As I stepped foot into the prestigious Yacht Club at the Bvlgari Resort in Dubai, I was greeted by the scorching yet beautiful Arabian sun and a divine brunch set-up fit for an empress. Funnily enough, it was a Byzantine Empress known as Empress Theodora — a Bvlgari woman of her time, who was the inspiration behind Bvlgari’s latest release of fragrances, the Le Gemme Reali trilogy.
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Beautifully crafted by master perfumer Alberto Morillas, Le Gemme Reali encompasses three rich Eaux de Parfums inspired by Empress Theodora’s love for colourful jewels: sapphire blue for Nylaia, emerald green for Veridia, ruby red for Rubinia. Each fragrance is bottled up in a black glass amphorae bottle and topped with a corresponding precious gem cabochon. As a nod to the Maison’s Roman heritage, each lid is adorned with a gold, eight-pointed star taken from the architecture of the Piazza del Campidoglio in the Italian capital, bringing the worlds of high jewellery and fragrances together.
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Known as one of the most famous ‘noses’ in the world, Morillas is the man behind a few of the most iconic scents in the world including Bvlgari Omnia and Bvlgari Godea and his take on Bvlgari Le Gemme Reali is that “fragrances as jewels, set as stones. I constructed this trilogy around the sapphire, emerald and ruby, inspired by the way Bulgari cuts and polishes them.”
Nylaia
A warm and floral scent that pays tribute to the land of Kashmir, home to the stunning sapphires is the most noble and sacred gemstones, sapphires symbolize power, radiance and inner strength. It carries the scent of blue iris and jasmine sambac combined with ambergris and white musk accords.
“In Nylaia, I have brought a deeply serene yet tactile warmth to the floral emotion of the iris, with benzoin tears combined with ambergris and white musk accords, a complexity that echoes the many facets of sapphire with its subtle blue.” — Alberto Morillas, Master Perfumer
Nylaia fragrance
