Renaud Salmon and Dimitry Hlinka have founded a design practice called Atelier d’Ingénierie Fades. The practice explores the objects and spaces of perfumery. It is based between Paris and Muscat.
Salmon is the Creative Director and Chief Creative Officer of Amouage. He has overseen the brand’s creative direction since 2019. Hlinka is a French designer and multidisciplinary craftsman. His work spans industrial design and furniture. He has held residencies at Villa Albertine and Villa Kujoyama and was recognized as a Lauréat of the Prix Bettencourt Dialogues. Together, they created the Atelier as an independent laboratory. It develops professional instruments, furniture, and immersive sensory installations that translate the ephemeral nature of scent into objects, tools, and spatial experiences. Perfumery is the initial field of exploration.
The name Fades refers to the fleeting quality of scent. The Atelier was conceived to give physical form to elements that belong to this invisible territory. While perfumery works through air, time, and evaporation, the Atelier works through objects, tools, and space. Design becomes a way to translate and hold what is otherwise meant to fade.
The Atelier’s work is structured around three areas. The first is professional instruments. Many tools used in perfumery have changed little over time. The Atelier seeks to rethink them through contemporary design and engineering. Projects may include tools for formulation, evaluation, storage, or sensory analysis. The second area is furniture. The practice develops furniture for environments connected to perfumery, including display systems, sampling and trial furniture, and pieces that shape the interaction between people, fragrance, and space. The third area is immersive sensory installations. These projects explore how scent, space, sound, light, and material presence interact. Installations may take the form of exhibitions, temporary environments, or site-specific works developed with cultural institutions, brands, or research partners.
Salmon said he has never been interested in keeping perfumery within its own boundaries. He called it a complete artistic system where scent, object, space, narrative, and time exist as one. With the Atelier, they explore how this system can take form through materials, tools, and environments.
For Hlinka, design can make visible aspects of perfumery that usually remain intangible. By working with materials, objects, and space, they can translate gestures, processes, and sensations that normally exist only through smell.
In the coming months, the Atelier will open its first publicly accessible space in Paris. It will function as a studio, laboratory, and place of encounter. Professionals and the public will be able to engage with the Atelier’s work.
