The first perfume Malle encountered was Miss Dior, worn by his mother she headed up development for the fragrance division and even came up with Baby Dior (a variation on Eau Fraîche) for her two sons. The effect of that early indoctrination, beginning with grand-père Serge Heftler-Louiche, is hard to dismiss. You should write down that your grandfather was the founder of Christian Dior!’”Įditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle: The First Twenty Years, $65 (Rizzoli). “He looked at my press file and said, ‘You are an absolute idiot. Shortly before launch in 2000, he talked about the new business with his good friend “ Jean-Jacques Picart, who was to Christian Lacroix what Pierre Bergé was to Yves Saint Laurent,” as Malle put it. Instead, he wanted to give talented noses a platform-one squarely of his own making-“showing that these people were more than ghostwriters. When Malle created his perfume house 20 years ago, the industry was rife with cookie-cutter scents by hired hands. The fragrance impresario was momentarily doing what he prefers not to do: talking about his family connections. “I was very fortunate in life to land on this earth in Paris in the sixties, being brought up by people who were amazingly curious and international-driven by art, also by business, which was quite uncommon,” said Frédéric Malle in a recent phone call from France.

Frederic malle the night