Switzerland, "Ciné-Revue" in Belgium and "7 Jours" in Canada and is even popular in Japan.

By Frédérique de Granvilliers

Never one to rest on her laurels, Nicole Lambert has just created a new perfume for children, Les Triplés, which went on sale in department stores and perfumeries in September. The fragrance, conceived by Robertet, is a fruit-and-flower blend, with a splash of mandarin and a hint of orange blossom. Lambert designed the bottle, which is in the shape of a spinning top and is white for babies and blue for older children. "Creating for children," Lambert says, "is a very big responsibility. Everything they see, touch and smell marks them for life. My greatest reward would be giving someone a future childhood memory."

What kind of perfume are you wearing today?

Les Triplés eau de toilette. It's a very light-hearted fragrance that is perfect after a shower when you want to smell really fresh.

Which was your very first perfume?

My father was a film director and would often shoot movies at the Victorine studios in Nice. He used to send my mother big baskets filled with fragrant carnations and would bring me back small, hand-painted glass balls. You could open them up and inside each one there was a strong-scented wax that, to me, smelled like carnations. I was seven years old at the time and thought this was absolutely wonderful.
When I was 17, and working as a model, I was crazy about a clove-scented Caribbean perfume that you could only find at the Drugstore on the Champs-Elysées. It was called Royal Spice and was very strong and unusual. The bottle was wonderful, too. It was made of brown glass and had a pewter stopper in the shape of a small crown. For me, it's not just the perfume that counts. The bottle is very important, too. I can never dissociate one from the other. When the Drugstore burned down, I was in despair. I was never able to find the same perfume anywhere else.

What kinds of perfume did your parents wear?

Mom used to wear Heure Bleue by Guerlain. The pointed glass stopper on the bottle always fascinated me, but I wasn't allowed to touch it because I used to break everything. Dad was a very well-groomed and well-dressed man. He used to take baths all the time and smother himself with scented talc. What with the talc, the lavender of his eau de Cologne and the smell of his tobacco, he had an inimitable aroma. It was a delicious blend of smells that made up the fragrance I called dad.

Are there particular smells that evoke memories for you?

First and foremost, there's the smell of a baby's neck. On the back of the Triplés box, you see a mother burying her nose in her little boy's neck. Then there's a smell related to my grandfather, who was a bookbinder and took care of me a lot. I adore the smell of books. I love opening an old book and breathing in the smell. I recently became a publisher and whenever a new book comes back from the printers, I always breathe in the smell. Then there's the smell of adhesive paste and, although I don't like to eat quince jelly, I love the smell of it cooking.

Which smells do you dislike?

The smells from a plane when it takes off. They make me sick to my stomach. I hate the smell of kerosene, and the smell of gas.

Which are your favorite smells?

I'm crazy about plant smells. I particularly love the scent of the flowers that used to grow in my grandfather's garden in Verrières-le-Buisson. He grew lily of the valley, lilac, mock orange and orange blossom. Orange blossom was used to flavor our rice pudding and I was also given it in a glass of sugared water before I went to sleep at night. It was delicious.

Do you wear different kinds of perfume?

I wear Diorissimo by Christian Dior and also Jessica McClintock, which is similar but wilder, with more lily of the valley. A friend brings it over from California. In winter, when it's cold, I wear Shalimar by Guerlain.

What kind of perfume does your husband wear?

My husband, Cyril de Turkheim, should have been a "nose". I've never met anyone with such an acute awareness of fragrances. I've got three little perfume bottles in the bathroom and he has more than a dozen. He spends a fortune on perfume! He loves to try different kinds and combine them. Shalimar becomes marvelously masculine on him. He also has a passion for oenology. I naturally asked his advice when I was creating my perfume. Cyril composes music, but he could just as well be composing fragrances.