How One Jewelry Maker Captures the Untamed Spirit of Texas in a Dazzling Tribute to Her Family's Ranch Sallie Lewis, Veranda MagazineJanuary/Feb...

Slow Fragrance Is Reimagining the Future of Sustainable Perfume.

While the rest of the beauty world is speeding up, ultra-indie perfumers are deliberately slowing down way down.

Objection asked photographer Paul Rousteau to revisit Bonnard’s work and open a dialog resonating with the artist. Like Bonnard, Rousteau’s pictorial approach is spontaneous, immediate, raw without touch ups.

Featuring our Poeticus fragrance and “To Sound with a Harmonious Ring” Ring.

A story to discover in Objection’s Volume 2: The Bathroom. 

San Antonio atelier Cultus Artem elevates handcrafted, small-batch fragrance and skincare to a fine art.

There is nothing more intimate than the scents we wear on our skin—and the same can be said of crafting these products for a select few. “The sensuality of that experience to me is the art form,” explained Cultus Artem founder Holly Tupper, whose passion for her craft is deeply personal and drives her dedication to oversee every stage of her in-house production.

The philosophy behind the brand can be summed up by its name: “Cultus” is Latin for the practice of adornment and “Artem”—the root word for art—is the conscious arrangement of elements to affect the senses and emotions. “I wanted to create a name that really spoke to the complete essence of what I am about, why I am doing what I do, and how I am doing it,” said Tupper, who has over 30 years of global experience in the art, skincare, and fragrance industries.

For Holly Tupper, creating clean scents that riff on classic notes (honeyed orange blossom, rich tuberose) isn't just about leaning on nontoxic formulas. "Natural ingredients just have a greater nuance and magic to them on the skin," says the 65-year-old perfumer, who worked in finance before launching her luxury brand Cultus Artem at Bergdorf Goodman last fall. But Tupper's commitment to fostering a greener approach to perfume goes beyond responsible sourcing and small-batch production. In 2014, after moving from Singapore to Texas to manage her family's ranch, Tupper purchased a 13,000- square-foot former Southwestern Bell Telephone Exchange building in San Antonio and converted it into a laboratory for her in-house chemist, a salon for private appointments, a climate-controlled room for storing raw materials, and designated areas for filtering and bottling. A carefully curated mix of antiques and repurposed objets reveals an upcycling effort that is in line with Tupper's ban on all forms of single-use plastic and paper disposables, a philosophy she has extended to a just-launched body-care line and a three-piece collection of organic skin-care essentials, our later this year. It's a no-corners-cut approach that doesn't seem to faze Tupper one bit. "I like to think of it as an artistic challenge."