Marissa Zappas.
via publicist
“When I first watched the movie, I was like, This movie is about bulimia. How are we going to make a perfume for this?”
That was the question Marissa Zappas found herself asking after viewing Maddie’s Secret, the directorial debut of comedian and actor John Early. Zappas, an accomplished indie perfumer in her own right, had worked on unexpected multimedia collaborations before, including scents for art exhibitions by Portia Munson and a companion fragrance for a one-woman-theater show by Ruby McCollister, but coming up with an odorous counterpart to the dark underbelly of Early’s sharp, satirical film presented a unique challenge.
“Bulimia is one of those things where it’s hard to introduce a scent to anything even remotely associated with the word,” Zappas laughs on a late August video call. “But after really thinking about it and talking to John, it really came down to, as I think a lot of eating disorders do, her relationship to her mother.”
If the thought of a perfume inspired by bulimia makes you viscerally cringe, don’t worry – Zappas has thankfully spared us any of the rancid smells you might associate with vomit. Instead, Maddie’s Secret eau de parfum is almost unnervingly wearable, a lactonic saffron perfume with a big whiff of night-blooming jasmine that becomes more prominent over time. Subtler diegetic notes from the film include toasted rice, sichuan pepper, and a hint of chocolate (as in chocolate milk), though Zappas admits accurately representing a fragrance is hard because, “everybody has a different experience smelling something.”
The FADER chatted with Marissa Zappas about her approach to brand collabs, imagining scents to accompany a movie, and her take on gourmands and commercial perfume.
The FADER: When Ruby McCollister of Radish came to you with the idea of doing a perfume for a John Early film, what made you decide to say yes?
Ruby and I are both really interested in the history of perfume and how perfumes have been made for movies in the past. I did a fragrance called Scent of Mystery last year that was [recreating] the first fragrance ever to be aligned with a movie, Scent of Mystery. Elizabeth Taylor had a cameo in the movie, and the film was about her perfume. Essentially, they made this fragrance to sell alongside the movie. The history of this one particular perfume is really confusing, and there's not a lot of documentation about it, but [after the original release], it was relaunched in collaboration with Schiaparelli in this really interesting way.
We were really interested in how could a product prolong the pleasure or experience of a really good movie? We actually didn't know. I had seen Maddie’s Secret before it came out, but we really had no ideahow it was gonna do. We thought it was amazing, but we didn't know how other people would take to it. We genuinely didn't. And so it was kind of a risk. Imagine making a perfume for a movie that flopped. It would have made the whole thing even worse in a way. But you know, that didn't happen and people really love Maddie's Secret. And so it's just been a total joy.
I think right now we’re maybe in an era where there are a lot of perfume adjacent product tie-ins. I’m thinking about the fragrance [Heretic] did for Nosferatu, but also the resurgence of celebrity perfumes by Ariana Grande or Ice Spice. How are you approaching this sort of brand-partnership perfumery as opposed to your solo work for your own brands?
I approach everything I do from a creative perspective. I don't really get brands or clients that come to me for something that’s super commercial. I do think my perfumes are wearable, especially compared to a lot ofother niche perfumers. Even Maddie's Secret EDP is so conventionally easy to wear, and I think some people were even a little bit surprised by that. They maybe thought it would be weirder than it is. Um, But the way that I approach like celebrity fragrances – I've been working on a couple this year actually, really in the same way that I approach the fragrances that I make for my own collection – but fragrances in my own collection don't have an outside person forcing me into a new direction, or giving me new ideas about things. So when I'm working by myself, it's very much an internal process. I do push myself in certain ways, but… I don't know, in an ideal world, my perfume collection would just be old-fashioned florals, you know what I mean? I like a powdery floral, and my personal taste is not especially branched out. But when I work with a client, obviously that's very different. And I actually really, really appreciate that. I kind of prefer working with clients as opposed to working on my own, unless there's a burning idea that I have inside of me that needs to come out.
A lot of the notes in this particular perfume are pulling straight from the movie. After watching the film, what made you decide yes, let’s do this project?
I knew John [already], and I trust his work. But I will say when I first watched the movie, I was like, This movie is about bulimia. How are we going to make a perfume for this? Bulimia is one of those things where it’s hard to introduce a scent to anything even remotely associated with the word. It’s quite tricky. But after really thinking about it and talking to John, it really came down to, as I think a lot of eating disorders do, her relationship to her mother.
There’s that scene in the movie where she goes to the fridge and she’s just chugging the milk. And so we became fixated on this idea of milk as nourishment: mother's milk. Milk also happens to be a pretty trendy note right now in niche perfumery, so it sort of made sense. Not that we were trying to be trendy – if anything we were not trying to be trendy – but it really made sense for this perfume.
And I also found the opening scene of Maddie’s Secret where she's running around Los Angeles smelling the jasmine to be one of the strongest sensory scenes in the movie. So I wanted to really combine that milk, that jasmine. The perfume has that really bright opening of the jasmine and there's some lactonic notes and it does kind of give good girl. But then the dry down is a little bit more complex: Is she a good girl? Is she not a good girl? It kind of oscillates between the two.
And it has some cooking notes that refer back to the film. But mostly I really wanted the perfume to feel like Maddie, to have the essence of her to be lively and sweet.
Earlier we touched on the idea that this perfume is not so much a gourmand as a gourmette. What makes a gourmand a gourmand, and why is Maddie’s Secret not quite that?
A type of perfume that’s trending right now is the savory gourmand. And I might just be old school, but a gourmand, to me, you need that rich vanilla base. And maybe that’s wrong! I think a lot of these categories are subjective, to be honest, but to me, a gourmand has to mostly smell like a cookie. And I wouldn't say Maddie's Secret smells like a cookie. It's sort of an atypical gourmand and it has a floral seed. It has that saffron note, which is really strong. It's a little spicy. And I would say the sweetness isn't that cakey, vanilla feeling of a typical gourmand.
We talked about this idea of wearability or commerciality. Was that something you were trying to foreground with this perfume? Or was it incidental to other [goals] and it just happened to work out that way?
I really wanted the fragrance to mirror Maddie in a lot of ways, and I think Maddie has this sort of conventional girl in LA who's wearing the Coucou cardigan and the blonde hair and sort of prudish in a lot of ways, or naive. Sort of the basic things. So I wanted it to have a little bit of the Maddie basic feeling, but then obviously there's something subversive about her too. So it had to have that as well.
Yes, I wanted to have a more commercial, more basic appeal, but then also inherently, slightly subversive [...] The saffron to me is actually the strongest component. I smell it at the top and then I also smell it really at the base. But the Sichuan [pepper] one, I use real natural oil, and that really comes through in the dry down, there’s just a subtle spiciness. It’s really hard to list notes for consumers. I want to be as objective as I possibly can, and I always fail. But it’s hard because everybody has a different experience smelling something.
What does Marissa Zappas have coming for the rest of the year?
I’m so NDA’d up right now, I’m scared [laughs]. I used to just namedrop all the time and I don't think I can. But I would say really, really exciting year next year.
Actually, you can say that I'm gonna launch an oil at the end of this year. But it's not 100%. I'm sorry, I wish I could give more.
Obviously, you're not going to tell us what notes are in it, but if you could match that perfume oil to a movie you like, what movie would it be?
I have to be honest. Visually, spiritually, emotionally, I would say Big Fish. It's inspired by my favorite tree, a sort of magical tree.
