Rebel Smell

What happens when three true grit perfumers band together for a showdown with the bland world of commercial fragrance? Project Renegades, that’s what. Hold onto your psychedelic Stetson, it’s gonna be a wild ride...

Rebel Smell

– Project Renegades, who they? Three buddies, Geza Schoen, Mark Buxton, and Bertrand Duchaufour, classically-trained perfumers who have busted out of the mainstream to cook up hell-raisin’ fragrances a million miles wide of the usual commercial constraints.

– Where they at? Geza is Escentric Molecules – nuff said. Mark is the perfumer most associated with Comme des Garçons, and he has his own out-there brand to boot. Plus the dude wears a string of pearls, cowboy boots and a Homburg. On weekdays. Bertrand is the niche brands’ go-to guy, he’s done stuff for Comme, as well as crazy-good smells for The Different Company, Acqua di Parma and L’Artisan Parfumeur.

renegade /ˈrɛnɪɡeɪd/ – a person who deserts an organization, country. archaic a person who abandons religion; an apostate. Renegades and Deserters of Heaven, who renounce their God for the Favour of Man. – a person who behaves in a rebelliously unconventional manner.

– What they about? Kicking back and having fun. Giving the finger to the industry. Sticking avatar mini-sculptures of themselves on the front of their fragrances - avatars that detach to become fridge magnets.

– Fridge magnets? Yup. This is the world’s first ‘fragrance + fridge magnet’ concept. Are fridge magnets cool? Do we care? They’re fridge magnets!

Think Kinder Egg meets Timothy Leary by way of Jesse James

– These are no ordinary fridge magnets. The way this band of bros sees things, they are running amok as mixologist cowboys in a Wild West spooling out from their own kaleidoscopic imaginations. Which translates to mean: Geza’s avatar has Colt pistols for ears and silver bullets for teeth; Mark sports a Stetson transmogrifying into a peyote cactus; while Bertrand wears a mean-toothed rattler for a hat. Think Kinder Egg meets Timothy Leary by way of Jesse James.

– These avatars inhabit their own maxxed-out world. These dudes don’t just have fragrances, they don’t just have kinder-magnet-heads, they have an otherworld that their avatars run amok in. You can follow their serial adventures as they flee from bland corporate Consumador into the phantasmagoric universe of Panosmia, one nail-biting episode at a time on the Renegades website.

Geza had this idea for a wild ride. He got together with his mates and we took off with it.

– And the juice? Lets not be modest here. The fragrances are awesome. The reason is simple: without focus groups to keep things bland, the gang could create way outside of convention. Without cost constraints, they could use the materials they wanted at the concentration they wanted. The result is three auteur fragrances, each with a high proportion of the luxe naturals that have been priced-out of so-called ‘luxury’ fragrances.

– So lets hear it from the dudes themselves: Bertrand: “Geza had this aberrant idea for a wild ride. He got together with his mates and we just took off with it.” Mark: “We three have been the outlaws of the fragrance world for 20 years. This is our chance to really blow your mind.” Geza: “Yee haw!”