coty fume scent lounge

Winner of 9 international design awards including the Shop! 2018 Shop in Store & Fixture of the Year, and the Muse: Platinum Award for Retail Design.

The Fūme Scent lounge was conceived as a global concept pilot project; a first of its kind boutique that reinvents the way men & women shop for perfume.

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The lounge was about creating a completely fresh, dynamic and multi-sensory experience that raised the perfume lounge to a level of art. The lounge was also about reaching millennials who have their own unique shopping habits that are more about shopping as an experience, rather than a way of simply buying things. The design became about creating a memorable, entertaining, engaging and interactive experience that defined a journey of fragrance discovery.

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The design of the Fūme Scent lounge reveals an exploration of the fractal movement of mists of perfume. A white ribbon canopy twists & spirals as it rises from the floor and swirls high above, circling around the perimeter of the lounge.

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The fragrance bar was the central part of the journey and had to play as well. No longer a square counter to feature product and spray clients, it is a curving, dynamic place of discovery where lounge patrons would, through digital engagement with interactive screens discover what perfume they are most passionate about. The process starts with a digital fragrance finder on the screens that guides patrons through a process of revealing one’s fragrance persona. A group of 48 custom fragrance ‘inhalers’ flank each screen. Each ‘inhaler’ is filled with proprietary crystals infused with the fragrance of a specific perfume that allow one to smell the perfume without physical spray. Each inhaler also has its own RFID reader which activates and illuminates once a match is found on the fragrance finder. Patrons politely sample their discovered perfume via the illuminated ‘inhalers’.

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A series of 10’ tall black digital towers create a virtual backdrop to the lounge. The vertical black towers stand deliberately separate from each other.  Each represents its own unique brand, but only digitally, allowing for either a single brand experience, or a full digital concert of images and videos celebrating a specific brand and perfume, be it Gucci Bloom, Miu Miu, or Marc Jacob’s latest fragrance masterpiece. The images & videos dance across this media backdrop of the lounge, coming in and out of view and focus like a fine mist.

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This tied in well with the ephemerality of the concept. No physical branding whatsoever – everything is a fleeting, changing, momentary experience. And when you move around the kiosk, discover your fragrance persona, test and play, you can feel, for a few moments, the art of momentarily fleeting, sensual, non-linear movement of a spray of perfume.

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The first Fūme Scent Lounge opened in 2017 at the Hudson's Bay store in Yorkdale Shopping Center, followed by Version 2 in 2019 at The Bay in Montreal, Quebec.