You may already be familiar with Merit Beauty’s viral skincare and make-up offerings, which aim to make getting-ready routines effortless and unfussy. This week, the popular brand has made its foray into fine fragrance with the release of Retrospect L’Extrait de Parfum, a scent that’s inspired by the timelessness of some of the most iconic perfumes of decades past. “We decided to take the step into fragrance for a very similar reason as to what inspired Merit in the first place: we struggled to find something in the category that spoke to us,” Merit CMO Aila Morin tells Bazaar.
Merit partnered with the master perfumer Fanny Bal to compose the balanced yet robust scent in Paris. Retrospect features notes of bergamot, pear, jasmine, rosemary, violet, vanilla, musk and moss, that transition from clean and subtly floral to warm and musky as it wears. “Many of the notes that we used in Retrospect are not used very often in perfumery today, such as aldehydes and orris concrete,” Bal explains. “We used these classic notes and combined them with more modern ones like pear and musk to create a uniquely layered effect, and the result is nostalgia: a fragrance that reminds you of something warm and familiar, with a modern sensibility.”
The extrait de parfum lasts all day as it contains nearly 30 per cent perfume oil — most eau de parfums use no more than 20 per cent. “Choosing to do an extrait instead of a parfum or an eau de toilette and doubling the oil-to-alcohol ratio is very vintage,” Morin says. “All fragrances used to be much more concentrated until bottle size became associated with value. Choosing to prioritise wear time over a big bottle impression was a very intentional decision — a return to a focus on craftsmanship.”
The scent’s name, Retrospect – meaning to reflect on the past – also reflects the company’s ways of honouring the longtime art of fragrance-making. “Vintage clothing is beloved for its nostalgic feel while also allowing the wearer to give the piece a modern twist – and that’s exactly what Merit set out to replicate with its first-ever scent,” Katie Intner said about the coveted scent in the fragrance awards from our sister title, Harper’s Bazaar US. The scent’s throwback inspiration doesn’t stop at its note composition: Morin says that the bottle is also integral to Retrospect’s overall experience, inspired by vintage jewellery along with the artform fragrance bottles had in the past.
Retrospect took around two years and more than 200 rounds to develop, with the mission to become an enduring beauty staple for fragrance lovers everywhere. Merit is also realistic about its shoppers’ individual scent preferences. “As e-commerce has played a bigger role in the fragrance market, we noticed that scents have tended to gear more towards trendy notes and linear formulas that can be easily described online,” Morin adds. “We wanted to bring nuance back into fragrance, and we understood that in doing so, we may create something that isn’t for everyone. Retrospect is a bit different than what people might expect from us, and has a complexity that some consumers will love and others won’t.”
Merit is a woman-founded brand rooted in female empowerment, doubling down on its ethos by curating Retrospect’s campaign through the eyes of five woman artists: Yudi Echevarria, Hanna Tvietie, Pia Riverola, Suzanne Saroff, and Lauren Bamford. The brand also joined forces with Gentlewoman, another woman-focused company, on a stylish coffee table book that details the creation process behind Retrospect and includes musings on fragrance overall.
“Given the intentionality in the design of both the scent and experience, we brought the same lens to the campaign itself. For us, including the perspectives of people’s relationship with fragrance was the key, making women the narrator instead,” Morin says. “We have partnered with artists and creatives to express their perspectives in words, imagery, and video. Gentlewoman was the perfect partner to create a book, a very nostalgic way of sharing stories. They brought together a group who shared their viewpoints and experiences, which was always the campaign’s intention, storytelling our core memories and nostalgia around fragrance and driving adoption via word of mouth.”
Merit Beauty’s Retrospect L’Extrait de Parfum is available for£79 at meritbeauty.com.