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When the Roman emperor Hadrian’s young lover Antinous drowned in the Nile, he was so devastated that he had statues built in Antinous’ likeness to deify him, a custom normally reserved for the imperial family. “I thought that was such a beautiful mourning love story,” says Carlos Huber, founder of the brand Arquiste. It provided Huber with the inspiration for Arquiste’s next fragrance, Peau, which fits into a growing trend known as skin scent .

“All these beautiful statues were idealizations,” says Huber, who learned about this from the 1951 book . “That was the way to communicate the of a person’s internal virtues, so the representation of their body was the way to represent the soul.” Huber wanted to bottle this essence—the scent of idealized skin.



“It’s not so much a perfume that is about attraction and seduction; it’s about longing and closeness, and the desire for intimacy.” Huber presented the brief to perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux, who had developed an accord called “panacea,” which smelled like “beefed-up salty skin,” and combined it with savoury, umami notes like mushroom but also woody notes and white pepper. “It really does smell like human skin, and the lovely thing about it is that it really does smell different on everyone,” says Huber.

Lately, skin scent like Peau are growing in popularity, within the already exploding beauty category. “Right now, fragrance is just so hot, especially because of TikTok,” says Simon To.

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