Introducing Jijide with Adam James Cavallari
L to R: Jijide Co-founders Adam James Cavallari, Fanqi Guan & Andrea Alessandri
Founded by a creative, entrepreneurial group of friends from China and Italy, the independent fragrance brand Jijide is based in Milan and works with young perfumers from around the world, each bringing new ideas and unique cultural perspectives to the fragrances they compose.
We're currently featuring their wonderful Dialogue Collection, which was built on the foundational belief that "beauty is created through dialogue between different cultures." The collection's fragrances were released in three pairs (dialogues), with each perfumer partnered with another, working in tandem and conversation as they formulated their fragrances.
We checked in with the generous co-founder, Adam James Cavallari, who shared an immersive deep dive into the ethos and people behind the perfumes. So sit back, relax and enjoy the inspiring background story of Jijide and the Dialogue Collection...
Q. How did Jijide come to be and is there anything you'd like us to communicate about the brand?
A. It’s important to say that Jijide is a brand created by real-life friends — Italians and Chinese — and the word “Jijide” means “positive attitude.” None of us come from the beauty industry; we are simply designers and merchants.
We ignored perfumery until 2015, when we discovered that in China, young people were forming real buying groups to import perfumes from France, Italy and the UK. At the time, perfume was seen as a tool of emancipation within the Chinese social structure, which was very rigid and conservative. Our fascination with perfumery began then. All our collections are reflections on contemporary life. They represent a new model of how perfumery can express not only today’s society, but also highlight the elements that can help improve it.
Q. Tell us about the Dialogue Collection...
A. The Dialogue Collection was born from three guiding principles. The first — and most important — is the belief that beauty is created through dialogue between different cultures. The world’s ugliness doesn’t stem only from a lack of communication, but more profoundly from a lack of respect for others’ cultures.
Dialogo seeks to represent that moment of discovery — of things we haven’t had the chance to experience due to life’s circumstances —with very simple stories, to be as inclusive as possible: a walk through the streets of Shanghai, an evening in a village in Central Africa, the experience of being an expat, caught between excitement and nostalgia.
The second principle is to represent Jijide with a spirit of friendship, collaboration and authenticity — just like the feelings shared between people who truly care for one another. The third is to do this with young people — not because youth is the quality we seek, but because we value their vision of the future, their expectations, their beautiful naivety about the world and their strong sense of optimism, which we hope is fully conveyed through our creations.
Q. How did you select and pair the perfumers who worked on the Dialogue Collection?
A. Funny to say, there isn’t a standard. We work with people, so first we need to like (and believe in) the person we meet. Then we simply ask the question: “Do you have a friend, who is not from where you come from, that could work with you on a shared concept?”
We never judge previous works, concepts, or prototypes to evaluate an individual. We want to know their story — who they are, where they come from. A Dialogue is an introspective journey... we don’t care about trends. We create a concept together with them, and the formula must be 100% aligned with the story — it has to be authentic.
Q. We initially heard that all of the Dialogue Collection perfumers were still students when they created the formulas, is this the case?
A. Not all of them; each one has their own unique story. What they all share is that this is the first formula they developed for a brand, and they are all under 30. Here are more details:
Perfumers Zimo Luo & Nour Akoum
Zimo Luo (Riso): The first person we were introduced to was Zimo Luo. It was during COVID so we only met online, but she was introduced to us by a friend — a Chinese perfume content creator who knew about our concept for the Dialogue Collection.
At the time, Zimo had just finished ISIPCA [the top-tier professional perfumery school in Versailles] and started working at Apple Flavour, a global essence house based in Shanghai. Zimo impressed our friend with her natural talent as a perfume evaluator, and she had created a few concepts that drew attention. When we shared the idea of the Dialogue Collection, she loved it and we managed to reach an agreement with her company to let her work with us on the project. Zimo then introduced us to Nour Akoum.
Nour Akoum (Grano): Nour studied with Zimo at ISIPCA and they became friends during their studies. Nour's parents are French-Lebanese, and she lived in Paris for many years, but she married a Lebanese man and decided to move to Beirut to be with him. When we were introduced to her, she had just opened her own perfume atelier in Beirut — so we were actually her first customers!
Perfumers Adill Ali & Boris Barzut
Adill Ali (Terra): We met Adill at Esxence 2023. At the time, he had just graduated (he was 23) and started working in London for a consultancy company. However, he had loved perfumery and raw materials since he was sixteen, especially the deep connection between oud and his religion — Adill is Muslim.
