While lockdown may have halted our summer plans, we can still indulge ourselves with a little fantasy escapism. And Loewe’s recently released collaboration with Paula’s Ibiza may just be what we’ve been looking for.
The Spanish fashion house launched its fourth edition of the collection this spring, a collection characterised by kaleidoscopic patterns taken from the brand’s archive and so much more, a journey into the wild rave culture of the island.
This season, however, creative director Jonathan Anderson, in collaboration with his master perfumer Nuria Cruelles, also launched for the very first time a companion unisex fragrance, inspired by summers spent on the island.
Cruelles joined from IFF, where she learnt the profession of the perfume master, right after school. After that, she moved abroad and worked to develop accords and scents used in plenty of cosmetics all over the world. It was only then that LOEWE called for the creative position she is in now.
“Being able to create the perfumes working closely with Jonathan Anderson and recreate feelings, concepts and the entire LOEWE universe into scents… it’s a creative work that surprises me and challenges me every day. I have succeeded in making my passion for perfumes into my style of life,” says Cruelles.
She has now been at the Spanish fashion house for the past year and a half, working on a series of exciting creative projects merging the house’s history with its love for art and nature.
As Anderson was set on the idea of recreating the irreverent and bohemian spirit of the Mediterranean island into a fragrance, for this new scent, Cruelles recalls she looked back to Anderson’s previous experiences in Ibiza during his childhood as well as using her memories of her adolescent summers there, merging all of the sensations and moments of the endless summer nights of Ibiza into a flask full of colours.
The result was a fragrance that touched upon each part of the island: from the beach to the countryside to the greener inland.
“We used the Coconut Water and green galbanum to recreate the feeling of a sun-touched skin and bring you the smell of the beach. The tangerine oil, also on the top notes of the fragrance, makes you think about the sunsets of the Mediterranean Sea bathed with citrus trees and awakes you for the very first moment when smelling it. It’s a kind of a spark note. Then, the countryside is represented with the Sand Lilly whereas the bohemian and more spiritual side of the island is translated into the fragrance by the use of patchouli,” Cruelles explains.
The partnership between Cruelles and Anderson was so successful the perfect result came along only after six tests, and she concurs “it was, in fact, the 3rd scent the one we felt was the perfect recreation of Ibiza as a whole.”
