What’s Happening: Creative collaborations between art- and design-world talents and fragrance houses have long elevated mass-produced goods to the status of artwork. The likes of James Turrell and the Yves Klein Archive are building upon a tradition everyone from India Mahdavi, Frank Gehry, and Salvador Dalí have taken part in: designing rare perfume bottles.

The Download: In some corners of the design world, collaboration fatigue has, understandably, set in. One kind of creative partnership that reliably drums up excitement among even the most jaded aesthetes is also one of the least predictable: artist-designers and fragrance houses. According to beauty expert and Smell Ya Later fragrance podcast co-host Tynan Sinks, one of the earliest examples of crossover between the fragrance and art worlds occurred in 1908, when avant-garde artist and theorist Kazimir Malevich was commissioned to design a Severny Cologne bottle before shaping the future of abstract art with his bright, cubist paintings. The semi-opaque glass bottle he created features a polar bear perched atop an ice block as its stopper, with the remainder rendered as an ocean-worn block of ice.

In 1937, still far before the word “collab” existed, the Surrealist painter and designer Leonor Fini created the curvaceous bottle for Elsa Schiaparelli’s beloved ‘Shocking!’ fragrance, drawing inspiration from the Italian couturier’s dress form, or mannequin, for Golden Age film star Mae West. (In 2018, Kim Kardashian’s KKW Body fragrance raised eyebrows for its conspicuously similar packaging design.) Schiaparelli also worked with Salvador Dalí, commissioning him to design the bottle for her ‘Le Roi Soleil’ fragrance, which debuted in 1946. Schiaparelli ran in the same social circles as Fini and Dalí; she considered them friends, attended parties with them, and admired their work before tapping them as collaborators.

Fini’s bottle for ‘Shocking!’ represented an uninhibited celebration of femininity: “The shape of the mannequin was inspired by the curves of the actress Mae West, the Hollywood sex symbol of the time,” according to the Schiaparelli archive. “The bottle was placed under a glass globe in reference to those in which late-19th-century brides preserved their floral wreaths.” Dalí’s design, which was released nine years later, was a celebration of postwar Paris. It referenced the Place Vendôme, where Maison Schiaparelli was based at the time. The Place had also once hosted a statue of Louis XIV, the fragrance’s namesake. The bottle itself was made from Baccarat crystal and featured a stopper in the shape of a flaming sun atop a bottle evocative of rocks emerging from the ocean.

The more recent past has seen James Turrell team up with French glassmaker Lalique in the form of two obelisk-like crystal decanters that recall Asian stupas and pay homage to the Range Rider and Purple Sage fragrances they hold. The two prismatic bottles mark the renowned Light and Space artist’s inaugural foray into perfumery—and the first time he has created work on a small scale.

Then there’s Guerlain’s special release of L’Heure Bleue with the Yves Klein Archive, which has also charmed the design world. For the 110th anniversary of its L’Heure Bleue fragrance, the brand worked with the Yves Klein Archive to issue 30 bottles painted in International Klein Blue, using the late artist’s same pigmentation processes. The effect of such a matte, monochrome coating on the curvature of the Waltersperger glass crystal is wondrous to behold.

Also worth mentioning is Dries Van Noten’s recent partnership with the renowned 19th-century French fragrance glassmakers at Stoelzle Masnières Parfumerie, which yielded a chromatic array of luminous glass bottles. And, in 2021, India Mahdavi’s curvaceous reimagining of Dior’s iconic J’Adore fragrance and Frank Gehry’s sculptural crinkled cap for Louis Vuitton’s Les Extraits perfume collection.

In a crowded retail landscape, where collab culture feels increasingly like a meme of itself, these fewer and farther-between launches feel newsworthy when announced. The strategy behind formulating, launching, and marketing a fragrance is so calculated that bringing in an outsider—even one of the art or design world’s best—could present numerous risks. But in these cases, that’s where the magic happened.

In Their Own Words: “Artist-designed perfume bottles are a little harder to come by than artists designing limited-edition deco on existing components,” Sinks tells Surface. “Perfume houses often have their own bottle designers, who are artists in their own right, of course. To me, that’s not the same as an artist who works in their own medium, be it in sculpture or otherwise, being brought on for the specific purpose of designing a perfume bottle.”

Surface Says: It’s refreshing to see the prevailing “fewer is better” mindset expand to creative partnerships, but we wouldn’t be mad if more artists left their signature stamps on perfume bottles.

