Once upon a time, it was not uncommon for women’s magazine mastheads to be filled with names, each department staffed by a constellation of editors. To produce the pages of their designated sections (e.g., fashion, travel, lifestyle, food), a typical team consisted of a director, a senior editor, an associate, and multiple assistants.

At some publications, the beauty editor and the jewelry editor were one and the same. I’m not sure why. Maybe the accessories department was busy calling in shoes, belts, and handbags (on top of the occasional Napier bangle), and the business of covering fine jewelry was complex enough to mandate having its own editorial mistress, especially when it came to attending trade shows and market appointments.

It could be that many prestige beauty brands—think Givenchy and Lancôme—often had advertising budgets comparable to those of fine jewelry houses like H. Stern and David Yurman, enabling magazine publishers to group them under a broader luxury sales category and pursue them as a unified set of accounts.

Or maybe curating product for, and weaving stories around, beauty and jewelry required a similar mix of skills: a refined eye for design and detail; command of unique, industry-specific vocabularies; the ability to simplify abstruse research and development processes, systems (like the 4Cs), and fabrication techniques; and last but not least, a knack for writing evocative descriptions of color, texture, and shine. Over and over and over again.

I’ve been pondering the relationship between jewels and beauty products ever since a dispatch about jewelry designer Briony Raymond’s new signature fragrance popped up in my inbox.

A branded fragrance fits in naturally with the luxury brand Raymond has been steadily building. After she spent nearly a decade at Van Cleef & Arpels, the New York–based jeweler established her namesake atelier in 2015, shaping her collection around a mix of curated vintage pieces from all the big jewelry houses and her own creations. Today, Raymond’s use of exceptional gemstones in designs that borrow from the traditions of the finest French and Italian craftsmanship have attracted an enthusiastic celebrity following.

The designer says she also has a personal connection to the fragrance category. When she was a child, she often played with the perfume bottles on her mother’s dressing table (as one does; for me, it was my mom’s Halston, L’Air du Temps, and—my favorite—the ambery Shalimar, in its wildly glamorous urn-shaped flacon). And when one of the perfume bottles was empty, Raymond would gather lily-of-the-valley blossoms from the garden, mix them with oil and water, and decant it all in the bottle, convinced she’d crafted perfume of her own.

Using the same sense of wonder, Raymond has developed a scent for her brand in collaboration with a master perfumer based in Grasse, a town in the Provence region of France that is known as the “perfume capital of the world.”

As with jewelry, the appeal of a fragrance hinges on personal preference—but color me intrigued. I’ve covered the beauty category enough to know that white florals are exceptionally sensual, familiar yet transporting scents, the epitome of classic femininity. Raymond’s eau de parfum combines a bouquet of jasmine, tuberose, neroli, and orange flower with the warm, creamy notes of honey, sandalwood, and cedar. Spritz it on, and something bright and nostalgic bursts forth while velvety frankincense delivers an ineffable—but distinctive—undercurrent of “expensive.”

From every note in the perfume’s pyramid to the refined details of the vessel containing it, each component was considered with the same rigor and intention that Raymond brings to her jewelry designs and curations.

The bottle is dressing table-ready, of course, with aesthetics that complement both the impact of the scent and Raymond’s creative sensibility. Made of cobalt blue fluted glass, it draws inspiration from a set of antique crystal jars that Raymond’s mother gave her as a gift and that now serve as decor in her Madison Avenue atelier.

The bottle’s monogrammed gold cap mirrors the silhouette of Raymond’s iconic Sloan ring and its satiny, weighty feel.

And hello, holiday gift! While they may prefer gold, platinum, and diamonds, jewelry lovers find all manner of shiny, faceted objects alluring—because we can see, and appreciate, so many other things as jewel-like. And that’s a beautiful thing.

Top: Briony Raymond’s new eau de parfum ($685) combines classic white florals with warm, creamy notes of honey, sandalwood, and cedarwood, luxurious cashmeran, and velvety frankincense. 

Follow me on Instagram: @aelliott718

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