The fragrance of fish

Gemma Williams travels to the Pitti Fragrance Fair in Florence to discover an unusual peaen to the delights of the riverside

Text and images by Gemma Williams

Recently, I’ve been reading The Complete Angler, published in 1653. Written by Izaak Walton in the aftermath of the English Civil War, the work is a celebration of fishing, and of the little things that make life good. I like it, not because of the sport (I’ve never actually gone fishing) but because it’s a manifesto for quiet. We might call this “touching grass.” Practically, too, fishing looks much the same to us as to a 17th-century gentleman. While technological progress has updated Walton’s seventeenth-century English tackle (rods 15 to 18 feet long with lines made of knotted horsehair), the basic premise remains. You dangle a hook; you wait. 

Or so I thought. In fact, as much as I enjoy this book, it turns out I’ve been getting fishing all wrong. It isn’t a hobby built upon patience, but a form of hunting. Moreover, I discovered this from the most unlikely of sources, in the most unlikely of places: at Pitti Fragranze in Florence, Italy’s annual tradeshow for perfume.

“You need to find out where the fish is,” says Satoshi Kuwata, founder of the LVMH Prize-winning fashion brand Setchu. “If there's no fish, you can't fish.” Setchu is the special guest of Pitti, and Kuwata is a keen fisherman. Keen doesn’t quite cut it. When he’s not running Setchu, he’s going fishing, planning on going fishing, or thinking about going fishing, to the point that he’s made a perfume of – if you can stomach it – the smell of fish.

This is just one of the innovations visitors have come to expect at the Florentine fair, which operates as a benchmark for buyers, industry professionals and enthusiasts alike. This year’s edition, which ran from 12 to 14 September, marks its 23rd year. Creating perfumes is one of the many artisan traditions that Florence has mastered, being home to Europe's oldest historical pharmacy that still stocks the perfume used by Catherine di Medici when she married Henry II, King of France, and which spawned the contemporary perfume industry in the West.

 Yet under the weight of such history, Pitti pioneers new trends. This time, it’s Asian brands, with Korean brands like Pesade and Saranghaeyo being easily identifiable highlights. “We are offering scents that are more discreet and intimate,” says Shim Ilhwa, founder of Organ Tale. Part of this wave, Setchu is debuting five genderless scents made in collaboration with Julie Massé, artistic perfumer at the French group Mane.

“Ayus,” — the eponymous Japanese sweetfish that lives on moss — “don’t smell like fish. They smell more like a cucumber or watermelon,” Kuwata explains as he walks me around the tatami-covered tables. I catch sight of a slender ceramic replica of the fish, made by a master craftsman, that looks as though it’s going to leap into the air. Another tableaux features maritime ephemera, including a replica of Hokusai’s 1814 still-shocking erotic print, Dream of The Fisherman’s Wife. 

Kuwata met Massé in Paris during Fashion Week, and they hit it off immediately. Satoshi likens it to a seduction: “I felt like Julie was undressing me.” Massé describes the alchemic process of their partnership with similar intensity: “You write a formula as if you were telling a story or describing a painting.” She admits to being initially stumped when tasked with writing a formula for fish, but Kuwata was adamant, and when Massé tasted the soft flesh of the Ayu, she was hooked. Ayu is a blend of fresh notes of red seaweed, moss and aqua of ozonic. It’s the saltiness of the Mediterranean’s yellow strawflower. A limpid fragrance as fresh as water and as flickering as a fish. ◉

Gemma visited the 23rd edition of the Pitti Fragrance Fair, Florence.