At the time of writing this, we are sitting on the plane on our flight home to London from Nice and wanted to share with you a few updates from our trip and another look behind the scent. The Côte d’Azur is certainly not a bad place to have a business meeting with your perfumer! We arrived in Grasse, in the middle of the French countryside, and quickly discovered the average wait time for an Uber is c25 minutes(!) so we had some time to explore the region. It is a beautiful little town, and along with the wider South of France region, is now firmly a key pillar in the establishment of THE 5TH, providing for our fragrance's creation. With that in mind we wanted to capture on film a glimpse of the place that has become very important to us:
When we (eventually) arrived at the factory and sat down with our perfumers, we had a number of breakthroughs. Heading into the meeting we had concerns about whether or not we would be able to eliminate a number of harmful ingredients from the creation process used by our perfumer, without compromising the quality of the scent. However, after emphasising the importance of safety and sustainability for THE 5TH, we were happy to hear that not only do our perfumers adhere strictly to the International Fragrance Association* (IFRA) standards, but also go the extra mile and refuse to use many other currently ‘legally safe’ ingredients in their formulas that raise even the smallest doubt as to potential harm.
Next, we started work on our bottle design. After consulting with our packaging specialist and having looked through hundreds of bottle, cap, pump, and packaging samples, we landed on a cylindrical glass bottle as well as a matte black atomiser. Both of these elements have been selected for their minimal aesthetic yet practical design, since we are currently at work to create a bottle cap that serves as the focal piece of art and intrigue. Anyway, for now that’s all you’re getting as we have to leave some element of surprise for the big launch!
Next, we started work on our bottle design. After consulting with our packaging specialist and having looked through hundreds of bottle, cap, pump, and packaging samples, we landed on a cylindrical glass bottle as well as a matte black atomiser. Both of these elements have been selected for their minimal aesthetic yet practical design, since we are currently at work to create a bottle cap that serves as the focal piece of art and intrigue. Anyway, for now that’s all you’re getting as we have to leave some element of surprise for the big launch!
We left the meeting with so much excitement and optimism that not even another 25 minute Uber wait, which meant we missed our train back into Nice, could bring us down.
(Our use of transport that day was not as seamless as one would have liked!)
One final update for now... the name of our debut fragrance. We spent hours and hours one evening in Nice trying to whittle down about 200 names. FINALLY, at about 3am we decided on the perfect name for our olfactory scent. HOWEVER, in the past it has changed every time we test new samples and variations of our scent, so we don’t want to completely commit to a name before we have the final scent on our wrists and so, for now, we’re keeping this to ourselves. In the meantime, we want to hear from you… do you have a suggestion that could completely throw our current name idea out of the equation?? If you believe you might, please let us know. All we ask is that they are bold, unique and unexpected.
See you on THE 5TH.
H & G