SYDNEY — After six years working as an indie beauty whisperer Avigon Belle Paphitis is about to hit the go button on her own venture.
On Feb. 26, the 36 year-old Melbourne-based industry consultant will launch her new brand Gorgeous Nothings. In development for five years, the company was a 2024 finalist in the Estée Lauder Co. incubator program The Catalysts.
Edition 1, a 100ml eau de parfum, will launch on Gorgeous Nothings’ Australian website and in Melbourne bricks-and-mortar retailer Pan After, which specializes in ethically produced objects sourced from around the world. Gorgeous Nothings’ global website will go live in March and discussions are underway with single-door brick-and-mortar retailers in London and Paris.
Edition 2, a color product, will be unveiled in May, with Edition 3, a body offering, due to launch in October.
The fragrance, which boasts top notes of creamy aldehyde, cedar wood, musk and amber, was developed with French perfumer Pierre Negrin using 95.1percent upcycled ingredients.
Designed as a permanent refill system to reduce packaging waste, the fragrance will be sold in two parts: a glass flaçon retailing for 300 Australian dollars, or $207.27 at current exchange, and a 100ml aluminum refill bottle retailing for 280 Australian dollars. Point of sale materials include silk pouches made from upcycled deadstock silk.
Avigon Belle Paphitis. Photo credit: Jess Brohier
A second generation beauty entrepreneur, Paphitis is the daughter of Aesop founder Dennis Paphitis — who is not affiliated with Gorgeous Nothings, which is self-funded — and is the only one of his three children to follow him into the industry, although never working at Aesop.
Avigon Belle Paphitis spent six years in London and Los Angeles working in communications, product management and marketing roles for companies including Seen Group, Beautycounter and Youth to the People, before launching the Paphitis Advisory consultancy in 2020. The company has since rebranded as Vanity Country Club and — together with her Bangalore, India-based business partner Lipika Hegde, a cosmetic scientist who is also head of innovation at Gorgeous Nothings — Paphitis consults for brands including Aeir, indē wild, Joh Bailey, Monastery Made, Raaie and Strange Luxury.
“Gorgeous Nothings actually came out of a lot of anger and frustration towards the industry,” said Paphitis, who believes the industry suffers from “an obsession with speed and scale.”
“‘I was like, ‘This is crazy. There has got to be a different way of doing this,’” she added. “At the same time aesthetically…there weren’t really brands out there that I was looking at and inspired by creatively. I thought to myself, ‘Surely there is space for something more luxurious that’s still attainable.’ I wasn’t seeing that at all.”
Paphitis has 20 new Gorgeous Nothings products in her development pipeline, as well as plans for Gorgeous Nothings retail outlets.
“To me, this is a responsible fragrance,” said Negrin, who has created more than 100 fragrances, including Tom Ford’s Black Orchid Voile de Fleur and Japan Noir and 15 fragrances for Amouage. “[Gorgeous Nothings] is a very exciting project and the beginning of a new era.
“I’m sure brands will be much more concerned about their positioning regarding sustainability, upcycling, protection of the environment, safety,” he added. “That will probably become the future of perfumery more than anything else.”
