HUMIECKI & GRAEF

Revolutionary Fragrance Concepts Mirroring Extreme Emotions

In autumn 2008, designers Sebastian Fischenich and Tobias Müksch launched the brand HUMIECKI & GRAEF consisting of five luxury perfumes: Skarb, Geste, Eau Radieuse, Multiple Rouge and Askew. Each scent is a unique artwork in a modern flacon of clear, streamlined design. Each of the unconventional concepts behind the highly individual perfume creations reflects a different facet of the entire spectrum of human emotion – from fury to elation. HUMIECKI & GRAEF represents a bold new dimension in the luxury perfume market. It revisits the traditional market methodology, reinterprets and reorganizes its component parts – from the development of fragrance concepts to the realization of the perfumes, through to the packaging and presentation. When it came to naming the brand, the two designers chose the maiden names of their respective centenarian grandmothers, creating a very special, fragrant memorial to two extraordinary women.

The Perfumers and the Perfumes

The HUMIECKI & GRAEF fragrances were created in close collaboration with Christophe Laudamiel and Christoph Hornetz – aka LES CHRISTOPHS – who are among the world’s top perfumers. The duo are known for “pushing the envelope” of their profession in pursuit of artistic visions, using the most advanced methods of perfumery to realize them. Every emotion is characterized by several different feelings experienced virtually simultaneously. The unconventional star-shaped “fragrance architecture” chosen by LES CHRISTOPHS for HUMIECKI & GRAEF perfumes enables them to reflect this phenomenon. Perfumer Laudamiel comments on the project: “The exceedingly sophisticated concepts and ideas for each fragrance were so forceful and challenging that I had to break with convention. I felt it was imperative to create each of the fragrances absolutely individually, which is a very unusual approach in contemporary perfumery.” Containing 20-25% perfume oils, the “Eaux de Toilettes Concentrées” from HUMIECKI & GRAEF have a higher perfume oil concentration than most Eaux de Perfumes.

The Flacons and Packaging

The HUMIECKI & GRAEF fragrances are not only works of art; each is also a distillate of the emotion it describes. For this reason a single falcon design was chosen for all of the fragrances. Its form is minimalist and allows maximum transparency and a clear view of the exquisite liquid within. Only the caps and the bands around each flacon bearing the name of the perfume are individually designed for each fragrance, the varied and unique materials used further communicating the story of the scent in question.

The bands were inspired by Medieval "cedulae", slim fabric or parchment bands wrapped around relic vessels, which bore the name of the Saint whose relics were stored there. All of the HUMIECKI & GRAEF bands, in various materials, are semi machine-produced in Italian and German workshops. The caps are manufactured in various factories and workshops in European countries. For the wooden cap, an artisan workshop in Austria was found to produce them in a semi-automated turning procedure. The logo is branded there into the wood by hand. The porcelain caps are made by hand in a German porcelain manufactory.

The white outer packaging takes up the idea of each perfume in an individual all-over blind embossing motif. Only the name, embossed on a shiny foil, stands out and reveals the contents within.

All HUMIECKI & GRAEF fragrances are bottled and assembled by hand, giving each package a one-of-a-kind appeal.

The Visualization

HUMIECKI & GRAEF is a fragrance brand that gives new impulses to the marketplace, not only with the perfume product itself but also with the communication of its own products. Scents have always been associated with emotions and images. For that reason it was especially important for HUMIECKI & GRAEF to involve young photographic artists in the process and to develop unique visuals for the individual perfumes. The visual images in each case are meant to capture the emotional expression that the photographer associates with the particular concept and scent.