Our creative process started with a thorough investigation, looking into the perfume and fragrance category, and building a visual audit of modern brands that speak to new generations.
Because Grasse is the fragrance capital of the world, we had to make sure that we truly understood the city’s heritage by going beyond the spirits industry and diving into the unique world of perfumery.
Based on our key findings, we were able to define the brand essence. We then built our three founding pillars that translated our brand values: Heritage, Grace, and No Fear, a tribute to the Grasse, to elegance and the innovative spirit of the founders.
Once we were grounded in knowledge, we started our design discovery, looking for experiences that embody the beauty of the place and its most inspiring time. With contemporary art deeply rooted in the region, we looked at iconic architecture, particularly at the Maeght Foundation.
The Foundation is an avant-garde exhibition space inspired by the French Riviera’s grace and style; integrating geometry and clean form with beautiful interior design that makes us lose track of time. This inspired our toolkit to play with different ways of translating this experience into an original visual language. The essence of the future brand lays in a place of collaboration, at the intersection of city and nature, but also a place where artists could easily escape.
We had the ambition to move ahead of the trends and create a design that will go beyond the expected codes of the category. We had to bend the rules and create an authentic lifestyle product, a modern icon that confused the genre and creates a powerful emotion at first sight; a sensorial, visual and tactile translation of the place, time and culture of Comte de Grasse Gin.
For us, building the best brand experience relied on honoring the city’s rich history and unique heritage as the fragrance capital of the world. For our aesthetic inspiration, we looked at the Mediterranean’s grace, both delicate and conveying deep emotion. Finally, we believed that the brand stood on daring ground—crossing paths between the old and the new while blending traditional beauty codes with innovative techniques.
The New Realism artist Yves Klein said: “Blue has no dimensions; it is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colors are not.”
This inspired us. All colors arouse specific associative ideas, while blue suggests at most the sea and sky, and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract.
At the same time, we were fascinated with the sensory experience of the sea – the depths of intensely blue water, the crisp breeze, radiant sunshine, and how it plays on the waves. We wanted to create a simple and stunning design that speaks to these experiences in an immersive way without being too literal.
Pierre Delebois, Executive Creative Director.
