Incorp brings together the work of Sissel Tolaas and Panconesi in three unique fragrances

Incorp took founder Kira Lillie ten years to develop. And, even though producing something truly different in an oversaturated beauty market is a challenge, Lillie has certainly achieved it, through bridging the worlds of wellness, art and fashion through the medium of fragrance.

To do so, she called on the talents of some of the most interesting creatives working today. This includes the likes of artist Sissel Tolaas, jewellery designer Marco Panconesi, production company Torso Solutions and the multi-instrumentalist and composer, Eartheater, who scored the Incorp launch event during Paris Fashion Week in October 2023. ‘The idea was to create a perfume that could ground you [emotionally] through scent using input from different artists,’ says Lille. ‘Incorp is probably the most difficult project I have worked on so far. It taught me a lot.’

Incorp brings together the work of Sissel Tolaas and Panconesi in three unique fragrances

Lillie was born in Santa Cruz to a ‘hippie’ family. Despite her New Age upbringing, at 18 she moved to Italy to pursue a career as a photographer. From there, she was able to sustain a peripatetic life that took her from Milan, Paris and New York to Berlin and Los Angeles, building a network along the way that would eventually help her form Incorp.

For example, Lillie knew from the moment she had the idea for Incorp, that she wanted the scents to be developed by Sissel Tolaas, who she had become friendly with while residing in Berlin. Tolaas describes herself as a ‘smell-artist’ and she is widely recognised as the world’s leading authority on smell – not, it is important to note, perfume. In Tolaas’ view, we have vastly limited our range of experiences by relying too much on sight and sound as our means of experiencing the world. To combat this, the artist created around 1,500 unique words for describing smells and collaborated with museums and fashion brands on a range of projects designed to expand our olfactory perceptions.

This spanned from using David Beckham’s sweat, found in his Adidas trainers, to make cheese (which was then served to VIPs at the London Olympics); perfuming Balenciaga’s runways with the smell of blood, antiseptic, petrol and money; and extracting the human scents left on historic items of clothing and applying them to the walls of the Metropolitan Museum Art’s Sleeping Beauties exhibition.

Yet, according to Lillie, Tolaas said that developing the scents for Incorp presented a unique set of challenges, as they are made solely from essential oils, which are difficult to control and stabilise. But after years of experimentation, Tolaas arrived a three olfactory profiles: I, WE, and YOU. I is the earthiest scent, with notes of thyme, vetiver, myrrh and a touch of lemon balm. WE is slightly brighter, with coriander, orange and Roman chamomile. While YOU has a floral-citrus blend of rose, lime, sandalwood and coriander.

The environmental cost of making perfume from essential oils means that Incorp will never mass produce the fragrances. But this was never Lillie’s intention anyway. For her, the perfumes are best used in a personalised, ritualised way. ‘For example, my friend, the fashion designer Glenn Martens, has [an Incorp perfume] hanging on his wall and he uses it every morning when he wakes up – like a morning meditation kind of thing,’ Lillie says.

The bottles that contain I, WE and YOU were designed by product designer Samuel Reis, who Lillie found working in a converted cereal factory just north of Lisbon. Reis created the amorphous-looking vessels using tree trunks as a glass-blowing mould. The top of the bottle, plus wearable perfume vials, were then added by jewellery designer Ugo Cacciatori, who Lillie met while living in Milan. Cacciatori has a resume that includes Valentino, Giambattista Valli, Marni and Fendi. But he was hesitant about taking on the challenge of designing a bottle top, according to Lillie. ‘I asked him to help and he said to me, “I’m not an artist”. But I just gave him one of the bottles anyway and told him to play with it. Six months later he called me and said: “I’m an artist!”,’ she explains.

Still, Lillie wanted an additional component for the top of each bottle. So she asked Marco Panconesi, who heads up his namesake jewellery brand Panconesi, to help design a gua sha-like tool that could be inserted into the perfume oil and used for application. ‘He had been at one of the crazy, experiential dinners I host all over the world for different artists,’ says Lillie. ‘I told him I wanted something functional for the bottle design,’ says Lillie. ‘I love what he came back with because it looks like an ear or a spoon, but feels like a finger – so it works for acupressure.’

In the future, Lillie has dreams of creating a physical space built on principles intrinsic to Incorp; namely, artistic collaboration and an almost spiritual connection to nature. ‘I would love to find a plot of land and create a community of artists that feels a bit more contemporary than your typical retreat,’ she says. ‘There would be a garden for growing food and rotating chefs. Creatives could come together to question how we move through life today, find support, experiment and play.’

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