Before the World Moved Again

Each edition at New Niche is developed with a visual artist who responds to the final perfume with a work of their own. For this release, we invited painter Ivana Rubelj to interpret Before the World Moved Again in form and colour.

Born in Croatia and currently based in Stockholm, Ivana describes herself as a world citizen.

Her artistic practice explores perception, layering, and rhythm—how we move through inner and outer states of experience. She is currently studying at the Idun Lovén School of Art, one of Sweden's most respected independent art institutions.

Her work for this edition is not a translation of scent into image, but a companion to it. Both came from the same moment. Each tells it differently.

Chester approaches scent the way some people approach memory — by following the quiet thread it leaves behind. What began with bottles on a shelf became a way of seeing: perfumes as colours, moods, and small shifts in atmosphere.

His work is shaped by a mixed heritage of tropical white flowers and kitchen spices, where incense, myrrh, and cinnamon were part of everyday ritual. Those notes now return in his compositions, not as decoration, but as a way of honouring where he comes from.

In each fragrance, he insists on leaving something of himself — a trace of the boy who refused to accept that flowers could be gendered, and the artist who treats perfume as a tool, not a finish.

For Chester, scent and image are parallel gestures. Both are bridges between the visible and the felt, guided by a simple motto: wherever you go, go with all your heart.