A raw and strong play of imagery makes up the campaign for HUEMN’s foray into perfumes, imbued with a sense of the edgy-cool that they are so synonymous with. The brand has collaborated with fragrance brand Olfa Originals which has a rich history of its own, to come up with HUEMN Pheromones, a unisex perfume. The bottle is an eyecatcher with the signature HUEMN devil horns and a deep red hue. Pranav Misra, co-founder and CEO, HUEMN, decoded the idea behind the HUEMN x Olfa Originals perfume for t2.
Let’s start with the campaign creatives first. What was the concept behind the stunning visuals?
A glimpse of the HUEMN Pheromones campaign
The perfume’s name is HUEMN Pheromones. In a way, we wanted to do justice to what the name makes you emote. We were trying to play with all the emotions Huemn has played with over the years. Its imagery has always had undertones of intimacy, sexual liberation.... The way we look at these subjects might differ from people to people... that’s the way I approach these subjects.
Tell us about the colour... the shocking red...
The first note of the perfume is red chilli. So, it’s got this intense punch, when you try it on and then it mellows down to the basil and the mid-tones and becomes floral eventually when it mixes with your skin. It’s a very unique perfume and it’s taken me a lot of time to make this, almost two years into the entire affair.
The whole challenge is from an audience point of view to make someone understand what something smells like with just visuals. There’s a binding lubricant texture that you would see in the campaign, which I don’t know whether it is under-explored or not explored at all in Indian imagery. We’ve seen oil and water as tools to create imagery, but I haven’t seen anything to do with lubricant as a texture, which is such a provocative texture in itself. That justified the HUEMN Pheromones mood as well.
How did the collaboration come about?
Perfume was on my mind for a very long time and even their presence, knowingly or unknowingly. In 2017-18, whenever I would have read Aanchal Malhotra’s — a dear friend and a historian — Remnants Of A Separation... these guys are a seventh-generation perfumery (dating back to 1805). Her ancestors had the biggest perfumery in Lahore and the chapter I read was based on her great-great grandfather and how her grandfather had come here.
The second book that Aanchal did was about the impact on the children who were not involved first-degree with Partition, and are now living in new circumstances. How they feel about that, where there was Pallavi’s (Pallavi Bhatia, founder, Olfa Originals) story. I was introduced to their history before I thought of partnering. Aanchal’s first book was about perfumes and we would discuss a lot about perfumes. I think I manifested it with quite the right person and it worked out.
Did you have anything in mind?
If I am being honest, I didn’t have anything in mind. I want to explore different categories from the brand because I want to see HUEMN as a lifestyle brand and it should dive into more areas of everyone’s life. I went from a place of curiosity because I had zero knowledge of perfumes at that point. We had an opportunity to learn how a perfume is made, what is the lasting time, the balance between oil and alcohol.…
I am very particular about the perfumes that I use. So, there was this particular smell that I really wanted to crack. Funny that I say that I smelt it in Paris way back, around the same time when I was reading that book. It was a really strong spice kind of a fragrance and I wanted to crack that. To me that was very addictive.
The whole challenge was to get as close to what I had in mind. It had to be very strong and had to settle well and could not have lived on your skin with that kind of an intensity. The chemistry of it becoming floral was also challenging.
My most favourite part was when you refrigerate it to see how it will turn out... the waiting period… that whole process is somewhere connected to the pattern-making side of garment construction. When you are draping, it’s more hands-on and you know where exactly it’s headed, but when you are making a pattern, you are making something two-dimensional and you have to be calculative and you have no idea what it’s going to be like. It’s mathematical in a way and… I am also aware that a little here and there can change the chemistry.
Pranav Misra, co-founder and CEO, HUEMN
The bottle looks striking!
It was borrowed from our Devil intellectual property. We are known for making horns on our clothes. Here it is handcrafted on a glass bottle. There is bare minimum branding and is like an art piece that you get to keep.
What kind of perfumes do you like?
My all-time favourite is from Margiela’s Replica Range At the Barber’s. It becomes very hard to find that. It has that rawness as the first note and can’t be ignored and that is something I like in perfumes. It settles really well. I like more tobacco, cigar and strong and woody ones.