An unprecedently hot May, a warehouse-turned-apartment-turned-studio and talk of sand, fire and flames. Stifling may come to mind, but the combination of jewellery designer Gala Colivet Dennison, perfumer Philippe Paparella and the redolence of saffron and patchouli is turning any discomfort into sensory melting pot. The two creatives are here to talk Rose Dunes – an opulent, spicy, sophisticated fragrance, masterminded by Paparella – and Colivet Dennison’s interpretation of it via her unique practice. Atmospherically, sensorially and creatively, it’s all rather perfect.
“There's a big nostalgia within fragrance for me. It always transports me into a time that I can think about as soon as I put something on. I wear it as an accessory,” the Vogue one-to-watch says as we sit down in her boyfriend’s friend’s studio, borrowed for today to house a selection of her jewellery and meaningful trinkets for the shoot. Originally a sculptor before turning to jewellery design, Colivet Dennison spent her formative years in France with her antique dealer parents, which not only had a big impact on her work – a marriage of tough metalwork with richly colored natural stones – but also her relationship with scent. “Growing up in France, a lot of women would wear a lot of powerful, strong-scented perfumes,” she recalls. “There were a lot of vanilla scents in banks and things, which I remember really vividly. So I've always been drawn to something very rich and powerful. I really feel that with this perfume.”
IN CONVERSATION WITH
Gala Colivet Dennison
What I like about using metals is that there are boundaries within it. The metal will tell you when it’s had enough. You’re working with something that’s quite alive.
GALA COLIVET DENNISON
JEWELLERY DESIGNER
Rose Dunes is certainly something. Crafted by Senior Perfumer Philippe Paparella, its notes of saffron, rose, patchouli Sulawesi and Oudh accord are a direct translation of Paparella’s own familial memories of his grandma’s desert rose, and experiences and travels in the Middle East. “My grandma lived in Algeria for some years. And when she moved back to France, she had this crystal,” he explains. “I love the story about how it was formed and where it comes from. It’s a mix of sand with selenite, that forms in the desert with the heat and the wind and the rain. It’s really beautiful and it captures the color of the desert.” When he moved to Dubai, Paparella immediately sought out those same conditions that form the desert rose. “Just to imagine how it was created was what nourished my imagination when I created the fragrance.”
And so, heat, sand – and of course, fire and flames. Colivet Dennison describes her craft as “a very physical process. It can be physically quite painful. But when I'm soldering – which is when the flames come into it – it's kind of the last element to bind it together. So there's something weirdly quite meditative about that.” The physicality of her craft lends itself perfectly to an intuitive interpretation of the scent – which is exactly what she has created. “It was mainly a visceral response to how Philippe was describing the scent and how he made it, and the elements of saffron and sand and fire and heat. And all these things that I thought definitely have elements in my work.” And how would she describe her work? “It's kind of open for interpretation. But there are different elements of me that kind of evolve in time, and different techniques that I'm sure come as my personality evolves. It's kind of always shedding a little piece of myself.”
IN CONVERSATION WITH GALA COLIVET DENNISON AND PHILIPPE PAPARELLA
ON IMAGINING THE FRAGRANCE
Gala Colivet Dennison: I think there is an element of mystery to [Rose Dunes], which is really intriguing, and it made me really have to think about the response. Because it doesn’t give you everything straight away. It’s powerful, but it really does develop along the way. The more I wore it, the different things I kind of gathered from it.
I know Rose Dunes was a response to the rose crystal that grows in the desert. That it had a life of its own and it would re-shed its layers and keep evolving. The piece I made was a sort of visceral response. I wanted to encapsulate the landscape. I was thinking about incorporating different stones and I came across acid-etched agate and different types of bone, which kind of paralleled with the idea of the desert. I also wanted to incorporate a weaving process. There's a kind of infinity to the woven technique, which paralleled with the sand and the infinity of the desert.
ON ROSE DUNES
Gala: It’s really powerful at first. It reminds me of my mum a lot. She would wear very powerful, musky, genderless scents. But they lingered. I get that with this, it starts off with quite a powerful saffron smell, also patchouli, maybe?
Philippe Paparella: There is a chypre structure behind the scent. We had this idea of association between rose and saffron. And that’s what gives the power with all those spices on top when you first spray it.
Gala: It’s also quite layered, isn’t it?
Philippe: It has a lot of layers in the structure. It’s not a linear fragrance – it tells a story. You have a lot of spices, very bright on top, and when it evolves you discover the floral bouquet and then the wood. And it’s very rich in terms of woody notes.
Gala: I noticed the longer I had it on, the woodier and muskier it got. But that saffron doesn’t go away, which I really like about it. And what does this remind you of when you smell it?
