If you were to brush past Troye Sivan at the Grammys Sunday night, wafts of pink pepper, cardamom and cedar would’ve come off the nominated pop star’s purple Prada suit.
He wore his own Australian brand Tsu Lange Yor, which just released its latest fragrance, By Your Side. “This feels like love to me,” Sivan posted when announcing the new drop; he wanted to create something that became like a second skin, capturing the closeness of “beautiful couples” and “new love” alike. “There’s something unbelievably romantic about it,” he says of the unisex scent that “really sticks” and smells like the “hot boyfriend” of Sivan’s dreams. “It’s very hot and evocative to me.”
Below, PAPER called up Troye Sivan days after the Grammys to gush about Doechii’s performance and dive into all things By Your Side: how he moodboarded the campaign using Pinterest, tested out the scent on his own t-shirts and worked to create something that felt “effortlessly feminine and masculine at the same time.”
Hey Troye, how's it going? Have you fully recovered from the Grammys?
No, actually. I'm almost better, but I have a really bad cold. If you find out that Beyoncé has a cold, she probably got it from me, or I spread something there unintentionally.
Or maybe you got it from Beyoncé? You were sitting around all the legends.
Maybe, I was kind of far away from her. I don't know, not her, but potentially Gracie Abrams.
What was your favorite moment from the night, looking back? I thought it was such a good year for the Grammys.
Overall, one of the best in a long time, for sure. I mean, the Doechii performance was the pinnacle. I feel like that was it. I'm just so unbelievably in awe of her. Seeing someone operate at that high of a level and be that actualized is so inspiring. She's just firing on all cylinders and leaving us all in the dust. It's crazy, it's incredible to watch.
I had the opportunity to work with Doechii this year and her brain really operates on another level, it's incredible. So your new fragrance, super exciting. I'm curious how you feel like it’s personal to you or your life in some way?
Fragrance is immediately emotive, always. It's really like music in a lot of ways, where it's very closely tied to emotion and memory for me. I think I respond differently to different mediums, and for me, music and fragrance are probably the most immediate, or that strike the most deeply. I have really big reactions to scent.
By Your Side, when we first started working on it, there's something unbelievably romantic about it. I think it's how genuinely unisex it feels. It feels effortlessly feminine and masculine at the same time. It's very hot and evocative to me, and it felt close. Also, the pink peppercorn in it is such a fun thing to play with.
I got these visions of beautiful couples and new love. I love how much this scent hangs around, it really sticks. I would put on a jumper or a t-shirt that I was wearing when I was testing out the fragrance, and I would put it on a day or two days later and it smelled like the hot boyfriend that I don't have. I'm like, Damn, this is something really special. So, yeah, it’s been one of these ideas that came super effortlessly from the second we started working on it.
Did you know what you wanted to make going into it? I think about that scene from the Halston Netflix series, where he's developing the iconic Halston fragrance and he brings his boyfriend’s used jock strap to reference.
Hot.
What was that process like, from start to finish, of actually developing By Your Side?
It's different every time. Sometimes you start with a singular ingredient or a singular idea, and sometimes it's a combination of things. With By Your Side, the pink peppercorn was the starting point. Then the cardamom really warms it up. And I always love a woody base, I think that's really sexy, so it's got cedar wood in it. I was really thrilled with how easily it came together, it was a seamless process.
Let's talk about mood boarding and Pinterest, specifically. What's so great about your work is you really build these thoughtful worlds. Looking at your Pinterest Board and some of the references, it's clear that was considered here, as well. In terms of sourcing imagery and inspiration, what does that look like for you?
It does look like a lot of research, and oftentimes that starts on Pinterest. I think the algorithm is really good and it's my favorite part of the process. It's constant piggybacking. You'll see something that gives you the tiniest kernel of an idea that then makes you leapfrog onto something else and that leads you down this pathway, which leads you down that pathway. That process, to me, is so fluid and fun and feels really alive. I just love doing it, I do it in my free time for fun. I do it for Tsu Lange Yor, I do it for myself, I do it for haircuts. I love learning and I find I'm really inspired by so much, whether it's flicking through books in my house or going to a record store and looking at the album covers. Visual research is really fun for me.
When you smell this fragrance, what image specifically comes to mind for you? What do you want people to think about?
There's this immediate feeling of young love and how intoxicating that can be. The scent immediately leapt out as that. I always find it crazy when people talk about synesthesia, it's an interesting idea to me. But I genuinely do, especially with scent, feel like I can see what it looks like. We redid the Tsu Lange Yor logo in this dusty pink, and it became really clear to me: this black and white and pink, kind of like Butt Magazine, that kind of pink came to mind. That's what it looked like in my head.
Do you remember what fragrance you wore growing up? I definitely had Acqua di Gio because I didn’t know anything else. What was your go-to?
Let me look it up because I'm pretty sure it was a red bottle. Was it like Hugo Boss or something? It might have been.
That checks out — the very boyish, locker room smells.
Yeah, exactly. It was definitely a present that I got for a birthday or something like that, and just absolutely ran with it. The one bottle lasted me a couple years, so I think if I was to smell that now, I would probably have a very visceral reaction to it. But yeah, that was the smell of my early teens.
What do you think are the sexiest smells?
When I think of something sexy, I think of something sort of second skin-like. There's something to be said for subtlety and something that's not too perfumey. Again, it's also sexy when people are not afraid to play with the feminine and the masculine. Just my personal taste: if anything feels overtly bro-y, it takes me back to what we were just talking about, being like 13, which is not a vibe to me. Similarly, if anything is too cotton candy, then that also puts me off a bit. There's so much space to play in this interesting way that says a lot about you, and there's a middle ground that I find mysterious and cool and playful. I love to switch it up and also mix-and-match. Scent is really personal, so that's the other thing: something that still allows your natural scent to shine.
What smells remind you of partying?
Like, sweat? Honestly.
What smells remind you of the Sweat Tour, apart from sweat?
Probably a combination of all the dancers’ different fragrances that they wear because that's what the dressing rooms would smell like. But then also, we all go on stage together and we're in these tight group formations and everyone's kind of started to cook, so it's in the air.
What are some of the most nostalgic smells that immediately come to mind for you?
Definitely Australian trees, like Eucalyptus. There are these piney smelling trees there, I don't know what they're called, but if I was to smell that, that would immediately take me back. There were so many of them around my old house that I grew up in.
Well, congrats on everything. It’s always great chatting with you.
Thank you so much. Nice to talk to you again.
I would put on a jumper or a t-shirt that I was wearing when I was testing out the fragrance, and I would put it on a day or two days later and it smelled like the hot boyfriend that I don't have. I'm like, Damn, this is something really special.
Photos courtesy of Tsu Lange Yor/Pinterest
