Fragance you can wear
Share article
Jiangyi - Qiloom
We've always believed in finding beauty in what others overlook. Designer Zhiyi Zhou shares this philosophy; she's transforming the aromatherapy industry's botanical byproducts into something extraordinary.
Zhou combines expertise across multiple disciplines. Her background in fabric design taught her how materials behave, while her Masters in Biodesign showed her how nature and innovation can work together. But it's her deep love for traditional crafts that makes her work truly special; she's breathing new life into an ancient Chinese tradition of making scented beads.
Every year, the essential oil industry generates vast amounts of botanical waste: pine needles, flower petals, and plant matter that once held healing properties but become surplus after processing. Zhou saw potential in this discarded material. She combines these botanicals with nanmu wood powder, following techniques passed down through generations, creating beads that hold fragrance.
The Seven Mansions of the Azure Dragon is an ancient Chinese constellation system that governs the East, symbolising vitality and renewal. Zhou draws from this celestial map for her designs, with each bead cluster representing different stellar points: Jiao, Kang, Di, Fang, Xin, Wei, Ji, creating wearable jewellery that releases plant essences as it warms against your skin. Silver connects jade elements to fragrant beads, building pieces that are part astronomy, part aromatherapy, part ancestral wisdom.
This is what we love: taking something destined for disposal and giving it a meaningful purpose. Zhou's beads don't just smell beautiful; they carry cultural memory, environmental consciousness, and the healing power of plants in forms you can wear close to your body.
We see ourselves in this vision. Just as Zhou has made ancient rituals portable, we've transformed your daily shower ceremony into something that travels with you. Our new 100mL collection carries the same seaweed-rich formulations, now in sizes that fit anywhere, in home-compostable Vivomer packaging that returns to the earth.
References: Zhiyi Zhou
Related articles
What if your next pair of jeans were grown, not sewn?
When mushrooms eat plastic
By 2049, we might be eating the plastic crisis. Odette Dierkx's Plastik Protein project imagines bioengineered fungi that consume PET bottles, polyurethane foam, and plastic bags, converting plastic waste into edible mycelium protein. The delivery format: chocolate bars, each labelled with the specific waste stream it remediated.
Mycelium of Japan: Between growth and craft
Urushi is tree sap — a material as ancient as the craft it shaped. Harvested from lacquer trees across Southeast Asia, refined through traditional methods, yet never fundamentally altered. Naturally water-resistant and heat-resistant, it develops a distinctive gloss over time. For centuries, Japanese artisans have turned to Urushi because it simply works. Even today, it remains enduring, no synthetic additives, no compromise.