Pop Culture | Victor Fang + Konor Nichols |  January 23rd, 2025.

Founded in 2005, Le Labo is New York’s fragrance gem. Since its debut, the brand has expanded to over 40 boutiques worldwide. The brand holds the title of a “niche” fragrance house—a term coined by the perfumers in the later 1980s referring to smaller, independent brands that weren’t affiliated with recognizable luxury brands like Christian Dior, Chanel, or Tom Ford. Known for quality and craftsmanship, Le Labo synthesizes signature scents like Another 13, comprised of a uniquely subtle and sweet oriental wood, and Santal 33, a polarizing leather-like cream scent. Le Labo’s growth in the nice fragrance market can be attributed to its integration of branding and unique store design. 

Most notable for its run-down laboratory storefronts, Le Labo follows the Japanese design philosophy of Wabi-sabi closely. 

Wabi, meaning less is more, and sabi—attentive melancholy, will be the key to unlocking the unique aesthetic of Le Labo. “Our main source of inspiration or ‘code of artistic conduct,’ if you will, is our close connection to the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi-sabi, centered on the acceptance of imperfection and impermanence, of things incomplete.” The Le Labo storefront seems like a space that has seen a meaningful span of use. Yet it is still clean—minimal, yet worn. 

Wabi-sabi is to appreciate the imperfect and incomplete in their existing state. Derived from the Buddhist teachings of the three marks of existence, Wabi-sabi’s origins can be also traced back to a Zen priest (Murata Juko) when he replaced the extravagant jade and porcelain of Chinese tradition with simple, handcrafted wood and clay in traditional tea ceremonies—one of the earliest forms of minimalism recorded. Wabi-sabi is still a concept that shapes Japanese culture and fashion to this day, also attributable to the rise and popularity of Japan’s characteristic interior design.

“We seek the beauty that finds its niche in irregularity, in “roughness”, a result of the integrity and voluntary simplicity of the process that we guide the craftsmen (the perfumer) through.” 

The color palette of a classic Le Labo storefront includes black, white, and grey. Walls intentionally styled to look like worn concrete, cracked after years and years of weathering. Plaster—ripped apart and broken with incompletely laid white subway tiles, left to sit as if it were a young artist’s incomplete work, exposed to nature’s elements, frozen in time. Even the credenza, where their body care and bath products are often placed, continues with the worn look, displaying the distressed nature of the texture of the wood, like scars of time. 

The storefront design is a tribute to thoughtful minimalism, roughness, and authenticity for their customers–an authenticity that is a rarity in today’s world. 

Le Labo’s storefront design is the definition of deliberate.