Les Ettes - En duft af board!
Lugter termotøjet og den hengemte våddragt værre end den lokale losseplads på en varm (og regnfuld, of course) sommerdag? Så tjek det her – Les Ettes er et parfume brand, der er startet af to snowboardtøser, Carmela og Stine. De har forsøgt at lave dufte, som piger på board, er helt tossede med.
Les Ettes begynde at få opmærksomhed sidste vinter, da de sponsorede snowboard konkurrencer for piger og samlede et killer team bestående af Lisa Filzmoser, Jenny Jones, Anne-Flore Marxer og Natasza Zurek.
Who are the founders and how did you get the idea to start Les Ettes?
Les Ettes was started because we (Stine and I) couldn’t find what we were looking for on the market. The perfume shops were saturated and all we walked out with was a headache (from too much choice) and smelling like we had marinated in a bathtub of perfume!
We were looking for something light and fresh that smelled like lotion or fresh laundry. We wanted something that reflected our lifestyle as we both highly enjoy boardsports, especially snowboarding.
We were looking for something that could support the female boardsport scene and something that would be distributed in the shops that we like to shop in (boardshops).
Do you girls snowboard yourselves – and what is your favorite resort?
Yes we both snowboard and we try to go as much as possible. However after this warm winter we’ll probably have surfed more days than we’ve snowboarded and we live in Austria!!! Haha!
Stine’s favorite resorts are Nordpark, Riksgransen, and Are in Sweden. Mine are probably Mt Hood, June Mountain, and Mayerhofen.
Partners in crime.. Carmela og Stine, Les Ettes skabere.
How did you come up with the name Les Ettes?
Anything ending in ‘-ette’ in French usually means something cute and feminine. We were looking for a name right when Forum’s film ‘That’ came out and we thought it was a genius name. "Have you seen ‘That’? or "’That’s’ great!". We liked ‘ette’ also because it was our own play on words. As in "Ette/it smells good."
You have a really cool team of riders! Are you going to add girls doing other sports than snowboarding?
Thanks for the compliment. Yes, we feel very fortunate to have them on the team. These girls are very special to us and rather than getting a billion of girls on our team, we’d rather focus on Natasza Zurek, Jenny Jones, Anne-Flore Marxer, and Lisa Filzmoser and support them with their films (Float, Runway, and Pirates).
But yes in the future, if budget allows, we’d love to support and put forward other cool, strong, independent, creative, and inspiring girls on the Les Ettes team.
Teamriders Jenny Jones og Lisa Filzmoser dufter og poser.
Are the teamriders involved in the process of making the scents?
At the beginning we attentively listened to their needs and we have worked with their feedback. Since some rarely wore perfume, we made sure the scents were light and fresh.
We made sure the bottles were light in weight so the riders could take it with them on their travels around the world. We also made sure the bottles were made out of shatter-resistant plastic so they could throw them in their backpacks and not worry to find broken glass and perfume everywhere.
We are planning a long weekend together with the team in Paris during Fall to work closely with our favorite nose, Pierre Bourdon. Pierre usually collaborates with the companies like Yves St Laurent and Dior, but he liked the idea of our market and has kindly agreed to work with Les Ettes again. Again we feel very fortunate to have been able to work with him!
Are you planning to make a wider range of products?
For now we would like to focus on making perfume. Most designer clothing companies like Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, and Gucci always end up doing their own perfumes at the end.
We wouldn’t be surprised to now see certain boardsport companies like Quiksilver, Billabong, Volcom, Burton and Nikita coming out with their own perfumes soon.
Like Nixon who has always focused on its watches, we would like to focus on the Les Ettes non-alcoholic perfumes. Always making sure we produce the best ones to cater to the needs of the boardsports market.
This might be hard, but can you in words descirbe what Love-ette and Want-ette smells like?
Good point, it’s soo true, describing perfume is like describing wine, or the smell of a flower. It’s always difficult to really grasp it through a description without sounding too cheesy.
The feedback we got for LOVE-ETTE is that it is apparently more feminine, soft, and subtle; while WANT-ETTE is more fruity, clean and fresh.
Les Ettes comes in reusable bottles and are non-alcoholic – Are you doing this to protect the environment?
Yes, from the beginning we made sure that the Les Ettes bottles were reusable bottles. If you look around in perfume shops, most of the bottles are a one-time use (clamp on) kind of bottles. After use, you have to throw them out as you can’t unscrew the cap off of them.
Once the fragrance in a Les Ettes bottle is finished, the bottle can be unscrewed, rinsed out, and filled with whatever you’d like. A bottle could be filled with water to water your plants, or with vinegar to clean your windows, etc.
Unfortunately, our generation has grown up with the throw-away mentality (disposable cameras, disposable tissues, etc). What companies could do now is to offer quality packaging with a long lifetime that can be reused for different purposes. Our generation, especially the ones who enjoy the joys of boardsports are sensitive to the environment and Les Ettes has kept that in mind.
We hope Les Ettes can set an example for other companies. It would be great if other perfume companies down the road also made their perfumes bottles reusable!
Is it possible to buy your scents at webshops or how can Danish girls get to smell like Nat Zurek?
We just received the final products last week but yes, they are available to be purchased online through info@lesettes.com. We are also looking for Danish reps to be distributed in Danish boardshops, so if you know of any please let us know.
Tjek: www.lesettes.com