Inside Citrine Veil, Galia Lahav’s First-Ever Fragrance
“I’ve always felt something was missing,” says Galia Lahav’s head designer, Sharon Sever. “You create a woman in a gown—completely transformed, controlled, almost cinematic. And then she leaves… and nothing follows her. It felt incomplete.”
That sense of ephemerality became the starting point for Citrine Veil, Galia Lahav’s first-ever fragrance, created in collaboration with A. N. OTHER.
Launching on April 8 during Bridal Fashion Week, the scent follows a months-long collaboration between the bridal couturier and the New York-based fragrance house. Their goal? To craft an “invisible gown,” as Sever puts it: not an accessory to the house’s signature bridalwear, but its natural continuation. “Traditionally, a fashion house will define its vision for a perfume in a very detailed brief, which acts as a blueprint guiding the perfumer from concept to formula,” says Ariella Appelbaum, co-founder of A. N. OTHER. As for Galia Lahav? “There was no brief. The brand spoke for itself.” Given carte blanche on the notes, A. N. OTHER invited a roster of perfumers to create their own interpretation of the house, with one directive: make something that lingered—in memory, in proximity, on skin.
From more than a dozen submissions, Citrine Veil emerged as the unanimous choice by the Galia Lahav team. What followed was less a product launch than the distillation of a feeling: the transformation Galia Lahav has long built into its gowns, now rendered in scent. For master perfumer—and the nose behind Citrine Veil—Steven Claisse, the inspiration came almost instantly. “I was immediately struck by the way each gown balances drama with restraint. I saw radiant energy piercing through a delicate veil.” In that image, the entire fragrance began to take shape—luminous, layered, and intentionally restrained.
Sever describes the development process in similarly couture terms. It’s “like a silhouette,” he says: “clean at first, almost innocent… and then it shifts. Warmer, deeper, slightly addictive.” The scent opens with sparkling bergamot, mandarin, and Italian lemon before softening into creamy orris, white jasmine, and cedarwood. Then, like a gown revealing its final line in motion, it settles into warm skin accord, sandalwood, musk, and woods that stay a little longer than expected.
That sense of evolution was entirely intentional. “The fragrance evolves, it surprises, it doesn’t give you everything at once,” Sever says—a sentiment that feels inseparable from the drama of Galia Lahav couture. Juxtaposing traditional bridal scents, which lean pretty in a simple, conventional way, Citrine Veil brings tension: brightness against warmth, softness against depth, innocence against seduction. The result feels almost architectural, like scent draped in layers.
“To create a signature perfume for a brand synonymous with intimacy, I leaned on Iso E Super in abundance,” Claisse explains. “Perfumers reach for it when they want a fragrance to feel close and personal.” Appelbaum adds, “The thread that pulls everything together is Ambroxan. It’s an invisible, modern engine that wraps the other notes in airy warmth and makes them last and glow.” Together, those elements transform the bright citrus opening into the soft, lasting veil the wearer experiences on skin.
More than a debut fragrance, Citrine Veil marks a new chapter for the house. “Until now, we existed in a very defined moment—the fitting, the aisle, the photograph,” Sever says. “Now we exist in movement, in memory, in proximity.” In other words, Galia Lahav no longer ends at the gown. It lingers.
As for what they hope the wearer feels? “I want people to experience that unmistakable click—the moment a fragrance aligns with who they are and who they want to be,” Appelbaum says. “When a scent settles onto the skin with a sense of rightness, it gives the wearer a quiet surge of confidence, a feeling of being a little bolder.” Which, in many ways, is exactly what Galia Lahav has always done best.
Written by Danielle Naer