Photo: Courtesy of Carol Han Pyle
Watch the full conversation between Carol Han Pyle and Fashionista Beauty Director Stephanie Saltzman on The Fashionista Network.
In true “The Devil Wears Prada” style, Carol Han Pyle landed the post-grad job a million girls would kill for: an Elle fashion assistant manning the coveted fashion closet.
Her career in editorial continued with positions at Lucky and Elle.com, until Pyle launched a consulting agency called Community Atelier in 2010. She still works with it today, but when the pandemic hit in 2020, half of the agency’s clients left overnight. Contemplating the future of her career, Pyle turned to her lifelong passion for fragrance.
“I was suddenly not very busy for the first time in my entire adult life, and I really spent that entire year taking a pause and just being like, is now the moment where I do something with fragrance that I have been dreaming about since I was a kid? So that’s what I did,” she told Fashionista’s Stephanie Saltzman live on The Fashionista Network. (Watch it here!)
Thus, Nette — Pyle’s New York-based candle and fragrance brand — was born in 2021. Her early childhood memories include watching her mother making candles by hand, but when Pyle began researching the candles burning within her own home, she noticed a lack of transparent ingredient lists and well-branded stories across the category.
“I really wanted to create something that could live up to the level of a very luxury, beautifully branded product that still did things in a way that made me feel really comfortable,” she said. She also cited her storytelling skills honed from her background in editorial as a key to growing Nette: “I’ve always been a storyteller at every touch point in my career, and I think that that basic skill has lent itself so well to building a brand.”
Housed in handmade ceramic vessels, Nette’s candles are designed to be “cup first,” meaning they’re food-safe, dishwasher-safe and microwave-safe for easy reuse. Nette tapped IFF perfumer Celine Barel to formulate most of the brand’s scents, which include complex, fine fragrance-level ingredients, such as Pearl Dust‘s notes of orris, known as one of the most expensive perfumery ingredients.
Photo: Courtesy of Nette
After launching exclusively with Sephora, Nette expanded into perfume last year and its most recent scent, Pear Jam, has emerged as a fan favorite. (It was inspired by a scene in the ’90s classic “Ghost” when Molly (Demi Moore) receives a paper bag of Japanese pears.)
In the full interview, Pyle also spoke about her strategy around collaborations with the likes of Tata Harper, Barbie and Crown Affair, and how they’ve served as growth opportunities. “We say no to like 90% of the collaboration opportunities that are presented to us,” Pyle said. “I think it’s really important to get it right.”
Pyle also opened up about some of the surprising aspects of becoming a beauty entrepreneur, including the “utter need for capital.” Looking ahead, Pyle teased an upcoming perfume launch, a high-profile new hire and category expansion. Watch the full interview here.
This conversation was hosted on The Fashionista Network powered by interactive media platform Fireside, where viewers get the chance to participate and speak directly with industry figures. Learn more about The Fashionista Network here.
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Source: Fashionista.com