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The fanciful booths at Salon Art + Design, New York’s leading collectible design fair, have always felt more akin to living rooms than white cubes. Held annually at the landmark Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan, the showcase offers a trove of vintage, modern, and contemporary design intermixed with blue-chip artworks. The hotly anticipated fair’s 11th edition is no different, welcoming 52 international exhibitors presenting an eclectic mix of objects that speak to what architects and interior designers are thinking about today. Our editor selected six highlights from the fair, which runs through November 14.

Dinner and a show, meet dinner as a show. “I don’t want to call it a restaurant as much as a performance,” says HaSalon NYC executive chef Orianne Shapira. “The kitchen is lit up like a stage. You see ten cooks who are all dressed up and running. We want people to be excited to come here [like they would be for] a concert.” An export from Tel Aviv, the restaurant is part of Jerusalem–born chef Eyal Shani’s global culinary empire. Known for its theatrical production and party vibes, a meal at HaSalon is a communal experience. Set in a Hell’s Kitchen space resembling a living room, with bold-patterned tiles and a mishmash of vintage furniture and decor objects, the market-driven Mediterranean menu is served family style—with flair.

“It’s colorful and fun. The food usually comes out all at once in an organized mess. The roasted fish with vegetables gets this beautiful charred color on the top; we add buttered wine sauce, flame the dish, and send it out with everyone screaming ‘fire on the floor!’” Shapira says of the dishes, each of which focuses on a single ingredient and don cheeky names like Our Most Famous $24 Single Tomato and A Couple of Artichokes Roasted with Terrifying Fire.

A seasoned talent who seamlessly navigates scales ranging from furniture design to apartment buildouts, Roula Salamoun approaches her work through a lens of material experimentation that invites users to revisit their relationship with space. The Lebanese designer, a key figure within Beirut’s burgeoning design sphere, is presenting her latest collection—the erosion-inspired Archipelago Seats and topographic Strata Tables—at Dubai Design Week, the culmination of years of studying the boundaries between analog and digital design.

Our weekly roundup of the internet’s most preposterous headlines, from the outrageous to the outright bizarre.

Rappers’ Lyrics Are Used Against Them in Court. The Music Industry Wants It to Stop [WSJ]

“Homosexual” Was Added to Bible by Mistake, Controversial Film Claims [New York Post]

An Elon Musk Chatbot Tells Insider He Wants to Buy CNN, Reinstate Trump on Twitter, and “Show People How the Sausage Gets Made” [Business Insider]

National Park Service Asks Visitors to Please Stop Licking Toads [New York Times]

Oculus Co-Founder Makes a VR Headset That Can Literally Kill You [Ars Technica]

Gun Hidden in a Raw Chicken Found at Florida TSA Checkpoint [CNN]

Kentucky Officials Warn of “Slick Smelly” Chicken Offal Spill [AP]

Parisian Undertaker Aims to Introduce Bicycle Hearse in France [Reuters]

Thirty-Year-Old Crypto Tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried Was Worth $16 Billion. 94% of That Was Wiped Out in Just One Day. [Business Insider]

A TikToker Hit a Golf Ball Into the Grand Canyon. She Now Faces Charges [Washington Post]

For major brands with celebrity deals, the past couple of months must have been eye-opening. Ye, the rapper and artist formerly known as Kanye West, lost multiple brand endorsement deals after making a string of anti-Semitic remarks and wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt, sparking widespread outrage. Gap and Balenciaga quickly terminated their partnerships with West; Vogue vowed to never work with him again. Conspicuously absent from the conversation was Adidas, which struck a lucrative deal for West to create Yeezy-branded sneakers and apparel for the sportswear giant back in 2013.

Though Adidas ultimately severed ties with West and stopped selling its Yeezy line one week into the fallout, many complained the brand didn’t act fast enough. That’s likely because the C-suite was evaluating the financial blowback of terminating its most lucrative celebrity partner. Adidas has become heavily dependent on Yeezy, which analysts estimate ballooned to $2 billion in annual sales, 8 percent of revenue, and 40 percent of profit. Rebounding will likely become one of incoming CEO Bjorn Gulden’s biggest challenges.

Helena Clunies-Ross Design is a New York and London-based international design studio. With over a decade of experience, Helena specializes in high-end residential and hospitality design, delivering projects from concept design through to completion. As former design director of Anouska Hempel Design, Helena has collaborated on some of the most prestigious hotel and residential projects around the world, working closely with renowned hoteliers and operators.​ She combines a love of art with her passion for interiors and architecture to create spaces that exude warmth and sophistication.

Surface Says: Interiors by Helena Clunies-Ross are united in their contemporary elegance, which is particularly fitting for the several reimagined, landmarked residences in her distinguished portfolio.

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