The Interview: Atelier Rebul CEO Nuket Filiba on its latest launch and UK expansion plans

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Nuket Filiba, CEO of Atelier Rebul, on a lovely spring morning in London to celebrate the launch of the brand’s newest fragrance, Golden Hour. We talked about the brand’s origins and Nuket’s unwavering passion for making it a global success, her exciting plans for the UK market, and how this new launch came to be.

You celebrated 130 years in 2025. Can you tell me about the origin of the brand?

Atelier Rebul was born in 1895 from a remarkable encounter between cultures. A French apothecary, Jean César Réboul, arrived in Istanbul and founded La Grande Pharmacie Parisienne, where he later met his future apprentice, Kemal Müderrisoğlu. They began collaborating, giving rise to distinctive signature fragrances that reflected their shared creative vision.

This meeting between two worlds - French pharmacy expertise and Istanbul’s rich cultural heritage - became the foundation of our brand. It’s what we define today as our dual heritage.

From the very beginning, the brand has been defined by mastery of craftsmanship, where savoir-faire is elevated into an art form. It draws richness from multicultural ingredients, sourced from a world of traditions and transformed into narrative fragrances - each one telling a story, each one evoking emotion. At its heart lies Istanbul’s art de vivre: a timeless, sensorial expression of elegance, culture, and the poetry of everyday life.

For over 130 years, Atelier Rebul has carried forward a legacy of craftsmanship, quality, and olfactive expertise across generations.

What does the global business look like today?

Today, Atelier Rebul is a truly global brand, present in 27 countries with over 1,000 luxury retail points and more than 50 mono-brand stores worldwide.

We operate through a fully integrated omnichannel ecosystem - retail, e-commerce, travel retail, and horeca - all working together to create a consistent brand experience.

We are proud to partner with leading global retailers such as Sephora, Douglas, Harvey Nichols, Bloomingdale's, De Bijenkorf and Galeries Lafayette, while also building strong collaborations across hospitality, from luxury hotels to Michelin-starred restaurants around the world.

At the same time, we continue to expand in strategic markets across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, with a strong focus on brand building rather than simply distribution.

I’m thrilled to see you investing in UK retail, with the opening of your Marylebone boutique. Can you tell me about the store and your plans for the UK market?

Today, as Atelier Rebul continues to expand globally, the UK remains a cornerstone of our international vision: a market that truly appreciates the intersection of history, craftsmanship, and modern luxury. The opening of our Marylebone boutique is a defining milestone in our global journey. The UK is one of the most influential and discerning fragrance markets in the world, and we approached it with a highly intentional, multi-layered strategy designed not just for entry, but for long-term brand elevation.

From the outset, our focus has been on building true desirability. We supported the launch with strong PR amplification, high-impact editorial placements, curated influencer collaborations, and in-store activations that bring our universe to life - particularly around personalisation and the art of gifting. This was further enriched with London-exclusive creations, such as our Marylebone candle, designed specifically to root the brand in its local context while maintaining our global identity.

The boutique itself is a physical expression of our new retail philosophy, developed in collaboration with Autoban. It is not a traditional store, but an immersive, sensorial space where fragrance, design, and storytelling converge. Every detail is crafted to invite discovery and emotional connection with the brand world.

Alongside presenting our full fragrance portfolio, the store also features a dedicated personalised experience floor, where customers are invited to create their own bespoke fragrances. We host fragrance workshops every week, transforming the boutique into a living space of discovery, creativity, and connection. These workshops began during National Fragrance Week in March and were met with great success, reinforcing our belief that the UK consumer is deeply engaged with meaningful, experience-led fragrance storytelling.

In addition, we were honoured to be named a finalist in the Home category at The Fragrance Foundation Jasmine Awards, an achievement we reached in our very first year in the UK. This recognition further reinforces the strength of our home fragrance expertise and the growing relevance of Atelier Rebul within the UK fragrance community.

Looking ahead, our ambition in the UK is focused and deliberate: to build cultural relevance and aspiration, to expand selectively through the right retail partners, and to create a network of experience-led touchpoints that deepen engagement rather than simply scale presence.

Your newest launch, Golden Hour, has seen you collaborate with renowned perfumer Pascal Gaurin. How did this collaboration come to be and what was the inspiration behind it?

Atelier Rebul has always believed that fragrance creation is a dialogue between cultures, memories, and master perfumers - and Pascal Gaurin was an instinctively natural collaborator for Golden Hour. His rare ability to translate emotion, atmosphere, and memory into scent aligns deeply with our own philosophy of narrative perfumery.

Golden Hour was born from one of nature’s most universal yet intimate moments - the fleeting transition between day and night. It is that suspended moment when everything feels heightened, warmer, almost cinematic.

For us, this idea is inseparable from Istanbul. A city where light is never just light - it reflects off water, stone, and history, constantly shifting, always telling a different story. Golden Hour captures this duality: warmth and depth, clarity and nostalgia, presence and passing time.

The result is a fragrance that feels both enveloping and luminous - an olfactive interpretation of time slowing down for just a moment, before the night and day meet.

