The Original DNA -- An Interview With Frederic Malle On The Launch Of The New Estee Lauder Legacy Collection

It’s rather telling that one of the most exciting ideas to emerge from a mainstream perfume brand in recent months is not to create something entirely novel, but to turn to the past and reissue new versions of some of their old classics. However, let’s ignore the cloud for a moment and enjoy the silver lining, because in this case, the idea is genuinely exciting, as the brand in question is Estee Lauder, the classics include beloved gems such as White Linen and Knowing, and the entire project comes to us under the creative direction - or perhaps curation might be a better term - of none other than Frederic Malle.

The so-called Legacy Collection consists of five scents from the Lauder catalogue that have been reimagined, reinterpreted and reworked by Malle, with the help of a few of his perfumer friends. 1969’s Azuree now comes to us in a version by Anne Flipo, who has also created a Legacy incarnation of Private Collection (1973). Carlos Benaim has worked on Estee (1968) and White Linen (1978), and the quintet is rounded off by Knowing (1988), as revisited by Bruno Jovanovic.

Of course, legacy doesn’t come cheap — the scents cost £250 for 100 ml of eau de parfum, placing them well within the price bracket we expect from Malle’s own Editions De Parfums brand (which just happens to be part of the Lauder stable). But what’s interesting is that Lauder are showing no signs of discontinuing the ‘original’ versions of these fragrances, and at the time of writing, you can go to their own site and order, say, 75 ml of Knowing for £88 or 50 ml of Estee for £70. It’s an interesting situation and it may well mark the first time a brand as large as Lauder has offered ‘parallel’, differently-priced versions of the same product. Perhaps they’re waiting to see which fares better at the tills before deciding what will get the chop.

Interestingly, the question of the availability of the current versions barely came up at Harrods the other day when Malle was interviewed about the new collection by The Guardian’s Sali Hughes in front of an audience of fellow writers and journalists. The focus was almost entirely on the Legacy range and on how it came into being. As is often his way in such contexts, Malle displayed a certain amount of reluctance to talk with unashamed geekishness about the Legacy scents. I’ve often had the impression that he feels he mustn’t allow himself to become too technical or detailed in certain sorts of crowds, for fear of boring them with details in which they’re not interested. But when he let himself go a little bit and displayed some of his fascinatingly encyclopaedic knowledge of the industry, the insights he shared were wonderful. Below, you’ll find some highlights from what he had to say, and here’s a link to my YouTube review of all five perfumes: Estee Lauder Legacy Collection by Frederic Malle review.