01 WHEN PERFUMERY OF ART MEETS CONTEMPORARY JEWELLERY
More than a bottle, it is a true declaration of love: the love of Guerlain for its mythic Bee Bottle, that celebrates its 170th anniversary. The love of the Guerlain Perfumers for the voluptuous flowers that compose this exclusive eau de parfum, Rêve d’Amour. The love of Nadine Kanso, the Lebanese jewellery designer, for the Arab culture that inspires her. A glittering call to love that sublimes the splendid adornment of Guerlain’s legendary Bee Bottle in 30 unique, numbered and signed pieces.
02 NADINE KANSO, THE ART OF TURNING WORDS INTO JEWELS
Born in Beirut and based in Dubai, Nadine Kanso works both as a photographer and as a jeweller in order to express her passion for Arab culture. In 2006, she created her own jewellery line, “Bil Arabi” (“In Arabic”), drawing her inspiration from the Arabic alphabet to craft jewels in 18-carat gold, embellished with precious or semi-precious stones. Jewels bearing messages, in a style Nadine Kanso herself likes to call “bling-bling”, designed in a decidedly contemporary Middle Eastern spirit in which she hopes that “everyone can find something to relate to, to love and to understand”.
03 A GLITTERING ADORNMENT AS A DECLARATION OF LOVE
Nadine Kanso’s splendid creation for the legendary Bee Bottle is powerfully symbolic, as it embraces both the Middle East’s passionate love for perfume, and one of its most refined creations: calligraphy. Repeated nine times, the word “Love”, calligraphed in Arabic, embraces the bottle like a precious cuff bracelet that glitters with thousands of precious Swarovski crystals that make up the piece, set off by the warmth of gold and the ambery glow of the fragrance.
04 A PIECE DRAWING ON THE MOST EXCEPTIONAL KNOW-HOW OF JEWELLERY
The elegant design of Nadine Kanso was entrusted to a close collaborator of Swarovski’s: a 132-year-old historic French workshop, whose know-how has been passed on over five generations, earning it the “Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant” (“Living Heritage Company”) label. Each of the nine motifs representing the word “Love” is crafted individually. The tin décor is gilded with 24-carat gold, then covered in 1710 crystal-colored Swarovski crystals hand-glued one by one. Each adornment requires over 12 hours of manual labour, which makes each of them a one-off piece.
“I CHOSE THE WORD LOVE TO SHOW THE WORLD THAT WITH LOVE WE CAN DO BEAUTIFUL THINGS.”
Nadine Kanso
05 RÊVE D’AMOUR, A FRAGRANCE EXPRESSING THE ULTIMATE EMOTION
To echo the creative intention of the piece imagined by Nadine Kanso, it is a perfume as potent as the word “love”, as radiant as crystal, as sensuous as the downstrokes and upstrokes of calligraphy, imagined by Guerlain Perfumers. A perfume exclusively dedicated to this exceptional edition, to make it even more precious: Rêve d’Amour. A voluptuous eau de parfum that allies the suaveness and the solar radiance of a white flowers bouquet, with the balmy sensuality of cedarwood, abelmosk and benzoin.
