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The man behind the gin that is sold as a perfume

2022-12-06T11:09:31.375Z


Mert Alas, a member of the duo Mert & Marcus, became famous as a photographer. He now presents Seventy One, a spirit with the appearance of an object of desire


Mert Alas (Turkey, 1971) has never been about plastic cups.

Not even when he was a 20-year-old middle-class kid.

He then went to the markets in search of old crystal glasses.

To impress, admits the photographer, who together with Marcus Piggott forms one of the great creative duos of recent years.

“I like weird things and style,” he says on the other side of the screen in Los Angeles.

In the background, the red lips of model Anja Rubik appear, one of the many hypersaturated color photographs with which Alas has impressed the world.

The young Turk was going to be a musician, but adolescence arrived and with it a sudden taste for fashion, models and the surreal images of Helmut Newton: “I remember thinking: 'My God, is this really happening?'

At that time she did not know that the models were acting.

A fascination similar to the one she felt when she landed, when she came of age, in London in the 1990s. A small gallery set up the night before under names like Tracey Emin sprang up at every corner.

Björk's melodies swept through the joints and the night shone with revolutionary figures —Jefferson Hack, Stella McCartney or McQueen— who became Alas' “party friends”.

One of those nights, Mert met Marcus.

Shortly after, they moved to a

loft

in Soho —which today is her studio—, where they began to organize spontaneous photo sessions, photographing themselves and their friends, sometimes with clothes on, in many cases naked.

One day, a colleague asked them to publish in his magazine,

Dazed and Confused

.

That cover triggered the following ones in magazines like

Vogue

or

Vanity Fair

and advertising campaigns for all the big ones: Versace, Dior, Dolce & Gabbana.

“One morning I woke up and I was a fashion photographer.

The only thing I remember from 1994 to 2004 is shooting with the camera.

The 'Seventy One' gin created by Mert Alas. Manuel Vázquez

Mert & Marcus broke with the minimalism that had characterized fashion photography until then.

“Why not imitate Magritte?

Why can movies be surreal and photos have to be documentaries?

Scenes of strong women, at times dreamlike, at times phantasmagorical, born from a search for the erotic, for the mystical, for knowing “what happens to the character in the dark when everyone goes to bed”, he explains.

Björk in a flooded room or Kate Moss raising a cigarette to the sky.

Faced with the rain of criticism for excessive use of Photoshop, Alas upholds the right to fantasy: "I live reality every day, what I want is to create things with which I can escape."

It is as if at birth Mert Alas was blessed with the responsibility of wonder.

A duty that led him five years ago to deconstruct the concept of gin to elevate it into the unknown.

In the process, he sampled 657 pieces of evidence that he accumulates in his house as “history” and took several “impossibles” from his team: “Every time I listened to it, I got more excited.

The point of view of my gin is the same as that of my photography: never settle for less ”, ditch.

The result is Seventy One, a gin in which each element has been distilled separately, like a perfume, and which rests for 71 nights in a mixture of virgin European oak barrels, previously with Pedro Ximénez and cognac.

The different woods catapult a whirlwind of vanilla, dark chocolate, pear and honey.

Mert Alas is attracted to the ceremony: dressing in the best clothes, bringing out the special glasses, preparing the ice.

For him, the style is reflected in the way in which the elements are arranged.

His is intimate and nocturnal.

"For me, there is nothing more interesting than listening to someone talking about Oscar Wilde sipping Seventy One, while he listens to a song with a drink in his hands."

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-12-06

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