Manifesto

How does an individual self-define in the post-globalised world where the serendipity of self-identification is over? The identity of an individual has always been, and will always be, a combination of affiliation with several social groups who share a set of similar values or interests and which we call communities. The recent history has shown that the self-identification through belonging has shifted from being imposed by birth - tribe, country, parents, social status… - to a set of free choices every individual has to make to position himself - sexual orientation, political beliefs, food, music, online groups etc. As per Jean Liefloff, a contemporary American writer who analysed the social behaviour of south American native communities : We need people. From birth, we expect from everybody we deal with to be nice and well-intentioned. In reality, we realise that we are brutally thrown into an individualistic world with a clear separation between OUR People and OTHERS - the strangers who can’t be trusted - while the expectation was to be able to blindly trust our tribe and feel supported. Hence, while our natural tendency to belong to communities is meant to reassure us when it is serendipitous, it turns to be a source of social pressure, every move, every purchase needs to be within the acceptable range of specific community’s paradigma to have meaning. In recent years, no marketing concept or strategy was made without targeting a specific community. Hence reinforcing the idea that purchasing the product makes ONE separated from the OTHERS who didn’t choose to buy the same brand. HOC is willing to go beyond these cleavages! What is the essence of what gathers a community together? A collective history and consequently a common vision of the future. The collective history is nothing but the combination of subjective memories every individual has and can revive through Reminiscences… A memory is a combination of impressions recorded subjectively through our five senses, each person recording the same event in their own way. The associated neurological processes are yet to be fully characterised, which often makes us deem this phenomenon irrational - meaning that it belongs to this irreducible part of our behaviour we all call human. Some memories can be revived at any point in our life through specific triggers, fragrance being the most SEREN(E)dipitous and reassuring one! The metaphor of the Proustian Madeleine in “Swann’s way” is a remarkable illustration : « And as soon as I had recognised the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had been built out behind it for my parents… » HOC creates fragrances reflecting the intimacy of selected perfumers through a set of olfactive reminiscences. Every new fragrance is a mood board able to reason with ANY individual and create a belonging to a pastel of sensations ALL world tribe is able to feel - It is just about being human! Let the instinct push us to unite in what turns to be one unique world tribe and go beyond the oppressing cleavages the obligation of choosing communities pushes us in! The same way HOC creates perfumes telling the story of perfumers’ intimacy, our marketing campaign is aiming to show the public how individual’s (models’) memories are associated, at the end, with fragrances. The very same memories which build the collective history defining the communities and reassuring us about the bright future we are building today!

MASHA ZANIER

The Founder

Every bit of HOC perfumes tells something about Masha Zanier. As a child, Masha had a special connection with nature through smells. “When you are a child, being small, you are close to earth so you smell its fragrances better. As you get older and taller, it gets further and further… until you get more mature, more wise, and you learn how to smell better so you can get back to it” she says. Through these words, Masha is telling us an absolute truth : Kids perceive the world through impressions and feelings, they are not corrupted by rational conceptions taught through experience and compromises with reality. In fact, kids are somehow closer to their inner self and are able to connect to it to feel happy. As we grow older, we lose this ability to reconnect. We try hard to return to this primitive state of happiness when we feel that the present moment is enough to feel good right where we are. Adults need bridges or reminiscences to travel back to these sensations of fulfillness. For Masha this bridge is the smell.