The story begins in Egypt. With Motherland Beginnings, I wanted to express the warmth, tenderness, and security of our earliest sense of home—a feeling close to a mother’s embrace.
I chose to work with perfumer Shadi Samra on this fragrance. Shadi is originally from Syria, and the cultural closeness between Egypt and Syria, including so many familiar details of everyday life, made me feel he would understand the emotion I had in mind and interpret it in his own way.
Egyptian jasmine and Egyptian geranium play a central role, alongside orange, mango, and fig. These are scents I associate with Egypt, and together they helped us build that feeling of warmth and familiarity. My hope was to express something people could connect with, even if they had never been there.