Nakshatra
Sane.

Developed a full experiential storytelling campaign for Maison Francis Kurkdjian, titled COMPOSED. Three deliverables: a campaign film called The First Note, following Francis through a day built on scent, music, and movement; a reservation-only multi-sensory pop-up in Paris; and a limited-edition collaboration with Cédric Grolet at Versailles where five MFK fragrances were translated into haute desserts. Solo project from brief to final delivery.

Started by researching everything Francis Kurkdjian has said publicly about his creative process. Found a YouTube podcast where he names his three passions: ballet, piano, and perfumery. The parallel clicked immediately: every art form he loves is built around notes. Brand research via YouTube and Instagram. Visual development via Pinterest. The Cédric Grolet pairing came from mapping the only other craft that consistently compares perfumery to composition: haute pâtisserie.

Part of a student team that developed a 360° GTM strategy for the South Asian launch of Dior Menswear Winter 2026, a collection inspired by Paul Poiret. The region was too culturally diverse for a unified rollout: the team designed simultaneous city-specific activations across Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, New Delhi, and Sydney, each with a distinct experiential concept. Presented at Christian Dior Couture HQ, Paris, among 14 international competing teams.

Within the group, I owned the full 360° execution plan, mapping every touchpoint across OOH, pop-up, VR/AR, influencer strategy, and private styling events, and ensuring the Poiret reference translated coherently across four distinct cultural contexts. I also produced the campaign presentation video independently, from brief to final cut.

Self-initiated project. Ran a full social media audit of Boucheron across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and Facebook. Benchmarked against Cartier, Bvlgari, and Van Cleef & Arpels through competitor benchmarking, content analysis, and a luxury consumer psychology framework. Built a campaign strategy and ambassador architecture from the findings, with the US market (New boutique opening, Sept 2026) as the primary strategic objective.

Four parallel audience strategies (Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Middle Eastern) with no unifying emotional argument connecting them. A near-absent TikTok presence (84K followers), no Xiaohongshu activation despite 17 mainland China stores, and its founding piece, the 1879 Question Mark necklace, sitting completely underused as a social asset. The US self-purchasing millennial was the most structurally obvious gap: the buyer exists, the behaviour exists, the brand had no social infrastructure to reach her yet.

Self-initiated brand extension strategy brief. Identified fragrance as Jacquemus's confirmed next category, based on the L'Oréal Luxe partnership announced in February 2025 and Simon Porte Jacquemus's public confirmation of a 2027 launch in GQ France. Developed a full fragrance concept (name, notes, packaging) and designed a PR launch package and immersive pop-up activation for Miami.

Signal-based research. The Jacquemus × Trudon candle documented Simon's nose (bergamot, blackcurrant, jasmine). The Le Bonheur SS27 collection signalled citrus, warmth, Provençal terroir. No publication predicted immortelle, the most geographically specific, most expensive note of the Provençal garrigue, and the one that would make this fragrance genuinely unmistakable. The fragrance was anchored at Salon-de-Provence (43°N · 5°E), Simon's birthplace, biographical fact, not prediction.

Four rooms in a Wynwood warehouse. Each room is one time of day in Salon-de-Provence, each corresponding to one layer of the fragrance. Guests exit with a bottle personalised with the timestamp of the room they stayed in longest. 17:00 · 43°N · 5°E. The time they were happiest.

Developed ScentSync, an AI-personalised fragrance device pitched at L'Oréal Brandstorm. The device adapts scent delivery dynamically based on mood, context, and time of day. Within a three-person team, I developed the AI personalisation mechanic (micro-encapsulation technology), the full business model (€450 device, €60/month refill subscription, 56% gross margins), the three-phase global rollout strategy across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and all three pitch slides.

Trend analysis identified the gap: no player owned gender-neutral premium beauty tech between mass fragrance and luxury niche. Platform research validated willingness-to-pay among Gen Z and millennial segments. I built the financial model and designed the pitch independently, while teammates validated the core opportunity and contributed to market sizing.

