Selected Artists & ICons
: 14
NICOLAS MALLEVILLE ENTREPRENEUR
AND HIS FAMILY
FRANCESCA BONATO
LEON
SANTOS & FLEUR
Born in Cordoba, Argentina, Nicolas Malleville is from a mixed background of Basque French ancestry on his paternal side and Italian ancestry on his mother’s side. As a child, he spent his days outside planting gardens filled with native florals, vegetables, fruits, and herbs. He grew up fully immersed in an organic, rural lifestyle in the Argentinian countryside.
His grandfather worked in the rural Pampas of South America in laboratory that created emulsions and cremes from natural flora to create natural products for daily life and a highly influential person for Malleville in his early years. Fond memories still flood Malleville’s mind from watching his grandfather mix natural creams, holistic medications, medicinal plants, herbs and even colognes in his childhood years. From an early age, he was immersed in the reality of plants, herbs, and botanicals within an authentic laboratory/apothecary setting.
Malleville went on to study agriculture in undergraduate school, before taking on a specialization in Industrial Design and Landscape Architecture. After graduation, Malleville moved to London to work as a freelance Landscape Architect in some of Europe’s most gorgeous and renowned botanical gardens. Shortly after, Malleville was scouted by a top modeling agency and began a new career, though his passion for botanicals always remained strong. During the next decade, Malleville lived between Paris, London, and New York while embarking on his rapidly growing modeling career. During this time, he fostered relationships with some of the top names in the fashion industry—Tom Ford, Karl Lagerfeld, Carine Roitfeld, Anastasia Barbieri, among others. He sat for photographers such as Peter Lindberg, Steven Meisel, Michal Jansson, and Mario Testino. Most significantly, he worked with Tom Ford on campaigns during his final years at Gucci.
While traveling the world as a young model, he first came to French Polynesia in the 90’s. Malleville had an instant love for the culture, botanicals, and vibrant landscapes that French Polynesia offered. He knew that one day, he would come back to live on these islands. In 2002 while in the height of his career, Malleville moved to the Yucatan Peninsula to merge his passions into a new venture. After years spent traveling the world as a young model, Malleville gained an appreciation for the landscapes and natural botanicals found in such remote areas of the world. In the Yucatan, his first fragrance collection was brought to life conceptually through merging his passions for perfumes, botanicals, architecture, and natural landscapes.
From his years in fashion, Malleville also gained a heightened expertise in the world of design, architecture, and art. Merging that world with his background in botany, his obsession with subtropical and tropical landscapes, and his fascination for travel led Malleville to found Coqui Coqui Perfumes, Residences & Spas in 2003. He first spent yearsexploring the flowers, fruits, herbs and woods native to the Yucatan Peninsula in order to create a fragrance line that captured the local flora, the landscapes, and the history and folklore of the region. On the shores of the Mexican Caribbean Sea, Coqui Coqui was born with a boutique residence and full service spa. There, Malleville created his first line of Yucatan-inspired fragrances for the home and body, with cents such as coconut, mint, lime, and tobacco. Today, this premier fragrance collection is now sold all over the world, alongside the Ilse de la Society collection, which is inspired by the landscapes, flora, and folklore of French Polynesia. The unisex fragrances are designed to complement the surrounding environment, inspired by the mix of nature and folklore which gives Malleville the guidelines for creating each unique bouquet.
Now with spas and fragrance collections in French Polynesia (Ilse de la Société) the French Riviera (Riviera dei Fiori), Argentina (Sierras Pampeanas), and the Yucatan (Yucatan Peninsula) — along with a residence and hotel in the Mayan jungle of Coba — his projects have grown across four of the world’s hemispheres. Alongside his partner, Francesca, and their three children, Leon, Santi, and Fleur, Malleville is living an authentic explorer’s lifestyle. Malleville currently resides between Mexico, French Polynesia, and France while serving as the creative director of Coqui Coqui, continuing to grow his passions for landscapes, botanicals, local handicraft and arts.
Writing credits Sarah Rowland.
The most beautiful way to harness the emotional expression of the places where we live is through our collections of fragrances and objects. All of this is born out of what we’re surrounded by in each place –essentially the botanicals, flavours, textures, and colours of these unique corners of the world. From the beginning, I have always rooted the Coqui Coqui concept in fragrance because of its ability to transcend memory and experience. But the concept also extends to objects that honour the handcraft and traditions of the specific regions where Coqui Coqui operates, which Francesca has brought her Italian artisan background to the production process. For us, the Coqui Coqui lifestyle is best expressed in natural fragrances and beautiful objects resulting in a combination of our shared passions – architecture, travel, fragrance, botany, art.
We will always have places that we call our “home away from home” – the places we return to. Our way of life has led us to navigate the four hemispheres of the world in which our collections exist. We move from place to place according to the seasons, often chasing after eternal springtime, because that’s when the florals and botanicals are in full bloom. In this way, we always have the desire to move within these four hemispheres of the world and to go back to these certain places that we call home.
Coqui Coqui is our interpretation of the explorers’ lifestyle that we have chosen for the last 21 years. Our objective is always to live a life fully immersed within the florals, the landscapes, and folklore of the tropical and subtropical regions that we choose to inhabit. These are the places where we discover the formulas and authentic aromas for our fragrance collections and also where we find inspiration for each of the objects that we design.
In 2006, our story was shared in several major magazines such as Conde Nast Traveler, AD France, W Magazine, and The New York Times. Many journalists were looking for authentic travel experiences at that time, and we started getting more attention through magazines and word of mouth. Having a perfumeria situated in the middle of the Mexican jungle was an unusual concept. We had this idea of wanting to share primitive and decadent luxuries in an unusual space, and we felt drawn to curating the experience for guests to arrive at a perfumeria and spa in the wildest corner of the Yucatan jungle. This was the first place where we began to share the region’s local arts, folklore, landscapes, and our own line of fragrances for the home and body that were inspired by the surrounding botanicals.
The name Coqui Coqui was born by accident when we started approaching the creation of fragrances for the home and body with coconut and monoi oils and coconut perfumes that were reminiscent of the Yucatan region where we began. This was the first fragrance ever made for our collection, and we curated it with two different types of coconuts, so Coqui Coqui felt like the right fit for our brand.
The magic of Coqui Coqui occurs within the transportive nature of fragrance and memory.
WRITING
BY
SARAH ROWLAND
