Bianca Brandolini d’Adda Gathers an International Crew to Celebrate Estée Lauder’s Newest Perfume Collection

By the time Bianca Brandolini d’Adda pulled up to Casa Cipriani on Monday evening, nightfall had settled over the windswept corner of lower Manhattan, leaving behind a constellation of lights visible across the East River. As if to apologize for the muted view, Brandolini painted a picture from earlier in the day: “The sunset with the Statue of Liberty, it was pretty magical,” said the model, who has served as an Estée Lauder ambassador since 2019.

Brandolini d’Adda—with the conspiratorial warmth of a Jane Austen character, if you swapped the corset for a body-hugging black evening dress—was in town from Paris to host a jet-set dinner for a global-minded launch: the beauty brand’s Luxury Fragrance Collection. The suite of eight scents, each developed by a different sought-after nose, is Estée Lauder’s entrée into the world of high perfumery. Nestled alongside the centerpieces’s sweetpeas and peonies, the fluted glass bottles conveyed a sense of well-mannered modernity with pedigree (note the vintage EL monogram, unearthed from the company archives, stamped into the cap). So did the guest list, a cross-section of fashion and art worlds that included Lauren Santo Domingo, Brian Atwood, Indré Rockefeller, and Carlie Cushnie.

The fragrances took shape in the early days of the pandemic, as airplane traffic ground to a halt and “Nature Is Healing” memes swirled. “It was all by mail, smelling together over Zoom,” explained Stefanie Spokek, SVP of global fragrance marketing, as a jazz trio behind her played “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” Her team sought to address the cloistered energy of that time by offering scents with a dreamy escapism. Infinite Sky, by Dominique Ropion, for instance, taps end-of-day sensuality with Sichuan pepper, vanilla, and leatherwood; Radiant Mirage, by Quentin Bisch, shimmers with jasmine sambac and sandalwood. As the cliché about perfume as “armchair travel” turned truer and truer, the scents in development aimed further into the ether: toward dusk and stars and sand. “The quote that anchors the collection is ‘Fragrance exists in the mind, not just the senses,’” Spokek said, borrowing Estée Lauder’s words. To that effect, the brand underwent independent “neurosensorial” testing to make sure the emotional register of the perfumes proved uplifting in their individual ways; there’s also a novel technology that ensures a 12-hour sillage.