It’s no secret that the fragrance market is oversaturated, with about two hundred new perfumes launching each year. A perfume is the cheapest way to buy into a brand, and therefore a highly lucrative business. Everyone, be it a jewelry company or a newly minted Paris Hilton clone, wants a piece of the $15 billion-a-year pie.
    Kaya Sorhaindo, the man behind the fragrance project Six Scents, wanted to do something different. He came up with an idea: take six young, promising fashion designers and pair them with expert perfumers in order to create unique scents manufactured in small amounts. Sorhaindo discussed this idea with Symrise, a German scent laboratory, and thus Six Scents Series One was born. Symrise provided the perfumers and Joseph Quartana, the co-owner of a SoHo boutique Seven, chose the designers. “We tried to pick designers without previous experience with fragrances but with a strong vision and their own esthetic,” Sorhaindo told me in a recent interview. The line up for Series One includes such names as Bernard Willhelm and Gareth Pugh. The current collection, Series Two, features Damir Doma and Henrik Vibksov, among others.
    Cutting out the middlemen was essential to Sorhaindo. “It’s a one-on-one experience between the designer and the perfumer,” he said. “Once a frustrated perfumer who was collaborating with Bernhard Willhelm called me: ‘Bernhard wants a perfume that smells like air and water. I can’t create a fragrance that doesn’t smell like anything.’