You’re now in 27 countries and stocked by some of the world’s biggest retail partners such as Sephora, Douglas and Galeries Lafayette. Do you see anything unique about the consumer in the UK?

The UK consumer stands out for their cultural literacy and refined curiosity. There is a natural discernment in how they approach fragrance - not as a product, but as an expression of identity. They value authenticity, craftsmanship, and restraint: a quiet form of luxury that does not need to declare itself loudly.

What is particularly exciting is the rise of the modern fragrance explorer in the UK - consumers who are moving beyond familiarity and actively seeking niche, story-driven brands with depth and originality. They are interested in the “why” behind a scent as much as the scent itself.

At the same time, the UK is uniquely cosmopolitan. It brings together global audiences who are already attuned to Atelier Rebul’s heritage and narrative world, creating a dynamic space where discovery and recognition coexist.

For us, this makes the UK not just a market, but a cultural conversation - one we are proud to be part of.

What are your bestsellers in the range?

Our most iconic bestseller remains the Istanbul Collection - our signature, story-driven range that sits at the very heart of Atelier Rebul. It is more than a fragrance line; it is the foundation of our brand universe, capturing the soul of the city where our heritage began and translating it into scent, ritual and memory.

Across our ecosystem, we operate in a fully immersive way across fragrance, home, bath and body - allowing consumers to experience the brand in different, interconnected layers of daily life. This multi-category approach has been instrumental in building both loyalty and frequency of engagement.

Within this structure, home fragrance has emerged as one of our strongest and fastest-growing pillars. It has become a key entry point into the brand, driven by consumers’ desire to shape personal spaces through scent and bring emotional storytelling into their homes.

Alongside this, our premium and niche fragrance creations, especially the Parfum Artisanal Collection, continue to play a critical role in elevating brand perception globally. These compositions reflect our more artistic, perfumery-led direction and reinforce Atelier Rebul’s positioning as a house that bridges heritage with contemporary niche perfumery.

Developed in collaboration with world-renowned perfumers, each Parfum Artisanal fragrance begins with the careful selection of the finest and most authentic ingredients.

Parfum Artisanal is “crafted inside out”, uniting exceptional olfactive mastery with refined exterior craftsmanship. Inside, the fragrances undergo an eight-week maceration process, allowing the notes to rest, blend and reach full harmony. Outside, each Parfum Artisanal fragrance is presented as a jewel-like masterpiece, inspired by Art Deco aesthetics and finished with handcrafted details that reflect Atelier Rebul’s timeless dedication to precision, beauty, and craftsmanship. Within this collection, Parfum Artisanal Elixir 1, created by world-renowned master perfumer Alberto Morillas, stands as a powerful endorsement of Atelier Rebul’s commitment to contemporary niche perfumery, artistic craftsmanship and exceptional olfactive quality.

Together, these pillars create a balanced portfolio - rooted in an iconic signature, expanded through accessible daily rituals, and elevated by highly crafted, expressive fragrances that define our global brand identity.

What are you plans for the UK market?

The UK is a strategic priority for Atelier Rebul, and we see it not as an expansion market, but as a long-term brand-building journey.

Our ambition is to create a strong and instantly recognisable presence through a carefully balanced approach - selective retail expansion, meaningful partnerships, and, most importantly, storytelling that truly resonates with the UK consumer.

Beyond distribution, our focus is on creating emotional connection. We want to build experiences that allow people to step inside our world - fragrance workshops, personalisation rituals and intimate, community-driven events that transform scent from a product into a shared memory.

At the same time, we see the UK as a powerful cultural platform for Atelier Rebul. In this context, we are planning special projects with “Museums and Foundations”, allowing us to connect our fragrance heritage with the worlds of art, design, culture and craftsmanship. These partnerships are very important for us, as they allow the brand to be experienced not only commercially, but also culturally.

From a business perspective, we are building the UK market through multiple complementary channels. Alongside our Marylebone boutique, we are actively exploring a second store location in London and look forward to sharing exciting news very soon.

In parallel, we are in ongoing discussions with leading department stores, and our aim is to finalise a department store partnership in the third quarter of 2026. We believe the right retail partnerships will be key to strengthening our premium positioning, increasing visibility, and reaching a broader luxury consumer base in the UK.

At the same time, our online presence continues to grow strongly, allowing us to build awareness, accessibility and engagement beyond our physical retail footprint. In the first three months, we have already tripled our online sales, which is a very encouraging signal of consumer demand and brand traction. For the rest of the year, we will place a stronger focus on online sales and digital marketing, with the ambition of growing our online sales eightfold compared with the beginning of the year.

In parallel, we are also expanding into the horeca channel, partnering with selected hotels, restaurants and lifestyle destinations to introduce Atelier Rebul through experience-led touchpoints. Together, our boutiques, department store partnerships, online business, cultural collaborations and horeca presence allow us to strengthen our position in the UK in a holistic and sustainable way.

For us, the UK is not about scale alone. It is about relevance, depth, and permanence. Our goal is to establish Atelier Rebul as a culturally embedded, highly desirable fragrance house - one that feels not imported, but meaningfully present and organically part of the UK fragrance landscape.