Dries Van Noten’s Soie Malaquais perfume is now ceramic art

Ceramic artist Bouke de Vries’ celebration of Soie Malaquais includes sculptures that reimagine the perfume bottle with shattered pieces of porcelain

(Image credit: Dries van Noten)

When Wallpaper* interviewed Dries Van Noten in 2022 about his upcoming perfume line, he compared the scents to olives: ‘The first one makes you go, “Ooh, what is this?” But after that, you always like it. I think you have to learn to appreciate things, and sometimes you have to learn to appreciate my vision of beauty.’

And while he’s right that the unusual combinations of the Dries Van Noten scents –pomelo and leather; pepper and rose; liquorice and tobacco – make them distinctive, they hardly make them divisive. This is especially true of Soie Malaquais, which, since it launched as part of the core range of ten gender-neutral Dries Van Noten perfumes, has quickly cemented itself as the emblematic fragrance of the house.

Dries Van Noten Soie Malaquais by Bouke de Vries — Sculptures by Bouke de Vries

Soie Malaquais is a blend of silk notes and chestnut that melds to the body like a second skin, with a slightly balsamic sweetness, warm cacao and a touch of rose. In the words of the nose behind it, Marie Salamagne, it ‘has a magnetic tension’ that draws people in and takes on new dimensions throughout the day – the kind of scent that, when you have it on, keeps you reflexively smelling your wrist from morning to night.

According to Salamagne, the key to Soie Malaquais' success is that it 'embodies everything that defines the Dries Van Noten universe: contrast, sophistication, and emotional depth. It brings together elements that don’t typically coexist – the warmth of chestnut, the luminosity of silky florals, the richness of dark notes – yet feels completely seamless.’

Now, Dries van Noten is celebrating Soie Malaquais with a series of sculptures and limited-edition bottles designed by Dutch ceramic artist Bouke de Vries. Based in London, de Vries is best known for transforming porcelain fragments into unified works, and his collaboration with Van Noten sees him apply that same process to the ceramic blue and white base of the original Soie Malaquais bottle.

‘It was really the blue and white of the bottle that my ideas were based on,’ says de Vries. ‘There is an obvious resonance with my work because of the use of blue and white ceramics. Working with fragrance was a way to add an extra, evocative dimension to a three-dimensional sculpture that was already an evolution of many two-dimensional patterns and, like a perfume, is built from different notes – [just like] my work.’

The new collection includes five one-of-a-kind bottles that see the Soie Malaquais porcelain base shattered and reconstituted as flowers, buttons, fans, and other shapes. De Vries has also created complementary sculptures of tulips and roses rising from shards of the same blue and white porcelain. While these creations are highly exclusive – only ten are in existence – a special edition Soie Malaquais with a gold-veined base is slightly more accessible, with 100 bottles available to purchase from Dries Van Noten boutiques.

For de Vries, the message behind all of these creations is the same: to transform what is broken into a treasure and, like Van Noten, find beauty in unexpected places. As the artist explains it himself, for this collaboration, he 'imagined the object in a suspended moment of drama, its ceramic shell shattered, while suggesting that fragments can be coaxed back into a form even more rare and singular than before'.

An installation by Bouke de Vries marking the collaboration is on view until 12 March 2026 at Dries Van Noten’s Galerie Quai Malaquais, Paris

Regular editions of Soie Malaquais are available from Dries Van Noten, £275 per 100ml

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Mary Cleary is a writer based in London and New York. Previously beauty & grooming editor at Wallpaper*, she is now a contributing editor, alongside writing for various publications on all aspects of culture.