The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2025
Gentlebrand bottles 12 perfumes as chess pieces — Avance wins Pentawards 2025 Platinum
Twelve fragrances, each a chess piece with a personality — collecting them completes the board. Professional Concept Platinum, Pentawards 2025.
Gentlebrand · Avance
What it had to solve
Gentlebrand's internal brief for Avance asked: in perfume — a category where every material, technology and iconic shape is already used to impress — how do you go beyond simple premium packaging and offer something truly distinctive?
How it works
Avance began as an internal provocation at Gentlebrand, the packaging and branding studio based in Conegliano near Venice, Italy. In perfume — a category where every material, technology and iconic shape is already used to impress — the brief asked how to go beyond simple premium packaging and create something truly distinctive: a system rather than another beautiful bottle.
The answer was chess. Gentlebrand built twelve limited-edition fragrances, each assigned to a chess piece that doubles as a branding archetype with its own role, attitude and values. The scents embody the dualities of the human soul — reason and passion, light and shadow — and each bottle is designed as an icon, a winning move in a game of desire and seduction.
Crucially, the collection is a system: every unit has its own strong character, yet it only fully reveals its meaning alongside the others, just as a chess piece gains significance through its role in the game. The packaging invites owners to collect all twelve pieces and complete a premium chessboard, turning the portfolio itself into the experience.
At the 2025 Pentawards gala in Amsterdam, Avance took the Platinum award in the Professional Concept category, its highest distinction. Andrea Rizzardi, Gentlebrand's managing director, said the trophy validated the studio's integrated approach — creativity, engineering and strategy working together — and opened new conversations with FMCG clients.
Why it lands
- It converts a packaging project into a narrative system: the chessboard gives every SKU a role, a personality and a reason to exist, which is far stronger than styling a bottle.
- The collection mechanic — each piece only makes sense with the others — turns the whole portfolio into the product, inviting repeat purchases to complete the set.
- It answers a real competitive question: in perfume, where premium materials and shapes are the norm, the concept differentiates through meaning rather than expense.
- The studio kept it credible by pairing strategy with engineering, treating the concept as a point of view that could still be manufactured and sold.
What it did
Avance won the Pentawards 2025 Platinum trophy in the Professional Concept category, the highest distinction there. Managing director Andrea Rizzardi said the award increased the project's visibility, gave it credibility in client conversations, and opened doors with FMCG brands.
What you can take
Give the product line a governing rule: when each SKU has its own character but only makes full sense with the others, packaging becomes a collection mechanic — differentiation and coherence coexist.
Since then
After the Platinum win, Gentlebrand presented Avance as its flagship concept work, and trade press covered it as a masterstroke in sensory design. Rizzardi told Pentawards that the award acted as an ambassador for the studio's approach, creating a shared language with clients about the level of thinking and execution behind a concept. The project reinforced Gentlebrand's positioning — brand strategy, identity and packaging design combined with prototyping and engineering — as it pursued client work across FMCG and beverage categories.
Sources
- AVANCE. Think ahead.
- Interview with 2025 Platinum Professional Concept Winner, Gentlebrand
- Avance and Rosae earn top honors for Gentlebrand at global packaging design awards
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