When we booked this trip, we called it a working holiday.
That was probably the easiest way to explain it.
Yes, we were going to celebrate the wedding of two close friends. But we were also travelling with notebooks, cameras and far too many conversations about fragrance.
When you build a brand around memories, travelling starts to feel a little different.
You stop asking, “What should we see?”
Instead, you find yourself asking questions like:
Why does this place feel the way it does?
Why do people remember it?
What would it smell like if it became a fragrance?
That was our plan.
Or at least we thought it was.
What we didn’t expect was to come home thinking less about perfume, and more about craftsmanship, patience and what it really means to make something that lasts.
The best ideas rarely arrive when you’re looking for them.
We landed in Venice after a long flight from Sydney.
Like everyone who visits for the first time, we knew it would be beautiful.
We just didn’t expect it to feel… impossible.
A city built on water shouldn’t work.
And yet it does.
Every morning we woke before the crowds arrived.
The canals were quiet.
Deliveries arrived by boat.
Cafés slowly opened their doors.
Locals crossed bridges on their way to work as if this extraordinary place was completely ordinary.
That was probably the first lesson Italy gave us.
The places we romanticise are still home to somebody else.
They’re lived in.
They’re allowed to change.
Venice didn’t feel preserved.
It felt alive.
Walking through those streets, we kept thinking about NOMAD.
When we first created that fragrance, it was inspired by the feeling of wandering through another place and another time.
Being there made us realise we’d been trying to describe this feeling all along.
Sometimes a place doesn’t inspire a fragrance.
Sometimes it confirms one.
We kept talking about ingredients.
Not just in fragrance.
In everything.
Some of the most memorable meals we had were also the simplest.
Fresh tomatoes.
Olive oil.
Pasta.
Wine.
Nothing complicated.
Nothing trying to impress.
The ingredients were simply good enough that they didn’t need anything else.
It sounds obvious.
But it stayed with us.
Because fragrance isn’t that different.
People often ask what makes a scent feel luxurious.
Sometimes they expect the answer to be complexity.
Or hundreds of ingredients.
Italy reminded us that complexity isn’t the goal.
Quality is.
If you start with exceptional materials, you don’t have to hide them.
That’s something we’ll continue bringing into every ARTES product.
Not because it’s the easiest approach.
Because it’s the only one that makes sense to us.
Then came the mountains.
The Dolomites felt like another country entirely.
The air was different.
The light was different.
Even the silence felt different.
We spent one day hiking Tre Cime.
Neither of us would describe ourselves as fearless when it comes to heights.
Especially Arti.
There were moments where the path became narrower than we’d expected.
We laughed.
We hesitated.
We kept going.
Looking back now, that’s probably what we’ll remember most.
Not reaching the viewpoint.
The decision to keep walking.
Travel has a way of reminding you that growth usually feels uncomfortable while it’s happening.
Only afterwards does it become a good story.
Tuscany slowed us down.
Or maybe it simply reminded us that we’d been moving too fast.
Lunch regularly became two hours.
Nobody seemed concerned.
Nobody looked at their watch.
The meal wasn’t interrupting the day.
The meal was the day.
That way of thinking fascinated us.
As founders, it’s easy to become obsessed with productivity.
The next launch.
The next campaign.
The next meeting.
Italy quietly suggested another possibility.
Maybe creating beautiful things requires slowing down.
Maybe patience isn’t something that delays good work.
Maybe it’s part of making it.
Rome asked different questions.
Walking through the Forum and the Colosseum was extraordinary.
Not because they were old.
Because they were still part of everyday life.
People drank coffee beside buildings nearly two thousand years old.
Children played football in squares that had seen empires rise and fall.
History wasn’t protected behind glass.
It continued to exist alongside the present.
One afternoon we found ourselves talking about legacy.
Not the grand historical kind.
The smaller kind.
The kind every founder eventually thinks about.
What sort of company are we building?
What will still matter twenty years from now?
It’s an impossible question to answer.
But Rome felt like the right place to ask it.
One conversation stayed with us.
Italy has an extraordinary respect for tradition.
Sometimes almost stubbornly so.
Recipes.
Coffee.
Wine.
Craftsmanship.
There are ways things are done.
And many people see no reason to change them.
We admired that enormously.
But we also found ourselves wondering where tradition ends and innovation begins.
Can you honour the past without becoming trapped by it?
It’s a question we’ll probably keep asking ourselves as ARTES grows.
Our hope is simple.
Protect what deserves protecting.
Then have the courage to write the next chapter.
One evening reminded us why we do this.
The wedding took place in Santa Marinella, in a family villa overlooking the sea.
The ceremony was held beneath old cypress trees.
Dinner stretched late into the evening.
Someone started dancing.
Eventually someone jumped into the pool.
Then everyone else followed.
It was one of those nights that nobody wanted to end.
Seeing ARTES candles included in the gift bags made the moment even more meaningful.
Not because our products were there.
Because they were leaving with people.
Going home with them.
At some point in the future, someone might light that candle and remember that evening.
The speeches.
The music.
The sea.
The laughter.
It reminded us that fragrance is rarely the memory itself.
It simply becomes part of one.
We came home with fewer answers than we expected.
But maybe that’s exactly what good travel should do.
We didn’t return with a finished collection.
We returned with pages of notes.
Sketches.
Colour combinations.
Half-written fragrance names.
Thoughts about materials.
Ideas inspired by salt carried through Venetian canals.
The brightness of an Aperol Spritz shared in the afternoon sun.
Lavender growing against mountain air.
The confidence of Italian design.
The patience of Italian craftsmanship.
Some of those ideas will become fragrances.
Some won’t.
That’s part of the process.
What will stay with us is something less tangible.
A renewed belief that craftsmanship still matters.
That ingredients matter.
That beautiful objects become more meaningful as they gather stories.
And that making something well usually takes longer than we’d like.
Italy reminded us why we started.
To create fragrances that are inspired by places, and by the way those places make us feel.
Some journeys bring home souvenirs.
The best ones bring home a different way of seeing.
We hope a little of Italy finds its way into what we make next.
Because before every story becomes a scent…
It first has to become a memory.
—
Erik Zhang & Artido Napitupulu
Founders, ARTES
