Altra World Building: The Creative Process

Every Altra creation emerges from a dynamic creative process.

Each scent is a journey of creation that is as distinctive as their creator, Beckielou Brown, who takes a unique approach to transmute raw natural ingredients into evocative fragrances. The way each scent comes into existence is a reflection of Altra’s artistic spirit that celebrates creative expression through contrasting mediums.

THE PROCESS 

Altra’s scent-making process is one that creates worlds beyond fragrance. Each scent composition evolves and unfolds from a story that is uniquely its own. ​​The initial seed of inspiration can be found in everything from the emotions that a memory evokes, to an obsession with a particular raw ingredient that Beckielou has become fixated with, sparking new ideas and catalysing the concept for a fragrance.

“I take a very fluid, intuitive approach to creating a new scent,” she explains. “A fragrance may start with one idea, but as I embark on the creation process, new ideas come in. The natural materials may guide me and take me down a new path, or there may be a hidden facet that reveals itself as I become more intimately involved with the materials I work with. I don’t have a rigid brief that I need to achieve - it’s a process, a journey each time, which allows the story to unfold.”

As the initial idea for a scent blooms, Beckielou’s creative process takes her in many different [and sometimes unexpected] directions, expanding the invisible contours of the composition. Her method is boundless yet also highly visual, tuning into the inspiration that textures, colours, photographic styles, architectural spaces, and cultural references provide. Gradually, as a mood board of images emerges, the fragrance sharpens into focus. “As the scent grows and becomes more distinct, the visual references become more apparent. I can easily look at an image and know which scent it represents for me,” shares Beckielou.

FUTURE NATURE

Altra’s creative approach is artistic in spirit and innovative in its method. Its brand imagery, too, embraces a cutting-edge vision that looks beyond the classic representations of nature often favoured by the industry. Rather, Altra pursues a Future Nature aesthetic - abstract representations of the natural world that are continuously reinterpreted through symbiotic relationships with other creatives. Reflecting Altra’s collaborative soul, the Future Nature vision shows how an initial idea for a scent can ripple out across different media to create scentscapes that portray an intangible feeling, all while revealing the inner worlds of Beckielou’s imagination.

“When solidifying something as evocative and dream-like as a scent into an image, the visuals must accurately represent the scent so that the viewer is immersed into an experience where they ‘feel’ what the scent would smell like. This is one of the most powerful and fascinating abilities of perfumery, to evoke emotion and transport the wearer, so the process of first transmuting a feeling or a concept into a scented medium, then the scented medium into a visual, to finally evoke the desired feeling in a viewer without them even [physically] experiencing the scent - that is a beautiful challenge,” explains Beckielou.

“When we launched Altra, I had a really strong desire to create more than just a line of scents. For me, it was about offering multi-sensory experiences; about telling stories with scent that are heightened through the tactility of the bottles and packaging while immersing you in the Altra universe through mesmerising visuals. I knew that to do this, we’d need to adopt a totally new approach, one that no other perfume brand was using - it made sense with the world-building that we were creating for each scent that we should connect with the emerging world of GCI art to build on this and to extend the otherworldly, futuristic vision that I had for the perfumes themselves,” she adds.

Enter artist George Jasper Stone. Introduced to Beckielou by a mutual friend, their digital utopias immediately resonated with the visuals that she held in her mind for her Future Nature vision, marking the beginning of a deeply aligned creative relationship. Working in symbiosis with each other, they delved into each fragrance using Beckielou’s visual mood boards as a springboard to communicate both the concepts behind each scent as well as the scents themselves, exploring their every facet before George threaded these together with their own surreal aesthetic. As George explains, “I approached the translation of the abstract and intangible qualities of each fragrance into a visual, digital world by treating the 3D environment in a similar manner to how I experienced the fragrance themselves.”

JASMIN XXX

The initial concept behind the scentscape for Jasmin XXX perfectly embodies this unique creative process and the space from which Altra emerges - where the Ancient and the Futuristic intersect. A wildly freeing scent that is defined by a white floral with a dark undertone, Beckielou’s visual references centred around distinct environments that held a common thread: a heady atmosphere, skies of deep red and pink, neon lights and sunrise reflected in ocean waters, modernist architecture and ancient ruins that all in some way depict the mood that distinguishes the scent: that of endlessly explorative nights evolving into sunrises full of optimism and excitement of the unknown.

For George, Jasmin XXX evokes feelings of elation and a sense of adventure. Representing a dynamic and energised state of mind, their scentscape for this fragrance shimmers with spontaneity. George adds, “The colourful nature of Jasmin XXX brings up a sense of joy and positivity. I found inspiration in the emotional connections and associations the scent triggered.”

This visual embodiment of the scent marked the starting point from which a feedback loop emerged.  It re-informed Altra’s vision of the scent, further defining the expressive language of Jasmin XXX. This month, Altra revealed its latest campaign shot by photographer Zach Gold, who brought to light a series of mesmerising  photographs that capture the glow of the rising sun blended with the intense, animalic notes of Jasmin Sambac.

“What I love so much about the concept we created for Jasmin XXX is the immersion in colour and how it captures Jasmin XXX’s vivid energy. It’s the expression of being alive.”

On working collaboratively with the brand, Zach notes “Working with other creatives is one of the best parts of what I do, that's why I was so excited to do this together [with Beckielou], because of the energy of our first conversation and the experience of the actual scents. Sharing your creation leads to the excitement and inspiration of others and out of that comes even more creation, and so it continues.”

Ultimately, Jasmin XXX - as all of Altra’s genderless scents - is a multi-sensory journey to get lost in. In manifesting the intangible, Altra opens up doors to infinite worlds and adventures.