PARIS — Nothing is ever as it seems at Vaquera, the iconoclastic fashion brand — including, now, perfume.

Vaquera’s designers Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee are launching their first fragrance, called Classique Perdu, in collaboration with Comme des Garçons Parfums. 

The design duo has been part of the brand development division at Dover Street Market, the brainchild of Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe, chief executive officer of Comme des Garçons International. 

“We always look at Comme as a business muse, because they’re so uncompromising with their creativity, but also such amazing businesspeople,” DiCaprio said. When he and Taubensee expressed interest to Joffe for Vaquera to create a scent, the answer was yes.

“It was sort of like a dream-come-true situation,” DiCaprio said.

“We’ve been talking about wanting to do a perfume for almost as long as we’ve been around,” continued Taubensee, adding she and DiCaprio always look to expand into different product categories. “Perfume is perfect for the customer who wants to buy into the brand but can’t get the more statement pieces.”

Joffe has worked with them for years, starting with a show at Dover Street New York. “Even before, I was following them,” he said. “They were friends of friends and did some street shows. I just thought they have this amazing vision about who they are and [are] very iconoclastic. They were just great people.”

The new fragrance, whose name translates into “Lost Classic,” is meant to be like a perfume one once knew, then forgot, then stumbled upon again hidden on a clearance product shelf. All this has to do with nostalgia.

“It is the main thing that’s tying everything together with this perfume, from the packaging to the smell,” DiCaprio said.

“It’s bringing nostalgia into the present,” Joffe said. “This is what I think their work is about, as well.”

He mused: “What is memory? Is it just the past? Or can you have a memory of a future?”

The design duo gave Comme des Garçons Parfums’ creative director Christian Astuguevieille a plethora of things they wanted their scent to smell like. Vials of trials went back and forth. DiCaprio said it was fun.

“One of the main things we were inspired by is phantom odors and odors that you smell just on the street or randomly, and you’re like: ‘Oh, that smells so much like something that I know, that I remember from my past,’ and it feels like you’re really transported to that moment when you smell it, but you can’t identify exactly what it was,” said Taubensee, explaining such scents tend to be pungent.

Classique Perdu’s olfactive inspiration came from peel-off perfume ads from ’90s fashion magazines, the odor of freshly dried hair post-shower, one’s childhood car’s air conditioning and the metal of a summer water fountain. 

Astuguevieille and Symrise perfumer Suzy Le Helley developed an aromatic, floral green perfume. It contains top notes including lavandin, tomato leaf, a permanent marker accord and blackcurrant berries Symtrap. The heart has notes of clary sage, iris and solar rose, while the base comprises styrax resin, sandalwood, evernyl notes and a suede accord.

Classique Perdu’s packaging is quirky, too: The travel-size bottle is plastered with clearance stickers and comes housed in a transparent plastic box full of packaging peanuts.

“One thing Bryn and I have in common majorly is our love for the thrift store and buying things secondhand and on clearance,” DiCaprio said. “Discovering things that were once lost, or making something old feel new again.”

A 30-ml. bottle of Classique Perdu will retail for 75 euros. It is due out from Tuesday at Comme des Garçons Paris, Dover Street Market Paris and London, and Dover Street Parfums Market in Paris. After, starting at the end of October, the fragrance will be available at all Comme des Garçons, Dover Street Markets and Pocket shops around the world.