Helena Christensen Launches Into The World Of Perfumes

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

When her friend and founder of the ERH1012 company, Elizabeth Gaynes, proposed to Helena Christensen to launch a perfume in oil, the Danish didn't even think about it after smelling the main ingredient: oudh. "It is difficult to explain, it is a poetic, beautiful aroma that stimulates your brain, wakes you up, intoxicates you," says Christensen, who since then has served as the company's creative director.

The oudh is an aromatic resin that is extracted from the aquilaria tree. This tree generates a resin by becoming infected with certain fungi that make the wood react, giving rise to this precious ingredient, more expensive than gold, which has been used in the world of cosmetics for hundreds of years.

"We use the trees from a sustainable plantation in Borneo," Gaynes explains. It was important to know that it is quality oudh and that the ecosystem of the region is not damaged. They were destroying the jungle to obtain these trees.”

In addition to a penetrating aroma, they say that oudh has aphrodisiac effects, "and that is always a plus," says Christensen, who has been in charge of baptizing this aromatic oil as Dead of Night. “I wrote down the words that the perfume inspired me and this name came up. It is a dark, mysterious essence, like a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Everyone sees what happens during the day, but the night is a hypnotic state where things happen that are not perceived”.

For two years Christensen and Gaynes, together with the master perfumer Christopher Laudamiel, tried different mixtures until they found the perfect combination, which has more than 125 ingredients, such as jasmine, incense or carrot seeds, among others.

"I would say that the best places to apply it are the inside of the wrists, the back of the hand, the clavicle, the neck … so that when we move we perceive the aroma," explains Laudamiel. "Being an oil, the perfume is better preserved because it does not contain alcohol, a bottle can last more than a year."

Christensen, from a Peruvian mother, also works as a photographer for the Oxfam organization and has taken photographs of the website and the perfume campaign, in addition to collaborating in the design of the bottles, limited edition, numbered and with a different flower engraved on each jar.

Dead of Night is available on the ERH1012 website in 20 ml bottles ($ 575) a 10 ml roll-on. (295), presented in an aquilaria wooden box, and a 1.25 ml mini bottle ($ 55).