Maison Reflet: logo, identity, art direction and custom e-shop for a French-Arab perfume house

Branding

A symbol that reflects itself, the way a perfume leaves its trace

The name already says what the project is: a reflection, faithful and different at the same time. The symbol is born from this idea. Drops and swirls drawn on one quarter, then mirrored to the right and downwards: it evokes at once a flower, a drop, a molecule and an organic crest. It is designed to be pressed into material (embossed paper, wax, metal, terracotta), the way a perfume imprints itself on the air.

The logotype frames it with two words in widely spaced capitals: MAISON, the symbol, REFLET. It sits horizontally on the site and labels, and the symbol lives on its own on caps, seals and boxes.

The identity comes down to a warm, restrained palette: an almost black ink (#150E0A), a burgundy (#812538) reserved for actions, a peach (#EFC5A9), a sand (#E7DFD0) and a cream (#F1EEE9) for backgrounds. Each Reflet also has its own colour, from the almost black purple of Bois Alert to the ochre of Melting Mango, designed for its box and label. Text is set in PP Neue Montreal, a crisp grotesque in two weights, often in capitals.

Art Direction

Six perfumes, six photographic worlds

Before settling the identity, Gemeos explored three directions, each with its own world of images. They all aim at the same thing, a contemporary perfume house, premium without ostentation, but each gets there by a different path. The chosen direction comes down to three notions: reflection (shadows, transparency, light on glass), trace (blurred flowers, textures, movement) and the contemporary house (embossing, cream and black tones, editorial compositions).

This direction was then rolled out perfume by perfume. Each Reflet has its colour, its light and its series of photographs: the top, heart and base notes laid out one by one on the same warm stone, raw materials in close-up, harvesting gestures, then the bottle in its setting. Melting Mango lives in gold and sunshine, Ultra Cuir in the deep red of leather and raspberry, Bois Alert in the dark purple of pepper and saffron.

These series dress everything: the site's product pages, the menu, social media. The bottle stays the same everywhere, square, with a gold cap and a cream label, and it is the light around it that tells the story of each perfume.

Web Design

A store you explore like a perfumer's house

The site sells six perfumes to customers who already know the great classics and are looking for something else. Every page helps them choose: by olfactory family, by time of day, by material, and every product page lets you sense the perfume before you have worn it.

A cart designed for upselling

The cart drawer opens as soon as something is added and works on the average order value without pushing. A progress bar shows what is left to reach free shipping, at AED 400. Just below, “The perfumer's pairing” suggests the perfume that goes with the one just chosen, with 23 seconds of the perfumer's recommendation to listen to: one click on “Add”, and the bar switches to “You've unlocked free shipping”. The free sample, to pick among the six, creates the desire for the next bottle.

Perfumes you can listen to

You can't smell a perfume through a screen: the site lets you hear it. Each Reflet has its one-minute audio portrait, to listen to from the product page, the menu or the guide, and each pairing has the perfumer's recommendation. The pages are composed like a perfumer's shop: large warm photographs, short headings in capitals, sharp corners, plenty of cream and sand, with burgundy reserved for actions.

Astro & Shopify Development

A custom e-shop, in three languages and for 32 countries

The site is custom-built with Astro and hosted on Vercel. The catalogue, prices and cart come from Shopify, used headless, and payment takes place in the Shopify checkout. The cart drawer calculates the free shipping threshold live in the country's currency, and the recommended pairing is added without reloading the page. Editorial content and images are managed in Sanity.

The site speaks French, English and Arabic, with a mirrored right-to-left layout for Arabic. Visitors choose their delivery country among 32, in the Gulf, Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific; each country has its currency (dirham, riyal, euro, Swiss franc, pound, dollar) and its delivery times, up to same-day delivery in Dubai.

Luma, the house's adviser, is a conversational assistant built into the site: she first asks whether the perfume is for yourself or a gift, answers in writing or out loud, and the conversation is kept for 90 days then anonymised. Each perfume also has its audio portrait, to listen to from the menu, the product page or the guide, in French, English or Arabic.

The guide's components are alive: the map of the six opens the page of the Reflet you hover over, and the filters fade out the perfumes that don't match the chosen criteria.

SEO

Three languages, one store, every page linked to its translations

Maison Reflet sells in the Gulf, Europe and beyond: the same perfume is searched for in French, English and Arabic. Every page exists in all three languages, at its own URL (/fr, /en, /ar), and presents itself to search engines with its two translations.

Readable by search engines and AI assistants alike

Each product page states clearly what an assistant is looking for: the olfactory family, the top, heart and base notes, the sillage, the price. The guide compares the six side by side, and the FAQs answer pre-purchase questions (free sample, shipping, returns): short answers that are easy to cite.