Discover Sisley Paris’ new daydream: a reimagined collection of classics. All complex and unique, all part of an ever-growing family of scents, dreams and passions
“We decided to create Les Eaux Rêvées, taking some of our classic perfumes, because we thought they presented better as a family," says Isabelle d’Ornano, co-founder and widow to the late Hubert d’Ornano, creator of the Sisley maison. We're in Paris, and Madam d’Ornano has opened her home to editors and beauty connoisseurs from around the world to share in this very special news – and the experience of the latest addition to the Les Eaux Rêvées line up.
Sisley, as a beauty house, has been known for decades as the utmost luxury when it comes to skincare and self care. Through their carefully crafted formulas, the business – just like the family behind it – has grown to global heights, becoming synonymous with quality, luxury, wellness, and all things divine. Three generations on, the whole family remains actively involved in the business, including Philippe d'Ornano, (son of Isabelle and Hubert) who is CEO of the company and his sister Christine who is global vice president, while Isabelle herself still remains very involved in Sisley life as matriarch of the family.
Isabelle and the late Hubert d'Ornano.
Christine d'Ornano and Daria Botin d'Ornano .
“Dreams have a lot of similarity to perfume, they’re not material – you do not hold them, they’re ephemeral,” says Madam d’Ornano when presenting the newly founded family of scents. "Les Eaux Rêvées represents that. Plus, it sounds really nice in French,” she adds with a laugh. Les Eaux Rêvées is composed of a total of six scents. Five of them are reinventions of classics from the Sisley portfolio, like Aria or Ika, and the sixth is a special brand new scent – but we will get to that shortly.
“We chose to include some of the perfumes we already had, but we represented them as a family, as a group. The perfumes weren’t never meant to be interchangeable between them, they were meant to be seen together but we weren’t presenting them like that,” explains Madam d’Ornano. “I always wanted the perfume to have numbers and I wanted to have a lot of them. I thought it was easy to take off the numbers and add others, but my son believes in names. He said one would prefer to wear a name than a number, it was more inspiring, and he might’ve been right. The collection makes sense, they’re all different but they’re all part of the same family, like us.”
Philippe d'Ornano, Isabelle d'Ornano and Christine d'Ornano.
As for the new scent, the storyline gets even deeper. Just like some of the classic scents of the family, modelled after some of the members of the d’Ornano legacy, the latest perfume is modelled after perhaps the most important of them all. “My husband never wanted a perfume named after him,” says Madam d’Ornano with a slight smile and pep to her tone, “so here I am proud to present you L’eau Rêvée d’Hubert."
“The idea came from a geranium plant that we have planted in the porch in our country house,” explains Madam d’Ornano, “Hubert would sit there all the time and you could smell the geranium right next to him. Today, we can smell it here with us”. Designed as a two-sided, two-toned geranium, with a powerful aromatic base packed with green energy, the perfume by itself is a fragrance wonder – the flower is one of the hardest to successfully recreate for perfumery. Commonly known as the masculine rose, the geranium emits a balanced breath of peppermint combined with clear, vibrant green notes and moist earthy accents. But due to its biological lack of natural oils, the blossom's perfume must be recreated using state-of-the-art perfumery techniques, making this scent not only an ode to the late founder of the Sisley maison, but also a masterpiece of formula and chemistry.
Isabelle d'Ornano and Christine d'Ornano.
Today, Les Eaux Rêvées is the crown jewel of Sisley when it comes to perfumery and creation. The six scents; Alma, Ikar, Aria, Eliya, Isa, and Hubert, all represent different stages and different moments of dreams. All represent different members of the founding family and all represent the union that family can create — no matter how different each member and each scent can be.
Just as the French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar noted in Dreams and Destinies, "the sleeper assembles images the way the poet assembles words,” and today, Sisley has assembled scents in this way too.