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For whimsical, geometry-inspired party-wear, fashion girls turn to Cult Gaia. The brand is known for its abstract, architectural clothing and accessories: Think an iridescent clutch in the shape of a shark eye seashell, a dress made of hundreds of threads of flaxen fringe, and anything-but-boring swimsuits peppered with metallic accents. Now, it’s venturing into the beauty world with three show-stopping fragrances.
Jasmin Larian Hekmat, Cult Gaia’s founder and designer, wanted the scents, like her designs, to marry opposing ideas by mixing grounding elements like woods and earthy resins with airy botanicals. Each scent is named after a Farsi word to pay homage to Hekmat’s Iranian heritage. The first scent, Noor, named for the Farsi word for light, is a fresh, peppery rose perfume with a hint of incense. Zan is the Farsi word for woman, and it smells like a whiff of cardamom straight from the spice jar, with the addition of ambrox and musk keep it soft. Mast, which means to be drunk with life, is the sweetest of the three and smells like drinking a piña colada on the beach, ripe bergamot, coconut cream, and tonka bean.
Like Cult Gaia’s clothing, the brand’s scents look like something akin to modern art. Each perfume is in a translucent, arc-shaped vessel that resembles colorful sea glass with marble caps (they will be different for every single bottle). The fragrances feel like an encapsulation of Cult Gaia, and of Hekmat herself. Read on to learn more about how Hekmat is inspired by nostalgia and Iranian culture, and why she’s obsessed with arches.
How did the brand decide to get into fragrance?
So much of why I started Cult Gaia is to create things that connect people and anchor memory in a moment. Many people come up to me and say, “I’ll never forget when I wore this Cult Gaia piece.” I have a terrible memory. If I don’t have a picture of [something], I forget. But the one thing that anchors me, aside from what I or someone else was wearing, is scent. [Scent] is the thing that ties me to memory and nostalgia more than anything else—even more than a photograph. I really wanted to make the best possible product out there.
How do these fragrances exist within the brand identity? How are they an extension of Cult Gaia?
Well, not only is the fragrance and bottle an objet d’art, but each scent enhances our ethos. All of the fragrances hold this duality, which I love. It’s like the divine feminine and masculine. [A scent] will have pink pepper with rose, or musk with coconut, something sweet. The word Gaia means chaos. My ethos is built on two opposing forces, or chaos coming together to create something really, really beautiful.
One of the pillars of the Cult Gaia manifesto is that everything is art. How did that philosophy translate into designing the bottles?
I’ve always been inspired by circles. To me, it’s infinity, it’s the Earth, it’s the sun. The sun is also a huge inspiration, because I’m a Leo, and I feel like everything is better when the light hits it. Arches are really important to me. Arches actually have been proven to make people happier. I wanted a [bottle] top that felt uniquely us. Every single cap is different. None will be the same. When I first started, we used to make our acrylic bags, and I would [look at] marble or stone [for inspiration]. I would try to mimic how imperfectly perfect [the marble was].
I really like how all the fragrances are named after Farsi words. How does your heritage play into these scents?
It’s everything. The older I get, the more I appreciate where I came from. The words that we have in Farsi, they’re so [charged that] you can’t [fully] capture what they mean in English. For example, “mast” means so much more than just one word. I was honoring where I come from. These are words I’ve heard my whole life. It felt very familiar and nostalgic.
Do you have any future plans in the world of beauty? Do you think it’ll go beyond scent?
I always feel like there’s a place for Cult Gaia in every category, but I don’t believe in making things just to make them. I don’t think the world needs more product or more things. It’s on my mind, but I’m very intentional about what will come next and how it’s different from [what] exists already.
Cult Gaia Mast Eau de Parfum
Cult Gaia Zan Eau de Parfum
Cult Gaia Noor Eau de Parfum
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Katie Berohn is the Beauty Assistant at Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Day and Prevention magazines, all part of the Hearst Lifestyle Group. She graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder, with a major in journalism and minor in technology, arts, and media, and earned her Master’s Degree at NYU’s Graduate Program of Magazine Journalism. In addition, Katie has held editorial internships at Denver Life Magazine, Yoga Journal, and Cosmopolitan, a digital editorial internship at New York Magazine’s The Cut, a social good fellowship at Mashable, and has freelanced for HelloGiggles. _When she’s not obsessing over the latest skincare launch or continuing her endless search for the perfect shade of red nail polish, Katie can be found in a hot yoga class, trying everything on the menu at New York’s newest restaurant, or hanging out at a trendy wine bar with her friends.