A practice of experiential aesthetics operating from a point prior to the subject experiencing and the object being experienced, in the “here and now” of zero-time and zero-space.

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Visual Brand Index
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5, 2ml tester bottles of perfume
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4 perfume samples

Featured Index

01-05 / 2025

Sensorial Transposition Excerpts

Index Item:
Category:
Olfactory
Defined Type:
Sample Pack
Size:
5 x 2 mL
Price:
$ 37.00 USD
Description:
Try Before Buy
Status:
Active
Index Item:
Category:
Olfactory
Defined Type:
Eau de Parfum
Size:
50 mL
Price:
$ 148.00 USD
Description:
Abstract Lactonic
Status:
Active
Index Item:
Category:
Olfactory
Defined Type:
Eau de Parfum
Size:
50 mL
Price:
$ 148.00 USD
Description:
Chlorenic Aquatic
Status:
Active
Index Item:
Category:
Olfactory
Defined Type:
Eau de Parfum
Size:
50 mL
Price:
$ 148.00 USD
Description:
Weightless, Illuminative, & Solar
Status:
Active
The Idle Times Mirror text headline
Vol: 04 Number: 1.6
Aesthetics

Date:

08.04.2025

Category:

Dover Street Parfums Market / PARIS

Headline:

Store Installation

Link:

< Read >

Image installation in Dover Street Parfum Market Paris

Date:

05.17.2025

Category:

Melbourne Design Week

Headline:

At The Above Presents...

Link:

< Read >

image of zen spa in gallery

Date:

12.07.2024

Category:

Architecture

Headline:

Le Corbusier's Apartment

Link:

< Read >

Window at Corbusier studio paris

Date:

04.18.2024

Category:

Product Release

Headline:

Vortex Linkages

Link:

< Read >

vortex linkage desktop sculpture

Date:

05.08.2022

Category:

Incense Aesthetics

Headline:

Cut Continue

Link:

< Read >

Temple Gate

index-article:

DSPM Installation

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Installation: Cut-Continuum

Dover Street Parfums Market

August 4 - September 12, 2025

Please visit the DSPM store at 11 bis Rue Elzevir, Paris, to see our installation on the lower level.

To mark the European release of Cut-Continuum, we created an architectural installation featuring our flowerless bouquet prints mounted within translucent sculptural forms. Wrapped in construction plastic, these structures appear weightless—an airy framework that echoes the fragrance’s internal logic.

HG012 / Print on paper 59cm x 84cm

The installation is built around five prints, all derived from a single photograph. Originally found in a Hong Kong flower shop and used to advertise floral arrangements, the image was digitally manipulated: the design software identified and outlined the bouquets, then replaced the flowers with fragments of their own backdrop. What remains is a kind of absence—an imprint or afterimage of what was once there.

This gesture mirrors the construction of Cut-Continuum, a scent designed as an abstract floral composition to feel as if the arranged bouquet was removed—leaving behind only its trace.

Installation View / DSPM Lower Level
HG005 / Print on paper 59cm x 84cm
Installation View / DSPM Lower Level
Installation View / DSPM Lower Level
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Melbourne Design Week

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Installation: Inflatable

At The Above

IDLE Launch in Australia

We were excited to take part in Melbourne Design Week at At The Above gallery. We soft launched our new fragrance 'Cut-Continuum'. Our products will continue to be stocked by ATA, so if you are in Melbourne, be sure to check it out.

Zen Spa -- 2025 / 11"x14" Oil on Canvas.
Installation View / Photo: Jack Lovel
Transparent Systems (Universe) -- 2025 / 8"x11" Oil on Canvas.
IDLE Permanent Display
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L1FEW0RLD | Eau de Parfum

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Fragrance: L1FEW0RLD

L1FEW0RLD

Abstract Lactonic

A “world-horizon” scent structure of potential future experiences, that are to be expected for the user at a given time, under various conditions, where the resulting sequences of anticipated experiences can be seen as corresponding to different possible worlds.

Milk and flora as potential life forces.

Find samples, with free shipping HERE.

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Formlessness | Eau de Parfum

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Fragrance: Formlessness

Formlessness

Chlorenic Aquatic

A chlorenic aquatic fragrance with subtleties gathered from the movement of water through its environment. Formlessness is liquid and has no definitive shape, instead it moves with nature and takes the shape of the wearer.

Find samples, with free shipping HERE.

