Nicole
Eckels

Nicole Eckels is a maverick whose passion for the transformative power of scent inspired her to create her own global fragrance brand.

Glasshouse Fragrances has flourished for two decades, creating cult-like devotion from fans and achieving success in over ten countries.

Nicole’s superpower is her early fascination with scent as an olfactory conduit to mood and emotion, taking us to another place or moment in time. Her first sense memories include the sillage of scent trailed by beautiful, fashionable women, who mesmerised her as they passed by, hinting at an enticing world of grown-up glamour. When Nicole’s stay-at-home mum ritually prepared for a special occasion, reappearing from her bedroom made up, fragrant and radiant, that spritz of favourite scent became a talisman of pure feminine magic. For Nicole, the real-world smell of freshly cut grass ushered in spring and the mist of sprinklers on a lazy, hazy Sunday. The smell of putting petrol in the car became inextricably linked to childhood shopping trips where she could ecstatically gaze at the latest fashions.

Nicole’s destiny as a beauty industry leader was forged by this fascination with the way smells become deeply linked in our psyche to life moments. In 2005, as a New Yorker and single mum far from home, embarking on a new life in Australia, Nicole created Glasshouse Fragrances, single-handedly inventing a new category of ‘destination fragrances’ designed to evoke an enchanting locale, with an early focus on home fragrance. The first versions were made in Nicole’s kitchen, curating and blending luxury ingredients, an alchemy that makes each note even more divine when paired with others, like harmony in a melody. Nicole designed a range of long-lasting, refined scents for the pickiest, most discerning beauty obsessive, herself.

Instant success sanctioned Nicole’s leap to being an entrepreneur, and her innate drive and resilience built Glasshouse Fragrances into a success story. Her business mantra is to keep evolving, thrive on challenge, and ‘be like water’, always find a way in, over and around. Leadership requires grit. Seek the solution to each new obstacle. Overcome. Repeat. Nicole also stays attuned to the warp and weft of the cultural fabric, music, fashion, design, keeping her CEO style highly engaged and personal. Nicole’s bubbly warmth and unsinkable energy bring a fun, fresh approach to her perfectionist managerial style. Nicole’s trade is fantasy, the Glasshouse brand promise is to uplift customers somewhere better than where they are, the definition of aspirational.

Today, in collaboration with an international team of esteemed perfumers, Nicole has built Glasshouse Fragrances into the Southern Hemisphere’s leading fragrance brand, selling fine fragrances for home and body in Europe, Asia and Oceania. Now, Nicole has launched Glasshouse Fragrances in the US, where there is no product line with a comparable breadth and depth in the home fragrance category.

Nicole’s mission is to offer the sensory bliss of the ‘ahhh’ to transport us further than fragrance. The wholesome freshness of linen flapping in the breeze in The Hamptons, the tropical headiness of white petals dripping in rain, the crunch of snow as you walk through crisp pine-scented air, shopping for a Christmas tree. Nicole’s life as a businesswoman dovetails the strength and vision of empire building with the soul-gladdening magic of luxury fragrance, “Without it, life is just not the same.”