Veronique Gabai Fragrance & Jewellery Workshop

Veronique Gabai-Pinsky has worked for some of the world’s biggest beauty brands such as Estée Lauder Companies and launched cult scents such as DKNY’s Be Delicious and Guerlain’s iconic Aqua Allegoria. 

This “moment” is the launch of Veronique Gabai, her eponymous brand. As a luxury fragrance-led jewellery, body and beauty brand, it is something of a hybrid, and the debut collection (which landed in 2019) can already be found gracing the finest beauty halls around the globe.

“Even though it took me a long time to jump into what I felt was my destiny, it was always there, from a very young age,” says Veronique. She describes her younger self as someone who, even when working as “the junior of the juniors”, tried to have the “mentality of the owner of a company thinking of the bigger picture.” Punchy, but it makes sense. She is polished, articulate, smells delicious (of course) and brims with enthusiasm and knowledge of both her product and the market in which it sits.

In a world increasingly focused on sustainability, Veronique is aware of the perceived frivolity of the beauty and fashion industry and offers a clear vision about what her brand can offer the consumer. “Nobody needs another lipstick, nobody needs another fragrance and nobody needs another white t-shirt. All we’re trying to do is bring things that are worthy of attention to the world.”

The collection certainly warrants this attention. It features nine signature fragrances, along with two “booster scents”, which can be layered with others or worn alone. She sees this as a way to enable each customer to find their signature—and adapt it for mood or occasion.

The names are memorable. There’s Sexy Garrigue, named after the sensual smells that emanate from Garrigue (a forest on the hills of the Mediterranean coast) and Lumière d’Iris, which sits somewhere between masculine wood and feminine flower. And are these uniquely named scents unisex? “They’re not even really marketed, they’re just ‘there’. Who’s to say that men cannot wear a flower fragrance, and that a woman cannot wear wood?” When Veronique and her team developed the fragrances, she didn’t have a specific gender in mind; instead, they thought in terms of how it would make the wearer feel. “Personality before perfection, and style before fashion,” says Veronique. Her view is simple: if you like it, buy it. If you don’t, don’t.

The scents are inspired by Veronique’s childhood home of the Cote D’Azur and the lifestyle there, which is anchored in nature, culture and glamour. Produced in a forest-based factory in the South of France, the fragrances are made of the highest quality raw materials, a testament to Veronique’s deep rooted expertise in the fragrance industry. “As an expert, I am going to give you beautiful things, and they are better than most,” she says decisively. And we believe her.

What about the brand’s take on being sustainable? The bottles and pendants have been designed and made as refillable objets d’art. Soon to come is the bigger, recyclable 125ml refill bottle. Veronique designed jewellery as a hobby, and wanted to marry this with fragrance—the pendants are beautiful pieces of jewellery in their own right.

As well as these scents and the beautifully designed fragrance pendants, there are candles, body cream, face oil and even a highlighter—and this is just the start.

“The idea of the brand is to help people escape for a minute, to be transported somewhere else,” she says. The scents are marketed as “sunshine for the senses and for the soul”, which enhance rather than mask. After all, Veronique smiles, “we are not imposing on you a look, we are simply giving you the tools.”

Veronique Gabai