Interview of Laurice Rahme, creative of the mark new yorkaise Bond N°9

Laurice Rahme’s fragrance brand, “Bond N °9,” is the outcome of her wish to pay homage to New York City.

More than 20 scents recreate the atmosphere and charm of the city’s varied neighborhoods. From Bleecker Street to Little Italy, via Chinatown and more, each neighborhood has its own scent, an olfactory imprint that will bring back memories of this magical city for you, too… or enchant you with the reminder of why you love your own neighborhood so!

If you had created the fragrances Rive Gauche, 24 Faubourg or Champs Elysées (respectively Yves St Laurent, Hermès and Guerlain), would you have ‘perfumed’ these places of Paris differently ?

Rive Gauche, my favorite French fragrance and also my ex-neighborhood and it's a masterpiece.  I could have never done it better. Guerlain, Jardins de Bagatelle is a perfect bouquet and Hermès, 24 Faubourg has bottled their address.  Nobody knows their address better than them.  (***)

After the USA, you have decided to win Europeans’ hearts. You launch Bond N°9 in the UK, in France... What are your ambitions on the Old Continent ?

I have not decided to win European's hearts.  They, the English, the Italians, the Germans and now the French have a very soft spot for New York despite of what they say and they all want a piece of it. How convenient for them to get New York in a bottle in the old continent. That really made me happy because America has imported French fragrances for so many years. Now it's our turn.   

How do you think to seduce a clientele that may not necessarily know NYC and the very particular mood of its neigborhoods ? Are you going to have a more hedonistic approach ?

New Yorkers buy their neighborhood in a bottle. Tourists, American or otherwise, buy a souvenir in a bottle. A good time they had on Broadway, they will buy Broadway Nite. A great dinner date they had in Noho, in Chelsea, they will buy the souvenir of it with Chelsea Flowers or Nuits de Noho.

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So buying a Bond N°9 fragrance is like having a special and personal souvenir of NYC...
Your brand proposes 26 creations so far. Which Bond N°9 fragrance resembles you most, Laurice Rahme ?

The Scent of Peace is what resembles me the most. Peace is what's closest to my heart and it should be the largest neighborhood of all. A place we all want to live in. It also happens to be our fragrance so I'm not the only one who wants peace.  (****)

What were the first perfumes that you wore ? Do they evoke you today accurate places ?

My first fragrance at 14 was Calèche from Hermès given to me by cousin who lived in Mexico and Calandre by Paco Rabanne who was the hot scent in Paris in the 60's. Today they evoke a place and time in my life rather than a physical place.   

What fragrance by another perfumer do you prefer ? What fragrance would you have loved to create ?

I would love to have created Rive Gauche. I'm just sad that here in the US, it's a forgotten scent. 

Thank you Laurice.

Thank you.

Laurice Rahme, you were born in France , but it’s New York that your heart chose. Why ?

Being Born in France is an advantage when you come to New York because you can appreciate the extraordinary freedom that New York offers.  As a woman (in a woman's profession) everything is all up to you.  The heavy weight, the stifling and heavy baggages of French Tradition was left in Paris and my heart has adopted New York for emotional and creative freedom.   

What conduced you to create Bond N°9 ? The spirit of NYC, the challenge to put into scents an entire city, the wish to propose a new brand that got off the beaten path ?

After September 11, being a downtown company and smelling the horrific scents of the World Trade Center, I had a strong need to make the city smell good again.  And why not doing for New York what was done for Paris in the previous century by a couple of brands like Guerlain, Yves Saint Laurent and Hermès.

Which neighborhood in New York was for you the easiest, the most natural to transform into scent ? On the opposite, which one seemed the most difficult, the one that you may still wait to ‘perfume’ ? Could you tell us about these places in a few words ?

Naturally the easiest neighborhoods to capture are the ones we live in, work in and love the best.  For me they are downtown, our headquarters in Noho (*), for which we developed a scent for day, Eau de Noho, and a scent for night, Nuits de Noho.  The one neighborhood that we will have to wait for a long time would be The Meatpacking District (**), which still does not smell good in the mornings.   

When you think about NYC, is there a typical smell or raw material that evokes you the city ? And for other American cities like Los Angeles or Miami, do you also have precise olfactory ‘correspondences’ ?

The typical smell for New York is food, all kinds of food.  That's why we captured Chinatown, Little Italy, etc.  This work perfectly fine with the gourmand trend that America cannot get enough of. 

Besides, would it inspire you to put into bottle other cities, like L.A, Paris, London or Roma, today ? Or maybe more confidential cities or regions ?

I have been asked many times in the last 3 years for Los Angeles, Paris and London and other regions.  But I do not do this as a gimmick and I need to know in depth all the nuances of the different neighborhoods of the city that I bottle.  For example in New York, Park Avenue and Madison are just a minute apart and a block apart and yet they are 2 different worlds so we made 2 different scents.  How can I do this if I had a superficial knowledge of the cities ?  The only real knowledge I have is Paris which has already been done.