Celebrity Name: Kelly Rutherford
Deal Type: Co-Creation Partnership
Announced: March 21, 2026
Impact: Elevates Rose Première as a niche, storytelling-driven scent while reinforcing Rutherford’s status as a luxury lifestyle figure.
- Kelly Rutherford and luxury fragrance founder Véronique Gabai have co-created Rose Première, a floral scent anchored in Rose de Mai from Grasse, born from a 15-year friendship and a shared love of the South of France.
- The fragrance blends bergamot, vanilla, and musk alongside its signature Rose de Mai heart, designed to feel, in Rutherford’s own words, “polished but still human, joyful, sensual, alive.”
- The launch begins with 2,000 limited-edition signed bottles, each carrying Rutherford’s signature and the tagline “Everything meaningful starts with love,” before entering Gabai’s permanent maison collection.
- The partnership extends Rutherford’s growing brand footprint, coming just days after she also announced an expanded collaboration with jewelry brand The Twentyfour Six, adding 18-karat gold diamond earrings and a sterling silver necklace to that line.
Kelly Rutherford, best known for playing Lily van der Woodsen across all six seasons of Gossip Girl, has stepped into the world of luxury fragrance with the launch of Rose Première, a new scent created in partnership with beauty entrepreneur Véronique Gabai.
The collaboration is rooted in a friendship stretching back to 2011, when the two women first met as co-chairs at a gala for Lycée Français De New York.
Gabai, who was born in Antibes and founded her namesake luxury fragrance brand in 2019 after executive stints at LVMH, L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, and Vera Wang, drew on Rutherford’s deep affinity for the rose flower, and for the South of France, where the actress now lives.
The two traveled together to harvest Rose de Mai in the village of Grasse, and the experience shaped the entire scent. “From one step to the next, we created the fragrance,” Gabai told WWD. The result layers that prized rose with bergamot for brightness, then settles into vanilla and musk for a warm, sensual finish.
Just as she’s made her mark on screen, Rutherford is quietly building an off-screen brand identity. This fragrance launch follows just days after she expanded her ongoing collaboration with jewelry brand The Twentyfour Six into 18-karat gold diamond earrings and a sterling silver necklace.
Similar celebrity-brand partnerships have been making headlines throughout 2026: from Gabrielle Union and Keegan-Michael Key fronting the Casamigos World Cup campaign to Lindsay Lohan teaming with Health-Ade for a playful wellness campaign.
The 2,000 limited-edition bottles go on sale first, before Rose Première by Kelly Rutherford enters Gabai’s permanent maison collection.
Takeaways
This launch is a masterclass in what makes celebrity-brand partnerships land in 2026: authenticity over transaction. Rutherford didn’t just lend her name to a bottle; she went to the harvest fields in Grasse, she shaped the scent’s direction, and she carries a genuine decade-and-a-half relationship with the brand’s founder. That’s not a campaign, that’s a co-creation.
For Gabai, the move is equally smart. Rutherford brings aspirational lifestyle appeal and a built-in audience that already associates her with elegance, sophistication, and the Franco-American chic that defines the Véronique Gabai brand universe.
The limited 2,000-bottle debut is also a savvy play: scarcity builds desire, the signed bottles create a collectible moment, and the tagline “Everything meaningful starts with love” positions the product emotionally before it ever hits the permanent collection.
Are you more likely to trust a campaign when the star is involved in product creation, not just the photoshoot? Does a celebrity’s personal style influence whether you’ll try a new fragrance?
