Henri Bendel’s New Fragrance Smells Like New York
Suite 712 Eau de Parfum. (Photo: Henri Bendel New York)
Lately, everyone’s been clamoring for newfangled indie cult fragrances and celebrity scents, but there’s a new fragrance in town—and it’s got 100 years of legacy and iconic status behind it. Today, Fifth Avenue retailer Henri Bendel New York launches a new eau de parfum, Suite 712 ($98), a century after it launched its first signature fragrance, Un Peu d’Elle. The sleek rectangular bottle features the legendary trademarked brown and white stripes that have been re-popularized in recent years in media, from Gossip Girl to Sex and the City. The scent, with notes of freesia and suede, is not trendy—it’s supposed to smell like you’re walking into Bendel’s iconic Manhattan townhouse. Its sex appeal is less Victoria’s Secret sugar-sparkles and more I’m-wearing-nothing-under-this-fur-coat-but-heirloom-diamonds-and-perfume.
“What we wanted to capture was the excitement that you get when you enter our store, since a lot of our memories are formed through scent,” Pina Ferlisi, creative director of Henri Bendel, tells Yahoo Beauty. The last time Bendel’s sold and launched fragrances was in 2012, and today, Suite 712 is the only scent that Bendel’s sells.
Since its 1895 opening in Greenwich Village by milliner Henri Bendel, the shop has been etched into the memories of generations of daughters and mothers who have walked into the shop with visions of sugarplums—and fancy hair accessories—dancing in their heads. Bendel’s, as it is affectionately called by its “Bendel Girls,” was the first American retailer to sell Coco Chanel’s designs, employed Andy Warhol as an in-house illustrator in the 1960s, and was, in fact, the first retailer to launch an in-house fragrance. Even though it was a prestige department store, it was fiercely committed to supporting new designers—every weekend, emerging designers would have the opportunity to showcase their designs to Bendel’s buyers. For all you knew, Manhattan’s most-photographed socialites could be wearing your designs less than a week after your fashion school graduation.
Down the steps of Henri Bendel’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue. (Photo: Instagram)
Bendel’s is quite different from what it used to be—for one, it stopped selling clothes in the fall of 2009, and now it boasts a chain of 28 smaller stores around the country, each wafting with the same Suite 712 scent. It has to keep up with bigger retailers—and it does so by selling the New York experience. Bendel girls don’t just dwell on Park Avenue anymore—they could be in Los Angeles or Detroit or Miami. “Our five Bendel Girls are chic, fashionista, sporty, quirky, and glamorous,” Ferlisi tells Yahoo Beauty. “They can be a combination of these characteristics, and they span generations of mothers and daughters.” Manhattan zip code not required.
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