Scent Structure: Chlorenic Aquatic
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Le Corbusier

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Le Corbusier: Kitchen Skylight

Le Corbusier

The Studio-Apartment

Designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret between 1931 and 1934, the Molitor building is located on the border between Paris and Boulogne-Billancourt. At a time when Haussmann-style architecture dominated Paris, Le Corbusier used this project to explore his Radiant City concept, creating what is considered the first glass-walled apartment block in architectural history. Securing the top two floors for his own residence, he delivered the remaining apartments with open floor plans, including only the essential sanitary facilities.

In his personal apartment, Le Corbusier experimented with innovative design ideas, such as an arched ceiling in a light-filled studio space, large cantilevered doors, a raised bed inspired by steamship cabins, and a rooftop garden. These elements not only reflected his functionalist principles but also demonstrated his commitment to reimagining modern living.

Le Corbusier: Desk in Study
Le Corbusier: Toilette Pull

Experiencing spaces designed and inhabited by architects offers unique insights into their philosophies and creative processes. In this case, the apartment-studio exemplifies a dynamic, utilitarian aesthetic that redefines necessary comforts, avoids frivolity, and integrates inspiring spaces for creative living. (Another excellent example open to the public is the Schindler House in West Hollywood, California.)

Images abound on the internet, so we leave you with a more detailed view herein.

Le Corbusier: Bathroom Fixtures and Tile
Le Corbusier: Bedroom Light
Le Corbusier: Bathroom Mirror Faucet
Le Corbusier: Tile Floor
Le Corbusier: Foyer Drawings
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The Aesthetics of Incense

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Ryoin-ji, Kyoto, Japan.

Cut Continue

The Aesthetics of Incense

Kire-tsuzuki or 'cut continue' is often exemplified by the discontinuous continuum of breathing – the 'cut' between the exhale and inhale instills the simple fact that each exhale could be the last. This trope is often used in Japanese aesthetics and famously used by Hakuin, the Zen Master, whose teaching implores that we must be cut from the root of life in order to "see into one's own nature".

The dry landscape garden at Ryoan-ji is arranged within a large rectangle of raked gravel and bordered first with stone and moss before abutting a low earthen wall with a small pitched roof. The wall acts both as a cut and a continuum, because the scenery on the far side of the wall is borrowed by the dry landscape. Within the rectangle, the sand and 15 various sized stones exist within their 'own' stillness and suspended timeframe, compared to the borrowed scenery that moves within the patterns of nature. The borrowed scenery is vital, as the deceptive permanency of the dry landscape alone would communicate only part of the whole. 

Ikebana, which translates literally to "making flowers live", is a revelation – to cut the flower from the root demonstrates the illusion of the flower's seemingly permanent nature within the earth and exposing it instead, in its pure untethered form.

Borrowed Scenery seen through a Temple gate.

The cultivation and burning of a stick of incense follows these same kire-tsuzuki aesthetics. The natural materials are grown, cut, and composed into sticks that, like the dry landscape gardens, defy time and apparent material degradation. To burn incense, wherever you choose to do so, a unique interplay between the incense and borrowed scenery arises. As the ember chases its way down the stick, a suspended rush of fragrance is released – emitting the true essence of the woods, the flowers, and the resins that once grew; rooted in earth in distant forests. A cut and a continuum, the past histories of these exotic botanicals are released with wavering smoke into nothingness.

Borrowed Scenery incense.
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Vortex Linkages

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Illustration from the original patent.

Vortex Linkages

Kinetic Sculpture

Years ago, we found a mysterious object on the shelf of a recently deceased physics professor at an estate sale. It was 8 connected links that mathmatically moved around in the hands to create Buckminster Fuller tetrahedron-ish shapes.

The kinetic sculpture was originally designed by Paul Schatz in 1929, who's much more famous discovery was the Oloid, made in the same year. We aren't sure if there were any mass produced sculptures made after the discovery, or if it wasn't until 1975 when Flowerday Designs of England patented the design and began manufacturing an 8-segment 'Octyflex' sculpture and a 6-segment 'Hexyflex' iteration. A Flowerday Designs box from that time describes the sculpture as, "elegant geometric objects that you move and change in pleasing and surprising ways." They even managed to snag a quote from Buckminster Fuller for the back of the box, "I am extremely enthusiastic about the Octyflex."

