PARIS — Caron turns 120 this year, and to help celebrate is a pop-up takeover designed with Harry Nuriev in the storied French fragrance brand’s freestanding boutique here, starting Monday.
Olivia de Rothschild, Caron’s artistic director, met Nuriev, an interior architect and furniture designer, at an event the house held in late March to fete its iconic Pour Un Homme scent’s 90th birthday.
“We clicked on a lot of topics: values, perception for client journey, experience,” said de Rothschild. “And, most important — Caron’s heritage.”
When her family took over the brand six years ago, they kept its archives.
“We talked a lot about it with Harry, and discovered our shared passion,” said de Rothschild, who added it was highly stimulating for them to create something around the archives. “That was the core of the reason why we decided to work together on this.”
It is Caron’s first retail pop-up.
“For me it was important to come back to what Caron really was — a French brand, so that was a key element in our design,” she said.
“I had this immediate vision of French architecture,” explained Nuriev, referring to the beige patina-ed stone ubiquitous on Parisian buildings. He wanted to bring that from the outside inside the store.
“We did it with interesting twists,” said Nuriev, highlighting the addition of stainless steel, a signature material, which gives a modern contrast.
A rendering go the fountain-shower central to Caron’s pop-up.
Courtesy of Caron
De Rothschild wished to bring to the fore Caron’s historically audacious approach to perfume.
“So the centerpiece, which is a fountain-shower, was a take on that,” she said, of the installation nodding to fragrance and new life. “Caron was the first brand, in the ’80s, which did refillable fragrances.
“I like to call it a house of firsts,” she continued, citing as another example it having a perfume scented like tobacco. “For me, it’s the first retail experience that is super immersive, super human-centric and not client-centric. I like to make that distinction, because we wanted it to be around curiosity and education [about the brand], rather them solely focusing on purchasing.”
As such, archival elements related to five Caron fragrances and the times in which they were released line shelves fronted by a display window running along one of the 322-square-foot boutique’s walls.
Those five perfumes are: Narcisse Noir, from 1911, which was popular in the U.S. and made famous by the likes of Gloria Swanson; Tabac Blond, from 1919, a pioneer olfactive-wise; Pois de Senteur, from 1927, among the most beloved Caron fragrances; Fleur de Rocaille, from 1933, which women wore while playing sports then considered “masculine,” like tennis, and Pour Un Homme, from 1934, the first men’s perfume.
A rendering of fragrance nooks in Caron’s pop-up.
Courtesy of Caron
“For Harry and I, this project is the expression of how we interpreted the past, how we are in the present, and what we wanted to express for the future,” said de Rothschild.
Nuriev is perhaps best known in fashion circles for the transparent vinyl sofa stuffed with discarded clothing he did for Balenciaga at Design Miami in 2019. He’s also done projects for Jimmy Choo, Nike, Valentino, Opening Ceremony and other fashion brands, as well as Augustinus Bader in beauty.
Caron’s Paris pop-up, at 23 Rue François 1er, in the eighth district, will run for three months.
