On Thursday, January 23rd, actress and activist Ashley Judd joined Audrey Gruss to introduce the new Hope Fragrance Collection at a high tea in Bergdorf Goodman’s luxurious seventh floor, BG Restaurant.

The Hope Collection consists of the classic Hope, The Uplifting Fragrance™, and two new scents, Hope Sport and Hope Night. The collection will launch exclusively at Bergdorf Goodman on February 3^rd, 2020. Guests at the high tea, including Muffie Potter Aston, CeCe Cord, Diandra Douglas, Jamee Gregory and Hilary Ross, were treated to a first look at the two new fragrances, designed to uplift the senses and developed by Firmenich’s master perfumer Honorine Blanc in collaboration with Ms.Gruss. The two NEW Hope Fragrances, Hope Sport and Hope Night, take the Hope Fragrance journey from day to night.

Additional guests included: Bonnie Pfeifer Evans, Susan Gutfreund, Barbara Bancroft, Krista Bard, Janna Bullock, Jean Doumanian, Joanna Mastroianni, Marc Rosen, Scott Snyder and Louisa Benton.

The Hope Sport Eau de Parfum ($150) is a refreshing and invigorating blend of essences that helps energize during an active day. This youthful scent blends green citrus top notes with two of Hope’s signature white flowers, Tuberose and Lily-of-the-Valley to create a crisp, clean effect.

The Hope Night Eau de Parfum ($150) is a warm, romantic and sensuous fragrance that inspires you to fall in love again and again. Featuring a unique blend of sophisticated oriental notes, including Amber, Vanilla, Patchouli, Plum and Vetiver, on a base of Gardenia and Lily-of-the-Valley, Hope Night evokes warmth, comfort, and romance.

The Hope Fragrance collection created by Audrey Gruss, Founder and Chair of the Hope for Depression Research Foundation (HDRF), Hope Fragrances are 100 percent charitable. All of the net profits of sales from each Hope Fragrance go directly to HDRF to support groundbreaking depression research. The mission of HDRF is to fund the most innovative neuroscience research into the origins, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of depression and its related mood disorders, including bipolar disorder, postpartum depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorder and suicide.

Pink champagne by Laurent Perrier was poured as hors d’oeuvres were passed around the room. Guests mingled amongst green and white linen-covered tables, decorated with freshly cut flowers evoking Hope Fragrance’s key notes – gardenia, jasmine, lily-of-the-valley and tuberose. Gold bowls of Madagascar vanilla pods, vibrant limes and ripe plums were positioned in the middle of the grand room, representing the fresh and evocative notes of Hope Sport and Night. Classic three-tiered trays adorned each table, offering a variety of sandwiches, freshly baked scones, fruit preserves, Devonshire cream and petite sweets including macarons and financiers.

“My mother Hope loved white flowers and surrounded herself with them,” said HDRF Founder & Chair/Hope Fragrance Founder, Audrey Gruss. “The original Hope, influenced by my mother, is a combination of white flowers and a verdant note that evokes the fresh green of nature. The two new fragrances are also based on the DNA of the original iconic white flowers, but with warm oriental notes that evoke romance, beautifully manifested in Hope Night; and with green citrus notes that energize a woman’s day, captured in Hope Sport. This creates the Hope Fragrance Collection that takes a woman from day to night in the key moments she experiences.”

ABOUT THE CLASSIC HOPE PRODUCT

The original Hope Eau de Parfum ($150) is a magnificent fusion of the most aromatic white flowers—Gardenia, Jasmine, Lily-of-The-Valley, and Tuberose—the purest and most delicate essences that delight our senses. An exclusive green note adds a lively layer of crisp freshness. The original Hope Collection also contains Hope Hand and Body Crème ($50), a luxurious cream that leaves skin silky, soft and lightly scented, as well as the Hope Scented Candle ($70), an elegant fragrant candle that burns for up to 45 hours. The Hope Fragrance bottle, which features an elongated neck and luxury metal tones—silver for Hope Sport, rose gold for Hope Night, and iconic gold for Hope Original—was created by award-winning perfume packaging designer Marc Rosen.

ABOUT HOPE FOR DEPRESSION RESEARCH FOUNDATION

HDRF is a public, non-profit 501c3 organization founded in 2006 by Audrey Gruss in memory of her mother Hope. Its mission is to fund advanced neuroscience research in the causes, new treatments, and prevention of depression and its related mood disorders. In 2010, HDRF launched its Depression Task Force, an outstanding international collaboration of world-renowned scientists from different disciplines and research institutions across the U.S. and Canada. Working together, these top scientists are executing a joint research plan and sharing data in real time to accelerate discovery. For more information, visit: www.hopefordepression.org

HDRF aims to raise awareness of depression as a medical illness and to educate the public about the facts of depression in order to help remove the stigma that still surrounds depression.

HDRF Recent Highlights:

·       In September 2017, the Depression Task Force published a major review of research progress, including the discovery of two new compounds now going into pilot clinical trials.

·       Each compound represents a long-awaited breakthrough for a field that has seen very little progress in drug discovery for over 30 years. For example: Since the introduction of Prozac (an SSRI) in 1985, there has been little progress in developing new categories of antidepressants. All of the common medications today are just variations of the same formula (SSRIs and SNRIs, involving serotonin and norepinephrine) even though over 50 percent of depressed individuals do not respond to any of the existing medications.

·       Work by Depression Task Force members Drs. Rene Hen and Jonathan Javitch at Columbia University has proven that Tianeptine, an antidepressant compound that has been used clinically in Europe for 30 years but has never been approved for use in the US, acts on a specific part of the brain that has never before been considered for treating depression.

·       The lab of Depression Task Force member Dr. Bruce McEwen of Rockefeller has discovered that a natural chemical in the body (L-Acetyl Carnitine/LAC) can rewire the brain and is a possible new treatment for depression. Clinical research would also show that LAC analysis could offer the first blood test for depression.

·       In five short years, the progress of the Depression Task Force is an unprecedented fast track in the slow-paced world of research.

Availability: Now available at Bergdorf Goodman and BergdorfGoodman.com