Avigon Paphitis’s luxury beauty brand is peak IYKYK-coded

Avigon Paphitis, Australian beauty brand founder, has a weighty last name. Her father, Dennis Paphitis, founded the cult beauty brand Aesop from a humble hair salon in 1987. But a conversation with the Melbourne-based creative reveals a woman who has worked towards separating herself from that legacy to build a name of her own.

Paphitis brings over 13 years of industry experience to her new beauty brand, Gorgeous Nothings—none of it at Aesop, unless you count the summers she spent stocking warehouse shelves with her siblings (none of who work with the company that their father eventually sold to L’Oréal). She worked in global brand communications in London with names like Unilever and Nars, then in-house marketing at clean beauty label Counter and product marketing at Youth to the People, both based in California, before returning to Melbourne to launch her consultancy, Vanity Country Club. She also spent two years consulting at Indē Wild, leading its marketing through a complete rebrand and transformation.

Paphitis finally launched Gorgeous Nothings earlier this year with a fragrance, Volume I, as its first product. The scent features warm, powdery notes such as creamy aldehyde, cedarwood, musk, amber and, most interestingly, comes in an unmarked, unlabelled glass bottle. The website reads more like a chic editorial blog than a shop, with none of the usual prompts to buy. The fragrance has a DIY element: the entire package includes an empty glass bottle with a handblown stopper, an aluminium refill bottle containing 100 ml of EDP, and a glass funnel to pour your own fragrance—all for AU$540 (approx ₹36,190). The refill for repeat purchases retails at AU$280 (approx ₹18,778). “Our consumers have a little bit more discernment and understand luxury,” says Paphitis. “They don’t want something that everybody has. It’s like buying a beautiful pen with a refill. People like the fact that it feels more like a keepsake.” 

On building her own beauty brand

Moving back home to Melbourne during the Covid-19 pandemic was the catalyst for self-reflection and the birth of Gorgeous Nothings. “I was feeling like the industry was creatively homogeneous, and a lot of greenwashing was taking place. I wasn’t going into a beauty store, in the fluorescent lights, and really feeling joy and love for what I was seeing. I wanted to create something that feels beautiful and special, wholesome and luxurious, but I also didn’t feel that luxury needed to feel superfluous and excessive,” said Paphitis when we chatted over the phone.

Creating a slow, upcycled fragrance

Family trips to Grasse to tour fragrance regions gave her insight into the industry from a young age. “I was always quite intrigued and shocked by how much landmass it took to produce a very small amount of fragrance. There’s a lot of debate about natural versus synthetic, but there’s nothing particularly sustainable about natural ingredients if, ultimately, you’re using so many natural resources to maintain the land.”

Upcycling and the use of biotechnology are core pillars of the brand. She, along with master perfumer Pierre Negrin and her Bengaluru-based head of innovation and cosmetic chemist, Lipika Hegde, created a fragrance with 95.1 per cent upcycled fragrance concentrate—the highest known percentage in the world. “Pierre was really supportive of the concept, and he wanted to get behind us as this next-generation brand that was trying to push the envelope on what upcycled would mean in the fragrance industry. He described the fragrance development process like we had asked him to write a book without using vowels,” she says of the perfumer, who has also worked with Tom Ford and Amouage.

The fragrance itself was five years in the making, with the packaging taking almost as long. “In the fragrance world, there’s a big push to use AI to accelerate product development and innovation. I just don’t think there’s any romance in that,” says Paphitis. “Someone like Pierre Negrin has literally spent his entire life on his personal pursuit of fragrance. AI cannot replace human depth, integrity, and soul even if it’s faster, more efficient, and cost-effective.” 

Her India connection

Paphitis spent a few months in India working with Hegde and over time developed a soft corner for the country. With Volume I, the brand also works with a female glassblower to design, handmake, and hand-etch each of their stoppers. “In the West, there’s more of a lean into minimalism, but things are quite homogeneous, whereas in India, even in the way women dress and take care of themselves detail is celebrated,” she adds.

On not being a founder-forward brand

You won’t see Paphitis on the brand’s Instagram page, but you will find her on Substack. “It was my way of offering a bit of a behind-the-scenes window for the brand. I’m not an influencer and don’t want to be one. I think there’s something quite chic about being private, more allure in actually showing less.”

International expansion is on the cards soon after the brand entered a few more doors across Australia this year. “We’re bringing theatre and romance back into the beauty industry. I feel very privileged that the product I’ve spent years creating is going to be sitting on someone’s vanity, in the privacy of their home. There’s something quite intimate about that.” Up next: a refillable lip and cheek product.