From the now expired 1974 patent application explaining the design:

There is disclosed a manipulative toy in the form of a linkage containing an even number of at least six links, each of which links comprises a central limb with two end limbs projecting one from each end thereof in planes mutually perpendicular to one another, each end limb of each link being journalled alongside an end limb of an adjacent link so as to pivot generally coaxially therewith and enable the linkage to be successively turned inside out through a position in which it defines a planar polygon, in which position half the journalled pairs of limbs stand perpendicular to the plane of the polygon at each vertex thereof whilst the remaining journalled pairs of limbs lie in the plane of the polygon and project from the mid points of the sides of the polygon towards the centre thereof.

We noticed a trail of Octyflex and Hexyflex sculptures across the internet, but couldn't see any in current production. In an attempt to breath life back into this useless design object, we set out to see if we could make our own variation. Instead of chrome plated wire, we made our version from stainless steel and added vinyl endcaps to each internal segment so that the object rotates and flexes in a more satisfying way.

Vortex Linkages

Taken from the Flowerday patent description of the object, we decided to call it 'Vortex Linkages' and are pleased that we can offer you this almost useless object that hopefully does nothing more than quiet your mind.

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UPDATE - Cut-Continuum is out now.

--> Stockists:

Dover Street Parfums Market
11 bis Rue Elzevir, 75003 Paris, France

Goodhood
15 Hanbury St, London E1 6QR, UK

Dimes Market
143 Division St, New York, NY 10002, USA

Stéle
179 Mott St, New York, NY 10012, USA
339 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA

At The Above

198 Gertrude St, Melbourne, VIC 3065, AUS

•••

¯\_(ツ)_/¯  

For detailed information, periodically direct to your inbox:

Praxis

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Theoretical Foundation

IDLE™ is a creative practice devoted to cultivating direct aesthetic experience. Drawing from Zen’s influence on daily life over the past millennium, we explore how heightened awareness of sensory conditions can extend Zen thought beyond conditioned responses.

Zen often employs language not as an end, but as a guide. The saying, “The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon,” reminds us that words are provisional: signposts toward an experience that transcends them. In this spirit, IDLE™ seeks to function as such a signpost — presenting aesthetic opportunities that move beyond ego and consumption. IDLE™ is the finger; the experience itself is the moon.

Our practice engages across sensory mediums, encouraging an understanding that surpasses explanation and rests in presence.
The distinction between art and brand is often drawn sharply: art as imagination and boundary-breaking, brand as a mechanism of need and desire. Today, however, art is frequently commodified, while brands absorb the language of creativity through marketing and social media. In both cases, meaning is too often tethered to sales or status rather than lived experience.

We believe a brand, like art, can still act as a boundary-pushing tool — pointing toward other human potentials. Boundaries, after all, are not only divisions but connections: fluid, impermanent, and dissolvable in moments of wordless contemplation.To step beyond them is to enter the boundless space of direct experience.

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Process

At IDLE™, fragrance is not self-expression but a medium of perception. In a world saturated with scent, smell is too often reduced to alarm or preference — safe, unsafe, good, bad. Yet fragrance can serve as a trigger for awareness: a pause in distraction, a glimpse into being itself, free from judgment.

Our compositions reject perfumery’s conventions, trends, and compromises. They are abstract arrangements designed not to dictate, but to invite. Like an abstract painting, they hold open space for potentials yet to be realized. They ask nothing of the wearer except attention.

Uncompromising in intent, each fragrance becomes a sensory threshold — an opening into new ways of experiencing the world.

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Engagement

Central to our practice is the question of engagement: how might one encounter fragrance beyond explanation or categorization? We resist lists of notes or prescriptive outcomes. Words cannot smell; they can only gesture. To describe fragrance by its components is no more sufficient than to describe a painting solely by its pigments. Instead, we create conditions for personal, open-ended perception. This approach draws from Zen’s many vehicles for experiential transcendence. Zen is less a doctrine than a lens—a way of seeing.

When we describe our work as objects and experiences, “experience” itself requires clarity. The philosopher Nishida Kitarō, founder of the Kyoto School, spoke of “pure experience” in An Inquiry into the Good (1911): a state of direct, immediate awareness prior to the divisions of subject and object, thought and action, self and other. In pure experience, perceiver and perceived are one.

Our fragrances are not commodities but sensory platforms — quiet invitations to direct encounter. They ask the wearer to set aside preconception and enter the ineffable potential of presence.