The Accra Story
“My curiosity for Africa started in my teens, reading the reportage of Ryszard Kapuściński, the novels of VS Naipaul, later discovering the playful writing of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I was particularly attracted to West Africa. The colour, the style, the joie de vivre, the warmth …
Glamorous Ghanaians gallivanting in London. Parisian Ivoirians in their voluptuous pagne dresses.
My wanderlust mind was full of the larger-than-life style, the richness of West Africa. The alluringly iconic designs of Air Afrique. Art and sculpture. The Timbuktu fragrance we had in my time at L’Artisan Parfumeur – a gateway perfume to niche.
So with this journey to Accra, I wanted to evoke a bygone glamour, the tropical sensuality, an enveloping heat … A taste of the exotic, the musicality, the gorgeous bursting colours of the famous kente waxed cloth.
I wanted to feel the easy-going charm of Accra, a happy-go-lucky lightness of being…”
The perfume notes:
A blend of tropical fruits and spices, the Accra perfume opens with passion berry, eucalyptus, hot peppers, mango, papaya, davana, cognac, and carrot seed. The warm sensual heart of this perfume is composed around CO2 coffee extract, saffron, a cocoa accord, tobacco, and styrax. And the base is constructed around a leather skin accord, cedarwood, patchouli, vintage vinyl, smoky liatrix, and musks
Meet the maker
For the creation of the Accra fragrance, founder Nick Steward worked with former colleague, indie perfumer Stéphanie Bakouche
At the age of five Stéphanie proclaimed “When I grow up, I want to make perfumes!” That moment of childhood clarity would set her course in life.
A graduate from the renowned ISIPCA school, she’s worked with companies like Takasago and Givaudan, for brands such as Cloon Keen, Jul et Mad, Masque Milano, Parfums MDCI and L’Artisan Parfumeur, where she worked with Nick in the Creative Studio.
The history and culture of perfumery are close to Stéphanie’s heart and since 2013 she has been a curator of the Osmothèque, the repository of fragrances in Versailles.
Based between Paris and Grasse, the home of her studio, Sensaba, where she produces in collaboration with Accords & Parfums (founded by the legendary Edmond Roudnitska)
Accra by GALLIVANT is compounded in Grasse, France and then hand-finished in England, in a genuinely artisanal, small-batch, human process