Earlier this month, Rick Owens’ Fall-Winter 2022 show at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris featured fog machines pumping a woody scent into the room as models took to the runway in the designer’s avant-garde creations. (Some models even carried portable smoke machines down the runway, further filling the venue with the aroma.) The show notes revealed that the scent emitting from the machines was, in fact, a new collaboration with the Australian brand, Aesop.
Over the years, Owens has collaborated with many fashion brands, including Birkenstock, Moncler, Dr. Martens, and Converse to name just a few, but this marks his first step into fragrance and body care. As expected, he put his signature design stamp on the collaboration’s scent and line-up of products.
Launching Tuesday, March 22, the collaboration includes a candle, a travel kit featuring the designer’s favorite Aesop products, and an all-new fragrance, called Stoic Eau de Toilette, developed in partnership with perfumer and longtime collaborator with Aesop, Barnabé Fillion. Stoic features a spicy aroma of black pepper and coriander seed that reflects Owens’ radical aesthetic, while Frankincense and woody notes conjures the equanimous spirit of Aesop.
For Owens, it was important to give the buyer an option to bring the scent everywhere they go.
“I am not sure if it was my body responding positively to the alchemy of the unguents they produce or my head responding to the quiet and gentle aesthetics of their ethos as a company, but Aesop’s balms represented a soothing mood that I wanted to continue seamlessly throughout my home life and my travel life,” said Owens in the press release.
To make the fragrance go its furthest, Owens designed 10 porous ceramic beads which increase Stoic’s longevity when applied directly to the bonus accessory, compared to when applied directly to the skin.
The products Owens has used for years included in the travel kit are the Coriander Seed Body Cleanser, Resolute Hydrating Body Balm, Classic Shampoo and Classic Conditioner, plus the new Stoic Eau de Toilette. The designer also brought his aesthetic to the packaging, by wrapping the travel kit in an organic jersey material which can also be worn as a wrist-wrap or bandana with a co-branded dual grosgrain strip.
Owens explained the importance of the packaging in an Instagram post. “A threadbare faded white t-shirt has been one of my motifs for a long time — and something I wear frequently,” he wrote. “It alludes to Sid Vicious’s ripped t-shirt…The ragged t-shirts from Satyajit Ray’s black and white movies…Madame Grès’ legendary 1930s draped jersey dresses…And the clinging drapery of the winged victory of Samothrace…A garland of thin cotton jersey is my version of a laurel wreath or of a satin gift bow.”
The limited-edition collection is now available at aesop.com and selects Aesop and Rick Owens stores worldwide so you too can embody the full world of Rick Owens.