Philippe: First when I grew up, my grandma had a rose crystal [desert rose], and it doesn’t smell of course, but I really love the texture and the color. And when I moved to Dubai and I went to the desert, I really experienced the heat and the colors. This saffron color of the sand at a certain time of the day. And it reminded me of the one my grandma had. The idea for the fragrance was really to have this dry heat, to construct the rose-saffron accord. It’s very poly-sensorial. There is the color, there is the sensation of the heat.
ON MEMORY AND SCENT
Gala: There's a big nostalgia within fragrance for me. It always transcends me or transports me into a time that I can think about as soon as I put something on. I wear it as an accessory.
The early memories I have of jewellery, and scent, is how my mum would embody it. It’s very over the top, very grand, but there’s a delicacy to it. The jewellery was always very oversized, the smells were very powerful, but it kind of had a masculinity to it. There was a subtlety in the way that she would wear it, and I feel this really parallels that.
Philippe: I have something similar with my family, because my grandmother and my mother were wearing quite powerful fragrances. I think my earliest memories and my passion is probably coming from that as well.
Gala: What was your earliest memory of perfume?
Philippe: It’s really the scent of my mum when she was bringing me to bed at night, coming back from work. You could still smell the musky side of the fragrance, and that’s something that I really like. And the way that I came to perfumery was probably because of my grandma. She was kind of my partner in crime. She would buy me essential oils. I found some recipes of cologne that I wanted to do, so she tried to source all the essential oils. I was about 10 or 12. It’s how I started to really enjoy mixing scents.
Gala: So you were concocting it together?
Philippe: Yes, she was really the one who could source, because I was too young to buy. And we were making it together and counting the drops.
Gala: Does this remind you of her?
Philippe: Yeah. Everything that I do basically, it’s because of my grandma and my mother really supporting me in that journey.
ON BOUNDARIES & INTUITION
Gala: What I like about using metals is that there are boundaries within it. The metal will tell you when it’s had enough. You have to be very careful, and you’re working with something that’s quite alive. What’s it like with perfume?
Philippe: It’s a bit the same, because you are limited in the amount of powders, for example, that you put in a fragrance. Otherwise it won’t be soluble anymore. Sometimes you imagine something, but the reality is you cannot go any further, so we have some physical limits as well.
Gala: When I’ve tried to push too hard, or I’ve got a bit cocky, thinking I can go further with the material, it will bend in a horrible way. You kind of only get one shot with it. So that’s something I’ve learned with silver, that it will tell you when it’s had enough, and there are boundaries. I think it’s nice that you have to use your intuition and be confident in the first work.
Philippe: For the creation of Rose Dunes, it was easy at the beginning, because I had a very clear idea of that rose-saffron accord. What was difficult is when we worked on the Eau de Parfum, to really bring all the layers that we wanted.
Gala: I can imagine that’s also very hard, because that’s something that lasts and is layered, and has similar different intensities along the way. So sometimes less is more as well?
Philippe: Exactly. It’s a fine line between too much and not enough. Sometimes you do a fragrance and the beginning was good, you try to go further and it’s not going the way you want. So you go back, you remove a lot of things, and you try to add them again in a different order, different quantities, or you take something out.
Gala: A lot of the time I have to be careful if I’ve overworked a piece, if I’ve scarred it, if I’ve put too much heat on it. Sometimes you get fire stains, and I have to check in on the process along the way to make sure that the piece is OK. And if it isn’t, I melt it down, and I’ll start again.
ON GENDERLESSNESS IN THEIR WORK
Gala: My mum would always wear quite elegant jewellery, but it was very oversized. There was always this parallel with masculine and feminine, aggression and tenderness. So the tenderness I always find mostly in the stones and then the architectural, aggressive elements come from the metals. And so I try to work with both.
There is an element of mystery that I’m drawn to with my work. I think it’s about an essence of subtlety, so something quite powerful, but not too overbearing. Something a little bit intriguing – genderless.
Philippe: For me, it’s a bit the same. I like fragrances to be genderless – even if I work on a feminine fragrance, there is always a masculine element. At least through the wood and the spices. And the scents that are more masculine, I like sometimes to add quite a floral note or a bit of gourmandise. I think I like to see fragrances as more genderless.
Gala: I like that [Rose Dunes] doesn’t feel overly feminine, it’s really nice. There are different tones. It’s kind of a mutual genderless smell, and it really evolves. I love it.
Philippe: That’s the way I work. I really like when the fragrances are masculine-feminine. So here you have a lot of flowers, but also spices as well. So it’s neither masculine nor feminine.