Unisex, or rather, post-gender is nothing new within today’s youth culture marketplace, but it is new for high-end fragrances. Leave it to Pharrell Williams, who’s been on a roll recently with collaborations ranging from Uniqlo to Adidas, to Peace Love World and G-Star Raw and Burton with his sustainable Bionic Yarn, not to mention the success of his song “Happy” to create a fragrance, which says on the bottle, “for boys and girls.”
In a recent interview with WWD, Williams explains, “There should be no lines — I learned that from Comme des Garçons. Hence, Girl — for girls and boys. We just found another way to say unisex.”
Williams says his interest in fragrance started with basic Polo fragrances, then Christian Dior’s Fahrenheit. Williams also wears a mixture of Chanel pearls and jewels in a streetwise style. He then met Sarah Andelman, creative director of Colette in Paris and she was wearing a unisex fragrance called Wonderwood, which Williams loved.
“When I do a collaboration with brands, I do them with notable masters, so that I can experience the true purpose of collaboration, which is to learn. So I only work with masters,” he said. “We had the best nose in Paris, I was working with the best brand — Comme des Garçons is your favorite designer’s favorite brand — so there was not much of a struggle, because I was working with the masters of the artistic universe.”
Williams continued: “I work with all the masters because it allows me a crash course into not only who they are as people, but into their art form, and their craft. So that’s pretty cool.”
The other cool factor that will attract certain followers is the bottle has the artwork of streetwear artist Kaws.
The smell includes frangrances of lavender, white pepper, violet, neroli, cedarwood, patchouli, iris, and styrax.
But for $135 a bottle, it’s pricey. Adrian Joffe, the CEO of Comme des Garcons Parfum anticipated retail sales for the first year to reach $10 million.
As a reminder, Williams also has his own clothing labels Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream.
