Even more than clothes and records, perfumes have become manna for pop stars and fashion houses seeking to extend their brands—low overhead, high revenue, built-in sex appeal. And yet we still did a double-take upon learning that Zaha Hadid is releasing her own signature scent. (Maybe it’s all that time she’s been spending with Karl Lagerfeld?) Here are three concepts for fragrances you won’t be seeing on shelves anytime soon.



Inga Sempé
Paris-based Inga Sempé’s perfume may not have a name, but a scent like this—a blend of horse dung, gasoline, milled iron, and parma ham “because it smells exactly the same as a man’s neck”—speaks for itself. As does the crystal bottle, which Sempé describes as a contrast between “a classical and noble material, strong and straight, and natural animal hair, rustic and maybe repellent like some of the notes I’ve chosen.” Her concept is an effortless extension of her flirtation with Surrealism—witness her towering aluminum shelves curtained with tiers of plastic bristles for Edra, or the mustache tree she created for the French wall-decal line Vynil—but Sempé is completely turned off by the idea of branding herself this way in real life: “Why should I create a perfume moreso than a mustard?”




Béton
Leon Ransmeier
Leon Ransmeier, a young American designer who recently returned to New York after five years in the Netherlands, read a book about perfume before creating one. It shows: “Béton, French for ‘raw concrete,’ blends rain-wet concrete with the earthiness of an autumnul walk through the woods,” he explains. “The full-nosed, dusty mineral top notes hover abstractly over a body of clean metallic musk, complemented with the freshness of oxygen and crushed leaves.” Such a complex description for what he sees as a straightforward product—a wearable scent in a crystal bottle to be sold in high-end boutiques—is typical of Ransmeier’s design aesthetic. As part of last year’s Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt, he and former partner Gwen Floyd were represented by simple-looking household products that were multilayered in function, like a slim, wall-hanging photo printer that doubles as picture frame.



OIL
Constantin and Laurene Boym
New York couple Constantin and Laurene Boym call crude oil “an international symbol of power, wealth, and seduction,” similar to the way perfumes and their progenitors are marketed (think Liz Taylor in those never-say-die ads for White Diamonds). Likewise, OIL—with a top note of crude oil and middle and base notes of Oriental spices, incense, and patchouli—is meant to be as “sexy and intoxicating” as a typical scent, insist the designers, imparting a complex sensorial presence to something few people have actually seen or smelled. As a branding device, OIL reflects the wry commentary for which the Boyms are known: “It could be considered a Building of Disaster for the perfume world,” Constantin says, referring to their iconic series of tragic landmarks from the past century.