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."
Rubinia
The Rubinia fragrance was the hardest scent to create and match up to the precious gemstone, ruby. The intense and passionate heart of the ruby pulsates with intensity in Rubinia, an oriental amber Eau de Parfum. A scent that my be more favourable to the Middle Eastern market as the presence of the Sicilian mandarin brings out the boldness of the sandalwood, tonka beans and copaiba tones.
“For Rubinia, I imagined glowing sandalwood, immersed in an amber bath as if to calm, in vain, the ardor it provokes. The incandescent glow of Sicilian mandarin exalts the senses with sparkling freshness. Its enveloping heat is multiplied tenfold by notes of copaïba wood. Tonka bean elevates the fragrance’s addictiveness to its height” —Alberto Morillas, Master Perfumer
Rubinia fragrance
