Words: Joseph Bullmore
Our good friends at Chopard are no strangers to rarity and excellence. So perhaps it’s to be expected that their latest haute perfumerie collection is inspired by some of the rarest and finest ingredients in the world, and has been executed with characteristic authenticity and passion.
Gardens of the Kings, a remarkable new curation of four masculine fragrances, is centered around oud — the dark, mysterious, aromatic oil made from the agarwood tree. The oud in question, moreover, is oud assafi — the most precious material in all of perfume making, with a value far exceeding that of gold. Every spritz of the Gardens of the Kings, then, is a spritz of utter decadence and refinement — and a timely evocation of nature’s ancient riches.
Karl-Friedrich Scheufele and Chopard Parfum CEO Patrizio Stella
The fragrances themselves have been crafted by master perfumer Alberto Morillas, with his alchemical blend of the artistic and the scientific. “A formula is like a well-written sentence,” he says. “There are thousands of beautiful words from which to choose, but what makes it impactful is the emotion with which they are brought together.”
The emotions evoked by these new fragrances are intertwined with their international provenance. Agar Royal is inspired by the radiant splendor of the Maharajahs of India; Aigle Imperial recalls the sophistication and mystery of the Far East; Nuit des Roise is evocative of the magnificence of the Princes of Arabia; Or de Calambac conjures up the seducers of Latin America.
At the launch event on Tuesday, on the rooftop at the Martinez hotel in the thick of the Festival de Cannes, the emphasis was on nature and sustainability. Indian actress Sonam Kapoor Ahuja spoke movingly of the importance of being kind to our planet, while Chopard Parfum CEO Patrizio Stella told the remarkable story of the Jalali Agarwood procured responsibly from Bangladesh.
Patrizio Stella, Michael Christopher Brown, Karl-Friedrich Scheufele and Sonam Kapoor Ahuja
All the ingredients in these remarkable fragrances have been sourced with care and passion for sustainable production. “We inherited this Earth and this Nature,” says Chopard’s co-president Caroline Scheufele. “We feel deeply responsible for taking care of them for future generations.” That ethos, of beauty in stewardship and decadence in nature, is distilled into every drop of the Gardens of the Kings — a collection, in every sense, for the ages.
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