When fashion meets beauty meets art. This could have been the credo of last weekend hot spot number one in Paris at 15 rue du Louvre, where Scandinavian luxury brand BYREDO congregated with super-hyped streetwear brand OFF_WHITE.

At the event, Ben Gorham the founder of BYREDO released his new fragrance “elevator music”. With a saddle mix between woody and floral “elevator music “ is ready to give us a unique, fresh touch just in time for spring.

The capsule collection’s title, “Elevator Music,” refers to sounds created for passive listening and asks the question: what do we take away from such experiences?

Together with street style super hyped brand OFF – WHITE he created a theme around fashion art and beauty.

The co-branded collection features an Eau de perfume, hair perfume and hand cream, but also a line of graphic T-shirts, denim pieces, as well as the BYREDO handbags that come with Virgil Abloh’s signature zip-tie tags and specially designed Industrial straps. Characterized by a minimalist black and white colour scheme, the capsule is street-chic and at the same time very classy.

Carsten Höller, an artist that Ben and Virgil both admire, set up the presentation which showed rags and framework. Known as an object and installation artist, Carsten had several collaborations with brands such as ACNE, PRADA and now BYREDO. Swedish scientist Gunnar Johansson, who had studied human movement and set the notion of “elevator syndrome”, inspired his installation

“Elevator Music” is a project that attempts to define the least amount of information needed to understand a product context and background. In this case objects, we define as luxury goods.

“I have known Virgil even before the inception of Off-White, so it’s great to be able to realise a project together finally. We have always shared a common understanding that relevance is everything and that the rules of our industry need to be rewritten somehow.”
Ben Gorham, founder and creative director of BYREDO

Ben Gorham, the beautiful man with the long hair, is a native Swede, born to an Indian mother and a Canadian father. Ben grew up in Toronto, New York and Stockholm. He graduated from the Stockholm art school with a degree in fine arts, but a chance meeting with perfumer Pierre Wulff convinced him that he’d instead create fragrances than paintings. With no formal training in the field, Gorham, a 31-year old, sought out the services of world-renowned perfumers Olivia Giacobetti and Jerome Epinette, explaining his olfactory desires and letting them create the compositions. As an outsider in the beauty industry, Ben is somewhat of an anomaly and has been recognised for his personal style and connection to fashion and art in several international magazines such as French Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle, V Magazine and Fantastic Man to name a few.

“Ben Gorham is one of my longest friends in the fashion industry. We share a common interest in progression. The concept of our collaboration “Elevator Music” was to define emotion with the least amount of effects. Much like real elevator music we wanted the scent to play a background of one’s life.”
Virgil Abloh, founder and creative director of Off-White

 

Words: Jazz Brown