When Rochas’ designer Olivier Theyskens was asked for A#3 to choose a personal object to represent his vision, he chose this ecosphere – an entire life-cycle preserved within glass.

The soft elliptical shape contains a self-sufficient environment, its intrinsic beauty in the purity and unity of elements: air, water, plants and animals. The silhouette is embryonic – feminine in the egg-shaped curve and cyclical function. Here it sits pod-like on a table, photographed by Marco Palmieri, as though life on Earth being studied by some grand alien spectator.

The object holds a dichotomous nature, in the dependence of the interaction within the sphere contrasting with a complete independence of the entity itself from the wider world.

A fusion of hard and soft, femininity with a hard exterior, subtlety and strength, the ecosphere is a carefully selected, formidable metaphor for Theyskens’ Rochas aesthetic.