The dissertation examines the growing tension between Gen Z's stated values and luxury brand behaviour. Three core sources of disillusionment emerged: the sustainability performance gap (brands claiming environmental commitment while driving volume growth), the authenticity paradox (brands presenting handcraft codes while outsourcing production at scale), and the inclusivity contradiction (brands deploying diversity imagery while retaining selective pricing that excludes the demographic they're addressing).

Gen Z's disappointment is not irrational. It reflects a cohort raised to detect greenwashing, performative diversity, and brand-as-content over brand-as-craft. The research concludes that credibility with the under-30 consumer cannot be communicated. It has to be demonstrated. Strategic recommendations centre on radical transparency, earned authority through practice, and storytelling that leads with action rather than promise.

Analysis of Brunello Cucinelli's model as a case study in what the paper calls humanistic capitalism, the argument that profitability and ethical conduct are not in conflict but are structurally interlinked. The model rests on five pillars: restrained growth (revenue targets set below capability), a no-discount policy (price integrity as brand integrity), wages that exceed Italian statutory requirements, the Solomeo village restoration project (cultural philanthropy as brand investment), and total vertical integration.

The paper argues that Cucinelli's model resists the conglomerate growth-at-scale logic not because it is naïve about commercial imperatives, but because it has correctly identified that brand desirability erodes in direct proportion to the speed and volume of production growth. The model is self-limiting by design. That self-limitation is what makes it commercially durable.

Market entry strategy for Amouage, the Omani ultra-luxury fragrance house priced above Chanel, expanding into India's premium fragrance segment. The paper opens with India's fragrance paradox: one of the world's oldest olfactive cultures (attar, Mughal perfumery) with a contemporary premium market still dominated by European houses lacking cultural specificity.

Amouage faces three structural barriers: fragrance literacy in the premium segment (consumers recognise brand names but lack vocabulary for niche categories), distribution scarcity (no selective multi-brand retail comparable to Printemps exists in India's tier-1 cities), and price perception (Amouage's positioning above Dior requires a credibility framework not yet established in the market). The proposed entry model is phased: first-year presence via Taj Group boutiques and selective airports (full margin control, zero wholesale); year two, a flagship concept in Mumbai or Delhi; year three, digital community building through India's growing fragrance enthusiast networks. The cultural bridge: shared olfactive heritage between the Arabian Gulf and the subcontinent, oud, rose, incense.

Completed LVMH's flagship online programme covering the group's 75+ maisons across wine and spirits, fashion and leather goods, perfumes and cosmetics, watches and jewellery, and selective retailing, building a precise vocabulary for how luxury conglomerates manage brand equity while keeping each house architecturally distinct.

Gained insight into how LVMH balances heritage with creative renewal across radically different product categories, and how the group's selective distribution strategy protects desirability at scale, a core tension in modern luxury management.

Developed an understanding of sustainability as a competitive imperative inside luxury conglomerates: how LVMH's LIFE 360 programme integrates environmental goals into brand strategy without compromising on craftsmanship narratives or perceived exclusivity.

Competed in L'Oréal Brandstorm, the group's global student innovation challenge, where teams pitch original brand or product concepts to senior L'Oréal executives. The process demanded working under tight competitive constraints, defining a real consumer insight, validating it, and translating it into a commercially credible pitch.

The experience sharpened my understanding of how large beauty conglomerates evaluate brand ideas: not just creative differentiation, but market sizing, channel strategy, and coherence with an existing portfolio. It forced precision in how I frame a brand proposition.

Working in a cross-cultural team taught me how to synthesise divergent perspectives into a single cohesive narrative under pressure, exactly the skill required when pitching to a room of decision-makers who have seen every kind of beauty concept before.

Studied the full lifecycle of fashion, from raw material extraction through design, production, distribution, and end-of-life, with a rigorous focus on where the industry's environmental and social costs are concentrated and which interventions actually move the needle versus those that are primarily reputational.

Examined how leading brands navigate the tension between growth and sustainability: why overproduction is structurally incentivised, how circular business models are being tested at scale, and what "sustainable luxury" means when most luxury houses still rely on exotic materials and intercontinental supply chains.

Developed a critical lens for greenwashing, the ability to distinguish between genuine systemic change and performative ESG communication. This directly informs how I evaluate brand strategy: sustainability claims need to be substantiated at the product and supply chain level, not just in campaign copy.