The creative process behind the scent
FEATURING FOUNDER FRANCES SHOEMACK, AND MASTER PERFUMER ISAAC SINCLAIR
In conversation with Amy Smilovic
Amy Smilovic is one of those rare founders whose company and personality are indistinguishable, you can't separate Tibi's point of view from Amy's and it is, I think, what makes them both so compelling. We've admired Amy as a businesswoman and as a creative for years, long before we started talking about doing this together. Ahead of the Tibi fragrance launch, Frances sat down with Amy to talk about the customer she built Tibi for, what she wanted this scent to say, and what thirty years of Creative Pragmatism smells like.
Our role in this collaboration was to take Tibi's positioning and bring it into fragrance. We were clear on what that meant visually, but what does it mean in scent? For us, that meant translating the positioning into raw materials, not just the overall feeling of the fragrance, but getting it right at a granular, almost cellular level. Frances and Isaac presented Amy with three directions originally, and were thrilled when all three of them agreed on the best approach, a peppery green wood. Fresh and crisp but with a grounded energy to it.
During the creative process, Amy was in NYC, Isaac in Paris, and Frances between Amsterdam and New Zealand. Distance, however, was never really a logistical barrier. Paris became the meeting point, and the international flavour these capitals lent found its way into this modern scent.
Vetiver became the classic ingredient, one that always feels modern despite its history. The chill comes through a yerba mate tea note, grounded and resonant. The modernity comes from an orange molecule, a biotech aldehyde that points to where natural science is heading. When the two came together, we knew we'd got the scent right.
One of the things Frances and Amy have in common is how hands on they are as business leaders, how much they drove the project from start to finish. With them involved at that level, and with a perfumer they had such trust in, the work was instinctive. That became the real power of this collaboration, the ability to riff off each other's creativity, make quick decisions, act fast, trust instincts. Having three creatives in the process meant the fragrance was pulled in directions that one or two alone couldn't have achieved. Three creatives, making a fragrance that balances chill, modern and classic.
