Bottle Service: A.P.C. Perfumes Are Meant to Last

One potential paradox of the fashion industry is that signature perfumes are often a label’s biggest moneymaker–and you never see them. A.P.C’s new offering, “Sustain,” is particularly abstract: Inspired by music, it is meant to evoke the scent of “a velvet lined guitar case in which rose petals have been scattered.” Whose guitar case have they been sniffing? Apparently, that of Ray Davies. “Sustain” is inspired by Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset”; it includes 12 essential oils–one for each of the strings on the song’s 12-string guitar. Carved from a block of wood, the bottle is a three-dimensional rendering of a sound wave. While the word “Sustain” seems a name more suited for a deodorant than a perfume, A.P.C’s product actually references the pedal that holds a note before fading out. Hopefully, the scent has similar staying power.