Heritage · Chapter IV
The Pillar Box
Innovatio ⋅ Imaginatio
Inspired by a traveling theater, the Pillar Box gives form to the house's code of innovation and imagination. Conceived by the founder himself, its design follows his reductionist design philosophy: every element has a purpose. Layers fall away, the flacon turns upside down, and the bottle becomes its own stage, transforming the inverted fragrance into its own striking display.
The Pillar Box
Reduced to its most common denominator
Touch or swipe the plate to take it apart.Click or drag the plate to take it apart.
The flacon is presented upside down: its base on top, the atomiser below. Almost zero plastic, entirely recyclable, and Swiss Made.
Inside every Pillar Box
The idea
Nothing to throw away
Packaging never made sense to the founder: you receive something beautiful, and the first thing you do is throw it away.
True to his reductionist philosophy, he designed a box in which everything you buy is kept. There is nothing to throw out: no packaging in the traditional sense.
The inspiration
The travelling theatres
The street puppeteers carried their theatre with them: a small stage raised on a draped column.
In the Pillar Box, the glass flacon is the stage where the narrative perfume takes place, and the box carries it.
The design
First, the drawings
Drawn by the founder: every part with its purpose, its measurements and its material.
At first a lid; turned over, it becomes the base. The box is the flacon’s home, then its pillar. The pump stays hidden inside; the dome carries the house’s plaque.
Drawn to the millimetre: the lid 65 × 20, the box 58 × 84, the flacon 50 × 48. Standing, the Pillar Box measures 135.
A leather-like covering, black for the box and red for the lid, in recyclable paper; a flacon of thick, clear glass; a recyclable pump.
The material
Leather-like, yet paper
The covering looks like leather: an ode to the perfumer’s old craft, perfuming the leather goods of the aristocracy.
Yet it is made of 100% recyclable paper, an innovation in its own right.
The symbol
A Swiss cross of scent strips
On the dome of the flacon, a metal plaque bears the house’s symbol: a Swiss cross made of the perfumer’s scent strips, one for each of the top, heart and base notes.
It was born in the lab. Evaluating fragrances on scent strips one day, the founder noticed he was holding the Swiss flag.
The inscriptions
Reading the box
12Every narrative, its own box
