The new Maison Francis Kurkdjian perfume: ‘an intimate conversation between fragrance and skin’

Long-time devotees of Maison Francis Kurkdjian might think the brand’s latest launch, ‘APOM’, sounds familiar. That’s because the newly launched fragrance, first went on sale in 2009 as two different perfumes: ‘APOM Pour Femme’, a floral, woody fragrance, that blended luminous orange blossom with the creamy notes of ylang-ylang, and ‘APOM Pour Homme’, which had a more pronounced, woody base.

The name is an acronym for ‘A Part Of Me’, and the fragrance duo was inspired by the idea of leaving a part of oneself with another person via scent. As Kurkdjian says: ‘What better defines someone than [their] perfume?’

Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s new perfume ‘APOM’ is ‘an intimate conversation between fragrance and skin’

Both ‘APOM’ fragrances garnered a devoted following back then, but not a large enough one to warrant keeping them on the market for more than a few years. Still, Kurkdjian’s co-founder, Marc Chaya – along with several friends – kept asking the perfumer if he could create samples of the fragrances for them in the lab, long after it had been taken off the shelves. The requests became frequent enough that Kurkdjian even considered putting them back into production. ‘My first instinct was to relaunch them the way they were,’ the perfumer says over a call from his Paris office. 'But then I asked Marc to give me a few months because I thought maybe I could create something new out of the two of them. Maybe I could merge them.’

Kurkdjian then embarked on a long and complex process of extracting and testing various elements of both fragrances, until he hit upon a combination that balanced ‘the best of the feminine version and the best of the masculine version’. The result is what we see in the new, singular version of ‘APOM’, an ambery, flowery fragrance combining the orange blossom and lavender notes of the previous pair with warm vanilla and a brighter iteration of ylang-ylang.

Kurkdjian currently heads up the creative direction for Dior fragrances, a position he has held since 2021, and is the nose behind some of the world’s best-selling perfumes to come out of fashion houses. (This includes ‘Le Male’ for Jean Paul Gaultier, which first launched in 1995 when Kurkdjian was just 25, and ‘For Her’ by Narciso Rodriguez, which he developed with Christine Nagel in 2003).

Whilst these fashion houses give Kurkdjian the olfactory freedom needed to produce his best work, the perfumer opened his namesake Maison in 2009 as an outlet to experiment with scent on his terms. Although, collaboration has always been a key component in what he does. By that time, he had already worked under his name on projects that spanned from reimagining one of Marie Antoinette’s favourite perfumes using historical documents, or bottling the ‘smell of money’ with artist Sophie Calle. Perfumes such as the viral ‘Baccarat Rouge 540‘ (which MFK made with the French luxury crystal makers in 2016) are also a testament to this.

And, despite LVMH acquiring Maison Francis Kurkdjian in 2017, he maintains creative control. As with the new ‘APOM’, revisiting archival fragrances is something he does quite frequently. ‘This process is not about making it better, because there’s no such thing as better – that’s a matter of taste,’ he says. ‘It’s more about making them fit more closely to my original story.’

Amongst perfumers, Kurkdjian has a uniquely verbal relationship to fragrances. Every scent begins with a name, which he uses as a launchpad to develop a story and a character he can inhabit while creating the work. ‘Like a director making a movie, unless it is an autobiography, every character is not a reflection of the person making it,’ he explains. But 2024’s ‘APOM’ is an exception, with the fragrance reflecting more of himself than ever before.

Like the gourmet chef who eats toast for dinner, Kurkdjian never wears perfume himself. But he might be willing to make an exception for ‘APOM’, with the brand describing it as ‘an intimate conversation between fragrance and skin.’

‘There is a nude effect to this perfume,’ explains Kurkdjian. ‘It’s something very soft and calming, but also luminous and sexy’.

‘APOM’ by Maison Francis Kurkdjian is available now.

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