Rocket-flavoured candles... French artist, film director and candle creator, Philippe Parreno. Photo: Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images
I'm a big fan of the French artist Philippe Parreno, whose work extends from encouraging his peers to engage in "live art" to his acclaimed film Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle. But one of his latest projects has left me genuinely baffled: a collaboration with Cire Trudon, the oldest existing candlemaker in the world, which has been in business since 1643.
Its latest collection mines this rich seam of history to produce scents that are in equal parts good, bad and pretentious. There are rich mixtures of mint and tea, wildflowers and even baked bread - all of which are meant to evoke the company's proud heritage as the official candlemaker to the palace of Versailles.
Even some of the more bizarre concoctions are surprisingly successful: Roi Soleil, for instance, is meant to capture the smells of the palace itself and is pretty effective if you want your house to smell like a museum. Oddest of all, however, is Parreno's contribution, named simply Odeur de Lune. It... well, I'll let them explain it for you: "Odeur de Lune is a composition imagining the scent of this satellite orbiting around the earth". Furthermore, it contains "metallic notes derived from the reports written by Nasa on the rockets landing from their mission to the moon".
Of course it does. Nice work if you can get it.
