Before the rain 🌂🌂
Getting lost in this beautiful city is one of the best ways to spend a free day
Slightly obsessed with fragrance
Beautiful light to end our second full day in Florence 👣👣👣👣
You turn a corner and WOW 👀
We are always so grateful when people in business give up their time to teach our students on visits, thank you so much Marcella, you were amazing and the students definitely learnt a lot 💕
Beautifully complex, the art of creating a scent to communicate a person, a brand and even an occasion. @silenocheloni
A place to rest and contemplate; the sofa where a personal client might sit for two hours imparting personal preferences and scent based experience to help master perfumer Sileno Cheloni develop a truly personal bespoke scent. This is personalisation at its most connected, with the doors closed for every meeting this is really just about the individual. What personal experiences have you had that have connected you with a fashion brand??
Students listening intently to the role of olfactory branding today, and hearing that this amazing business worked with Alessandro Michele @Gucci recently to develop scent for a new range of candles. Lots of insight into the process of developing a scent for a brand, and the process of doing the same for a personal client. Time spent understanding the person or the brand is key, often a two hour meeting with a personal client to understand what they love and perhaps not love in terms of scents. Marcella told us that this is often an emotional meeting, where memories linked to smells come flooding back. This reiterated how powerful scent can be in creating meaningful emotional connections. Did you know that smell is one of your most powerful senses? ‘Scent reaches us in ways that elude sight and sound but conjure imagination in all its sensuality, unsealing hidden worlds. A whiff of a once-familiar odor, and memories surge into consciousness on a sea of emotions.’ (Sileno Cheloni)
Students learning about a new concept @silenocheloni where clients can create their own scents
Day two started with a visit to @silenocheloni, a master perfumer and olfactory branding business situated across the bridge from the main square in the artisan district of Florence. Crossing the bridge and moving away from the crowds was actually the perfect way to prepare for this visit as we joined Marcella who gave up her time to talk through why smell is important as part of branding today.
The Gucci store situated below the Gucci Garden Gallerie sells exclusive lines that you cannot acquire anywhere else, and definitely not online. They also sell ‘One of a kind’ pieces, these are single garments where the one for sale in that size is the only one in the world. This level of exclusivity drives a deeper connection, as memories are created around the purchase in the store in the city of Gucci itself. The majority of purchasers in this store are visitors, holidaymakers, so the opportunity to link the purchase with positive emotional connections of a journey are heightened with this retail innovation. Bravo Gucci P.s. there’s a kind of gift shop the other side of the main store selling magazines, notebooks etc allowing even the most budget driven consumer access to something from the brand, and the beautiful bag they provide the products in is well worth the spend 😉
Stunningly beautiful 💕
Archive pieces @gucci Now of course Gucci does not use real fur but this room evoked some discussion on the role of luxury and what it represented in the past. What’s your idea of luxury today?
Brilliant tour of the Gucci Garden
Day one Florence at the Gucci Garden Gallery. The Gucci Garden is a new concept that aims to give the consumer a connection to the brand in the city of its provenance; to learn about Guccis heritage and what it stands for today. We had a fantastic presentation tour there. We learnt that The Gucci Garden Gallerie is not called a museum as this word can put off young people ( bit of a shame but arguably a reality), and that the idea is to communicate the brand using all the senses to develop a greater connection with the consumer, build rapport and relationships. The concept did include some moving image on the walls around beautiful Gucci products, and there was a subtle scent pumped into the room based on the Gucci Garden fragrance, so the experience was all in all great but what really made it was the Gucci representative who was so passionate and knowledgable about the brand. Gucci are clearly paying attention to recruiting people who are invested in the brand, who love it and want to share that passion. This for me was where the biggest impact was made in the whole experience. People are the one part of the business where more impact can be made to differentiate in a crowded market place. What brands do you know where people are at the heart of their strategy?
Heading out for day one adventures, what a lovely group indeed.