Cyre Is The Memory Based Candle Brand You Should Know

by Hetty Mahlich on 10 March 2021

Cyre is a new experimental sensory brand collaborating with artists and designers to explore how scent affects our entire being.

Cyre is a new experimental sensory brand collaborating with artists and designers to explore how scent affects our entire being.

With all of us still stuck at home, we're forming intimate relationships with our immediate surroundings on a day-to-day basis. London designer Martine Rose was directly inspired by our newfound connections to interiors for her S/S 21 digital showcase, whilst the A/W 21 runways have seen a focus on protection through clothing, specifically bodysuits (see Prada and Rick Owens). Our internal monologues have become our dearest friend, and we're more aware of our senses than ever before; lucid dreaming has become a widely reported phenomenon since the pandemic took hold. Enter Cyre, a new experimental sensory brand founded by Rebecca Lazar and Cynthia El Frenn. When their paths first crossed in the design world, the duo began collaborating under aliases. Now they're launching Cyre, which has a plan to attack three of the five all important senses: sight, hearing and smell. Crossing into the art world, the brand invites artists and designers to interpret Cyre's candle scents via visual manifestations. Grown from an idea birthed a couple of years ago, Frenn and Lazar were initially thinking about how scent has been used in medicinal planting, ritual practice and ancient indulgence. They wanted to reinterpret this in a contemporary, '...unapologetic and utopic' manner. Cyre asks: 'How do you feel? How do you want to feel?'

Scent is one of those rare things that allows you to travel in time - Cyre
Courtesy Cyre

Scent and memory are intertwined. A spritz of musky perfume or Chanel No. 5 might remind you of your nan, or Hugo Boss cologne your first kiss at the school disco. The smell of tarmac hot from a summer's day, cooled by an unexpected downpour, always instils in me a heady sense of nostalgia. Maybe it's just memories from my moody teenage years, but I expect it boils down to something deeply rooted in my subconscious. Smell has the power to instil powerful emotions in us mere mortals, and latches on to our memories. The dressmaker Yohji Yamamoto described his complicated relationship with perfume as follows: 'Japanese people don’t smell; they use the scent on the kimono but they don’t put it on the body – this tradition is still there. So scent is a memory – it stays on the chair after she left. We Japanese have a tendency to enjoy the emotion of missing, enjoying the memory [more than the event].'

Back in 2014, the writer Lee C. Wallick explored the intrinsic link between scent and memory in an essay for SHOWstudio. 'For scent is our super-power when it comes to memory. It stands alone amongst our senses', he wrote.

I ask the pair behind Cyre if they have any memories related to scent which stand out.

'Yes, absolutely, and our process is memory-based. Canadian birch for example closely resembles a crackling fire. Night jasmine smells of Mediterranean air. It's why we only use pure plant oils, we believe that’s the truest link to those receptors. Memory really isn’t something defined or obvious, so we don’t try and replicate a specific time and space like your grandmother’s kitchen, instead we use these kernels of memory to layer and build up virtual landscapes around a concept, walking the line between real and unreal', they explain.

'Scent is one of those rare things that allows you to travel in time, it’s hard for me to think of anything comparably connected to memory, except perhaps music. A scent can give you that feeling of being completely awash in another space and time', Lazar adds.

Courtesy Cyre

Cyre will be launching with a capsule collection of three candles; Eros is made in the spirit of hedonism, an intoxicating mix of dirty florals, sweet grass and thin smoke, key notes include bergamot, neroli, vetiver and birch; Monk is a scent designed to create clarity in how we read the world around us, embracing the mind with ritual, enabling calm for observation, interpretation, and mastery, the burn is clean and resinous, woody but not smoky (key notes: palo santo, frankincense freana); Virgin is described as midnight in the Garden of Eden, fresh and floral, as it burns it transforms to bring an earthiness, with key notes of night jasmine, myrrh, neroli, aomori and hiba.

Lazar and Frenn describe how this trio work as one story. 'Monk and Eros are yin and yang - one profile devised to heighten clarity, allowing us to name the world, and another designed as an intoxicant that softens its boundaries.' Meanwhile Virgin can be combined with either of the two other scents, Cyre describe it as 'A memory of the virtual'.

Using a candle as the vehicle for their exploration into scent was the obvious choice for Cyre.

'When it comes to scent, we can think of perfume as something very much about the individual, but a candle plays with the built environment - it creates a landscape, it’s about atmosphere. A candle also gave us the freedom to play with the object itself. Our vessel, for example is inspired by water, a nourishing and essential substance that, like wax, shape shifts, and preserves. Each piece is hand blown so they are all unique.'

To call these 'vessels' rather than 'candle holders' reminds one of how much that small mound of fragrant wax brings with it. Within the swirling glass walls of a Cyre candle lies the catalyst for what sits within our own internal walls. A Cyre vessel feels almost too worthy to become repurposed as a pen pot or place for trinkets once the candle has burnt down.

Distorted worlds, shapes and colours come to the fore as the woman is hypnotised by memories of the self - Cyre
Courtesy Cyre

When Cyre decided to launch with an artist collaboration, they commissioned the multidisciplinary artist Linnea Skoglosa to explore unconscious memory and dreams. The Slade School of Fine Art alumna's work examines '...the psychological space where the individual expression confronts the idea of wellbeing and social dystopia' - fitting for the strange times we find ourselves in. The resulting film, Memory of the Virtual, looks towards unconscious memory. It takes the viewer through inverted frames of neon greens and lilacs, through the frames of the memories we all subconsciously hold, presenting an imagined utopia as we follow the female protagonist Zuza. The film is set in an imagined space between reality and dream land, there is an air of uncertainty mirroring our own.

'Linnea is a super talent, there’s something indelible in her work where the sum outweighs the parts, a certain rhythm and mystery. She also brought together a team of amazing collaborators whom together went about this process of world building', Lazar tells me.

She goes on: 'There is also a collective memory expressed in the ingredients we use in our scents, they are imbued with their own histories. Part of our early conversations with Linnea were about reaching into the DNA of the individual scents and tapping into that inherited memory, we were very interested in induced states and the unconscious interpretations of the mind.'

'Memory of the Virtual', Linnea Skoglosa for Cyre

Cyre plan to continue this model of collaboration as they grow. 'Art touches on the indescribable part of experience, something that is also core to the Cyre ethos, so it will always be essential to Cyre to be a platform for artists and designers, and a space for experimentation' they explain. 'Brand image is a very boring concept in the world of product, the idea that we can be interpreted and reinterpreted is much more interesting to us.'

To coincide with the launch, Cyre have published the first edition of a newspaper sharing the work of artists and designers in connection with the brand, kicking off with Yara Hanna and Michele Aoun.

Cyre shines a light on the all at once subjective and unpredictable impact scent can have on a human being, using it to create a new network of creatives which is only set to grow.

Cyre

Fashion Film Credits:

Concept, Direction and Film Edit: Linnea Skoglosa

Art Direction: Neoblade Studio

Talent: Zuza Kepa

Costume & Set Design: Emma Alvin

Wardrobe: Love is shouty but iconic

Make-up: Lynski

Sound: IVVVO

Commissioned by Cyre.

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