“Travel broadens the mind” is probably one of the most often-used sayings in the English language. There’s no doubt that surrounding yourself with new cultures, new locations, and even new cuisines is something that is guaranteed to have a lasting impression. These experiences shape who we are, and the ripples stay within us for the rest of our lives. Now, travel comes at a cost, and certain locations aren’t always available to everyone, but that’s where the magic of fragrance can help. By conjuring a place, the wearer can go some way to imagining how it feels to visit, and Gallivant are promising just that with their new Nida perfume.
Experiencing the sights, sounds, and smells of an unknown country is one of the things that I love so much about travelling. Being in a totally unknown environment, and veering away from the tourist route, always creates incredible memories. With restrictions still in place on which countries we can visit, it’s thanks to ingenious perfumers and visionary creative directors that we can be transported instead through scent. Step forward Nick Steward, who is continuing his anthology of inspirational cities with the release of his latest Gallivant fragrance. So, grab your passport because we’re about to discover the magic of Bukhara.
Summer sees many people jetting off for their holidays and often means that they end up exploring a new country or city. This idea that “travel broadens the mind” is one that many perfume companies have tried to replicate with numerous travel themed fragrances, but it has often proved problematic for those that have attempted it. A person’s impression of a location is, for want of a better word, “personal” and so appealing to a wide audience can be difficult. One company that have excelled at this concept though is Gallivant and their new fragrance, Los Angeles, demonstrates the perfect balance between the impression and the reality.
We live our lives through a mist of preconceived ideas about everything from music to fashion and places to people, but just recently I was stopped in my tracks because of my own preconceptions about a fragrance. I had imagined that Tokyo by Gallivant would be just another cherry blossom inspired floral that once again celebrated this delicate petal. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Tokyo, the latest release from the company, recreates the early morning in the city and mixes nature with neon and tanginess with tranquillity. The new addition to the collection fits perfectly into the style, although its individuality cannot be ignored.
Inspiration comes from many sources but our memories can provide some of the most unusual and exciting. There is something about the way our brains store information about a place or a situation that can result in quite an abstract recollection, and it's this that Nick Steward has used to create the debut range from Gallivant, his own perfume company. After a career spent working for some of the industry's top perfume brands, Nick felt that the time was right to branch out on his own. So, let's take a closer look at London, one of his first four fragrances, which is far more than just Earl Grey and sandwiches.
It takes guts to start a new independent perfume company these days, but that is exactly what Nick Steward has done. After nineteen years working in the fragrance industry he has taken the plunge and launched Gallivant with a beautiful range of scents designed for “the traveller in us all”. So, let’s find out a little bit more about the man behind the passport as he answers “Stephan’s Six”.
The niche sector of the perfume market is an ever-growing one with new companies seemingly popping up at a rate of knots. Some of them are excellent; some of them miss the mark. Some are created by perfumers; some are envisaged by creative directors. Whichever way they come to market the most important thing is that the product is of an exceptional quality, otherwise they just get lost amongst a sea of Google search results. Enter Nick Steward and his company Gallivant. No stranger to the perfume industry, and with an approachable nature that is refreshing, I met up with him to find out more about Gallivant.
