Bond No. 9 Washington Square
Launch date: November 2010
For Bond No. 9’s high-spirited, holiday-time eau de parfum launch, the inspiration is Washington Square— that outspoken patch of greenery with built-in bocce courts, chess tables, Scrabble zone… and (not to forget) its own triumphal arch. The city park: by definition, a place to relax and unwind. But what happens when the neighborhood surrounding that park is already unwound? Then you get that elegant yet iconoclastic urban oasis known as Washington Square. Located at the base of Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village, surrounded by stately Greek Revival townhouses and NYU mega-buildings, Washington Square is a world class public space—frequented by students, professors, drifters, hipsters, chess players, guitar players, bocce players, moms with their kids in strollers, and a steady stream of visitors sauntering along the gently curving walkways that surround this park’s very own triumphal arch. Mark Twain came here. So did Charles Dickens, Pete Seeger, Stanley Kubrick, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and (not least) Henry James, whose novel Washington Square has its setting here.
A spirit of rebelliousness has long pervaded Washington Square—which, after all, was named for the leader of the band of revolutionaries who founded this country. For the centennial of Washington’s inauguration in 1889, Stanford White (the great architect of the Age of Opulence) designed a wood-and-stucco arch in the style of Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, to reside at the north end of the square. It proved to be such a success that White was commissioned to render it in more permanent marble. The result is a stately and imposing structure that reflects power and might, even as it continues the rebel spirit of this landmarked public space. In 1917, the playfully scandalous Dada artist Marcel Duchamp and a group of friends ascended the arch, lit a bonfire, and read a resolution proclaiming the Republic of Greenwich Village, which they toasted with Champagne.
The square in fact is a triangle, whose sharp end points, arrowlike, downtown. It was named for Peter Cooper, the 19th century New York inventor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and city notable who founded Cooper Union so others could benefit from the formal education he never had. Over the years, the park’s surroundings have formed a mini-campus chock-a-block with students, hipsters, and tourists, with pizza and felafel joints, margarita and mojito bars, Japanese hair salons, tapas and sushi joints, yoga studios, a vinyl record shop, and even a mansard-roof Parisian style hôtel particulier across the street. But just lately, the atmosphere has shifted, as sleek and gleaming new buildings take shape on and around Cooper Square—including two hotels (the Bowery and the Cooper Square), both known for their cool factor, as well as a luxury apartment building with a swimming pool on the roof, and a couple of edgy clothing boutiques. Uptown, it’s not. This is Downtown in future mode, mixed in with treasures from New York’s past. Bond No. 9 Cooper Square, the eau de parfum we designed for this emerging milieu, is warm and intense (its lightest notes are juniper berry and vetiver), in a contemporary way. Rich in spices and incense (as befits the neighborhood), it’s seductive in its calming effects. Cognac, lavender, patchouli, and an ambery, feral Mediterranean flowering plant called ciste labdanum are key ingredients, giving it a desirable male-female quotient that’s avidly sought out in the world’s Downtowns these days.
The gleaming, chrome-finish Cooper Square bottle was inspired by the neighborhood’s new architecture. Laser-etched with an overall patterning of the Bond No. 9 signature logo, this is a study in high-tech spareness, reverberating with inner-outer light and transparency. When held up to the light. Not only does its cut-out pattern emerge on the opposite side, but its pool of eau de parfum becomes visible too. Arriving on-counter on September 1st 2010, Bond No. 9 Cooper Square will be sold at Bond No. 9’s four New York stores, at Saks Fifth Avenue, at Harrods in London, and online at bondno9.com. Price: 3.4 ounces, $230; 1.7 ounces, $170.
A similar defiance defines Bond No. 9 Washington Square—an iconoclastic, thoroughly modern rose-inflected eau de parfum that we hasten to debut on the occasion this month of the park’s reopening following a lengthy refurbishment. Washington Square, the eau de parfum, pairs the old-fashioned purple rose with tarragon, vetiver, and an unexpected leather accord. The result is an assertively dissident scent that never forgets to be beautiful; it has a female-male crossover appeal, whose balance is on the female side. In a first for Bond No. 9, the bottle displays a contemporary vision of Washington Square, viewed through its arch past casually dressed park-goers in the foreground. So detailed is this photo-negative image that we even see the coffered square panels of the arch’s interior—each square with a carved rosette at its center. Rendered in filmy, faded blue, the surface design recalls the muted tones found in antique daguerreotypes. The bottle, like the square, is simultaneously old and new. Arriving on-counter on November 1, 2010, Bond No. 9 Washington Square will be sold at Bond No. 9’s four New York stores, at Saks Fifth Avenue, at Harrods in London, and online at bondno9.com. Price: 3.4 ounces, $230; 1.7 ounces, $150; gold pocket spray, $95.
Congratulations to Bond No. 9!
Bond No. 9 is proud, thrilled, and psyched to announce that not one, but two of our eaux de parfum have just won the ultra-prestigious Fifi Award for Fragrance of the Year (the year being 2009) in the coveted Nouveau Niche division. For Women’s Nouveau Niche, the winner is Bond No. 9 Astor Place.For Men’s Nouveau Niche, it’s Bond No. 9 Brooklyn. Two prizes in the same category is a rarity in itself—and rarer still when the perfume house that created them is totally independent of larger corporate ownership.
We send our heartfelt thanks to all who have believed in, supported, and inspired our vision of New York-centric perfumery over the seven years we’ve been in business. Not least, we thank our cherished customers, and most of all, we give praise to Miss Liberty, lighting the way in New York Harbor. (We also like that she's French ... but that's another story.)
After all, Bond No. 9 is a sensory re-imagining of the city of New York (including Brooklyn—the other boroughs are coming!, And not to forget the beach retreats that, after all, are Manhattan in summer exile.) What our precious Fifis really signal is this: New York perfumery has come of age. At last we’ve got smell cachet.
Bond No. 9
Releases Two New Fragrances For Fall
Bond No. 9 zeroes in on that up-and-coming hotspot, Cooper Square, where the East Village meets NoHo, and the Bowery and the new über-Downtown begin. For this assertive new neighborhood, what else but an intense but contemporary eau de parfum?
For a century and a half, it’s modestly served as the front yard to Cooper Union, that world-famous architecture and engineering institution, and as a strategically located sliver of a park where traffic barreling down from uptown swerves and merges to form the start of uber-Downtown, otherwise known as the Bowery. But today, Cooper Square itself is in motion, zooming into the 21st century—and acquiring a new image as the latest New York hot-spot (worthy of the Bond No. 9 treatment, its own eau de parfum)....