When I met him, he was actually proposing to sell me some raw materials from his stock — he had some very special oud. After Esxence, we asked him if he wanted to work on our Dialogue concept. He accepted, especially because Adill's best friend, Boris, was also an amateur perfumer. Adill has since left his job, got married and now lives in Dubai, where he created an amazing brand called Hunayn — which are the perfumes I personally wear the most.
Boris Barzut (Fuoco): Boris is a raw talent — very shy — and has his own laboratory at home. His occupation is a chef. He would have never developed a perfume as he is very reserved, but he accepted because he was convinced by his best friend Adill. Neither Adill nor Boris studied perfumery, but not only are Terra and Fuoco stunning, their entire work is exceptional. I have some prototypes made by Boris that are among the most beautiful perfumes I have ever smelled in my life.
Perfumers Mattia Sorrentino & Edda Salvadori
Mattia Sorrentino (Dentro): We met Mattia at a Jijide event. Mattia had just finished an intensive course at the Italian Perfumery Institute and came to us with a proposal to create a perfume about Italy. His idea was a bit conservative, but we thought it over and decided to make it — in the Jijide way.
So we chose to open the Dialogue concept to Italy, but our idea was to describe contemporary Italy, made up of people who stay and try to make things better and those who leave in search of a brighter future. Italy is a country suffering from both cultural and economic depression.
We needed to find another person to match this new duo, and a few months earlier, at another event, we had met a very young student from IPI. I knew at the time that she was moving to Paris and wasn’t happy with how things were developing. So we asked Mattia to contact this person — Edda.
Edda Salvadori (Oltre): Edda was 22 when we started working with her, but she had a very clear idea of how to represent “Italians leaving the country.” Her talent is evident to everyone she meets—she’s a natural, but also very diligent. Today, she is attending her second year at ISIPCA and is also considering an internship in the Gulf to explore the tradition of perfumery in the Arabian Peninsula.
Q. How did the dialogue between perfumers take place?
A. The necessary premise is that Jijide has only an artistic approach — we don’t follow trends at all. For instance, we have no formula with tropical fruit and oud (a current trend here in Europe).
...The main idea is that discovering and respecting each other’s culture is a way to discover beauty in the world... A Dialogue takes at least one year to create, and we provide full support to perfumers, including senior perfumers to assist them with their ideas if necessary.
Of course, it’s a very intense process, and I follow it personally (so I can tell), because it represents the first-ever perfume that Zimo, Nour, Adill, Boris, Mattia and Edda have ever made.
Q. Do you have any interesting anecdotes about the perfumers as they worked on the perfumes?
Dialogue 1:
A. I believe the most interesting anecdote about the first Dialogue is about Zimo. The Riso that Zimo presented to us was considered irrelevant by all her male colleagues. She had other prototypes that others thought were more suitable but she was convinced that her best formula was the one that is now Riso. She was feeling very low, and because of the distance between us, I didn’t know about this — she shared the story only last year when we met again in Shanghai.
Luckily for Zimo, she had a friend, Jess, and they were the only two women working in that department at the time. Jess encouraged Zimo to ignore the comments and believe in herself. Today, Riso is our best-seller.
Dialogue 2:
A. For the second Dialogue, everything went very smoothly, as Adill and Boris are real-life best friends. While Boris was developing the formula, with smoke as the central part of the narrative, he wanted to find a particular accord. We didn’t understand at first why it was taking so long to create something that convinced him.
When we smelled Fuoco for the very first time, some of us got very emotional — and then we understood why: Boris wanted to recreate that particular smell that lingers on a smoker’s clothes. He wanted to celebrate his father, who was a heavy smoker, and the scent he remembered when hugging him. Boris lost his dad during the war in Bosnia.
Dialogue 3
A. In the third Dialogue, I believe the most interesting anecdote is working with someone as young as Edda, who has such a bright vision of perfumery. We were all enchanted by the depth of her research and her ability to use certain notes to evoke very specific elements of life — and the emotions tied to those elements. To see all this in someone just 22 years old is truly something.
Q. Anything else you'd like to tell us about Jijide?
A. At Jijide, we define ourselves as publishers. We do everything in-house, oversee every detail, and select suppliers who meet the highest quality standards — nothing is left to chance. Our goal is to bring something new to artistic perfumery, returning to the root of the word "art." For example, we never use the term "niche" to describe our fragrances, because "niche" implies exclusivity, while we strive to be as inclusive as possible. We truly hope you see all this in our products.
Thanks so much, Adam! We're honored to introduce Jijide to the US fragrance community and are certain the Dialogue Collection will be welcomed with the curiosity and enthusiasm it deserves.