How to smell ‘rock and roll', according to Duran Duran

Telegraph

26-03-2025

What did the Eighties smell like? If you were a teenager, either Anais Anais (girls), Dewberry (girls on a budget) or Drakkar Noir (boys). Like Eighties fashion, Eighties perfume was very OTT. Everybody reeked of something, not all of it pleasant.
There was no opportunity to smell like your favourite singer, actor or band; celebrity fragrance, was yet become a highly lucrative global phenomenon. But for Britain's vast army of Duran Duran fans, a new scent is set to prove that good things come to those who wait. Even if they've had to wait 45 years.
What does Duran Duran smell like? After decades of fond imaginings, Durannies (as their fans were called) are about to find out. Not content with selling 100 million records worldwide, scoring 18 American hit singles and 21 UK Top Ten songs, winning eight lifetime achievement awards, two Grammys, two Brits and two Ivor Novellos, Birmingham's most famous export (Duran Duran was formed by Brummies Nick Rhodes and John Taylor in 1978) have launched two scents that aim to bottle the band's essence, in partnership with luxury Italian perfume house, Xerjoff.
Scent is notoriously hard to describe, but Simon Le Bon, 66, is having a go. 'It's got that moodiness and I think it's quite romantic. But it's got a kind of tough side to it as well. It reminds me of going to a really great night club, and meeting somebody fabulous,' is how he describes Black Moonlight, a heavy mix of bergamot and mandarin with notes of saffron, hazelnut and jasmine. 'I'm not very good at remembering the names of the actual things that are in them, like tonka bean and oud,' he adds. 'We talked about what we liked, and I took quite a lead in that, because I'm very, very olfactory driven.'
The second scent, Neo Rio, he describes as having a 'tropical feel'. 'It's fruity, isn't it. It makes me think of opening the windows and letting a bright summer morning into your room, when the birds are really shouting at you. It's got that vibe. It's very in your face. But it's also very complex.'
'We've always liked the idea of doing things outside of the band, in the art, fashion and design world,' adds Nick Rhodes, 62, the band's keyboardist turned photographer. 'We love the idea of being able to excite a new sense – in this case, being smell – because we've mostly spent our careers with sound and visuals. We looked at it as though the project was what we would have done if we'd been a band of perfumers. The process was absolutely fascinating. We all knew the different things we liked. And just like when we're writing songs, everybody's pulling in completely different directions. Somebody wants something that's really joyful and uplifting, and somebody else wants something dark and moody and more musky. So that's exactly how the atom got split.' Better to launch two scents than cause dissent.
What would they say the Eighties smelled like? 'I think they're probably a little off after all this time,' quips Rhodes. 'I'd be very careful. People often forget that the 1980s actually began as a very dark period, particularly in Britain. Politically, it was a catastrophe. And so, as young teenagers, it was fairly natural that our instinct was to get away from this. 'Let's make something positive. Let's make our own brightness.' A lot of the 1980s came out of that, if you look at fashion, film, art. So yes, there's certainly a nod towards that period. But the fragrance itself feels very modern.'
Both miss the excesses of Eighties fashion. 'It's always difficult when you're part of something to try to be objective,' says Rhodes. 'But if I look at other people's things from the 1980s, rather than ours, I realise at this distance what a remarkable decade it was for invention and creativity.'
'There was so much freedom, and absolute, unrestrained imagination – people just taking any ideas that they had in the back of their minds and making it into something wearable,' says Le Bon. 'People would be telling stories through how they dressed. Modern fashion has become more understated, restrained and less willing to give that much away about oneself. [Social media] tends to encourage people to stay in the middle with everybody else. You don't want to stand out, or stick your head up above the parapet. Whereas in the Eighties, that's all we ever did. We stuck our necks up as far as they could go.'
How would he describe his own style now? 'That's like trying to bite my own teeth. I have an incredible stylist in the house with me, in the shape of Yasmin Le Bon. I always look to her for advice, and I've picked up a lot of her style over the years. Look, I'm a grandfather now. But I'm not called granddad. I'm called boomba. All capital letters: B-O-O-M-B-A-H - exclamation mark,' he says, spelling it out.
He and his eternally beautiful model wife Yasmin, 60, have been married for 40 years, an achievement in anyone's books, never mind in the capricious world of celebrity. Instagram yet to have been invented, they met in that time-honoured eighties pop star tradition, whereby he saw her photo in a magazine and married her a year later (in 1985). They share three daughters, and have just welcomed their second grandchild. Rhodes, meanwhile, has one daughter, whose mother is the US department store heiress Julie Anne Friedman.
Duran Duran are embarking on a European tour this summer, but don't expect them to play Glastonbury. 'Look, we're really up for it, but we're not going to play the disco tent on a Saturday afternoon,' says Le Bon. So it's the Pyramid stage or nothing? 'Well, exactly. You said it.'
Who would their dream surprise guest be? 'I'd love to do something with Charlie XCX,' says Le Bon. Brat is a great album.'
Brat summer might be over, but Duran Duran seem keen to hard launch Brat Halloween. Their most recent album, Danse Macabre (2023) is Halloween-themed: so, too, is their 'interactive' perfume launch. Held in 'Lost City' (aka a mysterious new events space in London's West End), the dress-code is Peak Eighties, with guests instructed to 'come glam, wear black or red, no heels, no perfume, be silent upon arrival'.
Less Eighties is the command to place our phones in a locked pouch. It soon becomes clear that the 'no heels' edict is on account of the narrow, dimly lit metal stairs leading down to a series of tiny rooms, to which guests are admitted six at a time. In the first room, Simon Le Bon is sitting dolorously at a bureau writing notes with a fountain pen. In the second one, John Taylor is simulating a threesome, which is to say he's reclining on a bed while two twentysomethings in front of him pretend to kiss. In the third room, a 'priest' asks us to repent our sins, before escorting us to another room, where Nick Rhodes takes our photograph (a reference to Girls On Film? Who knows?). Finally, after being held in another tiny room for crowd control reasons, a
woman dressed as a bird asks us if we've ever been to paradise. 'You will now,' she says, flinging open the double doors to a bigger room that reeks of Black Moonlight.
Whether guests are in paradise or purgatory will depend on their taste in perfume, but you've got to give the boys ten out of ten for effort. It might not smell like teen spirit (the band are all in their sixties now), but it definitely smells pleasantly of candied fig, rum, maple syrup and tonka bean - with a base note of money.