Designer Interview: Masaki Matsushima
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By Marie Redding, Senior EditorWhether he is designing a fashion collection or a fragrance package, fashion designer Masaki Matsushima is inspired by contrasting influences. “I often combine elements of Japanese traditionalism with modern, avant-garde touches,” he says. In the fashion world, Matsushima’s collections are often described as having an “engineered” look. He often uses clean, sharp lines and bold colors—which are also the right words to describe his fragrance bottles.
Matsushima’s unusually shaped bottles resemble sculptures. He uses the same bottle shape for different groups of fragrances. For example, three fragrances named mat; Orange, mat; Yellow, and mat; Chocolat are in the same-shaped bottle. The bottles are colored orange, yellow, and brown, respectively. The shape of the bottle was inspired by African art. “The shape of the indentation in the bottle mirrors the nose found in African masks,” says Matsushima.
The bold, opaque colors and the shiny finish were achieved by supplier Saverglass (France), which produced the bottles and used a patented spraying process to apply a water-soluable organic coating. “The bottles were all a challenge to produce because they are asymmetrical shapes,” says Matsushima. Panouge (France) developed the custom-shaped molds. The pumps are supplied by Coster USA (South Elgin, IL). Various suppliers produce the caps.
Solid-colored cartons match the different colors of the fragrances. Mat; Chocolat is packaged in a white plastic bag with a seal resembling the type on a Ziploc bag. “The cartons are meant to reflect the essence of each fragrance. Purity and modernity are key. They are all undecorated and frills-free to convey a minimalist design,” says Matsushima. Cartonage Besse supplies the outer cartons and the sealed plastic bags.
The latest addition to the Mat; fragrance collection is Mintea, which contains green tea, lemon, mint tea, and lily of the valley. “This bottle is a little esoteric in nature. Its shape is meant to resemble a door handle and has many levels of meanings not often found in fragrance packaging,” Matsushima says. “I am always inspired by my travels abroad, and the shape of the door handle is also meant to signify all of the places I have visited.”
The part of the bottle that was designed to represent a door handle protrudes from one side of the bottle near the bottle’s shoulder and was extremely difficult to mold, according to Gilbert Lejosne, perfumery sales manager at Saverglass. “It has a prismatic shape and a small radius, and it is almost as wide as the main part of the bottle,” he says. “Forcing the glass to stay in this part of the bottle was most difficult.”
With each new launch, Matsushima is sure to continue to give his abstract ideas a solid shape, combining modernist sculpture with bottle design.