If you are an amateur of historical perfumes, you are bound to have happened on Prastara Royal, a perfume based on a recipe created by a chemist to Louis XIV, as the tradition recalls, and now faithfully re-created by Douglas Hopkins & Co at the Perfume Factory. We asked its founder Douglas Hopkins to tell us about the story of this fragrance and his own role in shaping anew the destiny of this ancient eau. It turns out this is not just an inspired marketing project, but more an adventure taking its main hero, Douglas Hopkins, from the milieu of the New York fashion industry to Royal Austrian castles and post-Communist fragrance factories in Eastern Europe. The material contained in this exclusive interview will be part of a forthcoming photography book, Real.Views.
Marie-Hélène Wagner: The story of Prastara seems complex; I see that there is a Polish brand that sells a similar product. Do you have any information about that other Prastara?
Douglas Hopkins: The short story is that I bought the Prastara trademark from the Poles back around 1987, from a trip with a fragrance industry expert, looking for investments after the Wall went down. The Communist factory keeps the domestic Polish market, I have the rest of the world. I've since created three other scents, Prastara Blue, Åse (OH-say), and Zazou. I was friends with a number of European royal families, stemming from portraits I did during twenty years as a New York fashion photographer, and through their exquisite private castle libraries (You can yet see a photo of one on the first page of our old site www.DouglasHopkins.com). I found intriguing formulations, which I used in creating my scents. With my background as a volcanologist at MIT/NASA, I expanded into geothermal-based skin care products, which did exceptionally well. They were licensed a few years ago and are being redesigned for a new launch. We made an unintended splash in the fashion press for a $800 per ounce "Deep Sea" limited edition, therapeutic mud, which sold out at Bergdorf Goodman in a week. We have been more or less exclusive to Bergdorf's for 15 years, but are now expanding into a wider market. We have been a hit in Italy for a decade, and recently entered Galeries Lafayette in Paris, the first American niche fragrance in the store. These are a few of the highlights........
Graf Alchemy Diagram, Poland © Douglas Hopkins & Co
Continue reading "Interview with Douglas Hopkins of DH & Co - Part I: The Story of Prastara & a Fashion Photographer Turned Fragrance Developer {Passion for Perfume - Portrait} {Celebrity Fragrance}" »
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=acc5158d-a637-49d2-a923-1ee71b3aa037)
Digg This
Stumble
Facebook
Del.icio.us
