Acne Studios x Frédéric Malle: an evening on rue Froissart in Paris

Hello everyone! On July 3rd, I was invited to Acne Studios on rue Froissart, in Paris, to discover the shower gel and body milk created around the Acne Studios perfume by Frédéric Malle.

I’ve loved Acne Studios for a long time, so yes, receiving this invitation made me very happy. But I didn’t want to write an article that just boils down to: "I was invited, it was great." What I wanted to keep here is the evening, the people I met, the details I looked at, and what the products became once they were back in my bathroom.

A Thursday evening on Rue Froissart

I already knew the shop on rue Froissart. That evening, the pink bottles were set amongst the clothes, bags and furniture, without any grand scenery built solely for the launch. It felt much more appropriate that way. You understood straight away that the skincare belonged to the same universe as the perfume and the brand.

You could smell the products, chat, look at the collections and keep coming back to the same bag three times without anyone rushing you. It is exactly the kind of evening I like: no need to follow a set route or pretend to have understood everything in thirty seconds.

I had taken my vintage Kodak bought in Notting Hill. I’ve been taking it with me more and more often, even if that means discovering the photos long after everyone else. I like that disconnect. A story disappears the next day; a roll of film forgotten in a bag sometimes ends up telling the story of the evening much better.

The pink bottles in the middle of the shop

The launch was for the shower gel and body milk. Both capture the scent of the Acne Studios perfume by Frédéric Malle and its visual codes. The pink is almost impossible to miss, but the bottles remain quite clean: a simple shape, a very prominent typography and not fifty bits of information fighting for space on the label.

That is typically the kind of detail I notice. Not because I spend my evenings analysing packaging with a notebook, rest assured, but because a well-constructed identity ends up being recognisable even before you read the name. It is also a question I come across in my work with Minuit d’Orsay How to distil a brand into a few precise choices, without laying it on thick everywhere.

I didn't want to give my opinion on the skincare products that very evening. A shower gel smelled in a shop and a product used for several weeks at home are really not the same story. So I wrote a separate article on shower gel and body milk, with their wear, texture, price and above all the one I would repurchase.

What I really brought back from that evening

I left with the two skincare products, Acne Paper, some photos to be developed and a gift from Anthony, my favourite sales assistant. Put like that, you might think I'm very sensible at Acne Studios. That would be a rather creative version of reality.

Being invited by a brand that I buy from and have followed for a long time naturally meant a lot to me. The blog is taking up more and more space in my daily life, just like the Minuit d'Orsay projects, and this evening was one of those little moments where I told myself that all this is starting to come together into something coherent.

So I wanted to keep it here, with the pictures and details I remember, rather than letting it disappear to the bottom of my phone. For my review after several weeks, it's all in the article dedicated to Acne Studios by Frédéric Malle. And as for the perfume, I also compare it to Merit Retrospect in my current perfumes.