Personalized perfumes: a new business
- Eloïse Niklaus
- Nov 15, 2020
- 4 min read
The concept of tailor-made perfumes is a growing luxury and a service that more and more brands are offering. The trend of tailor-made perfume is not new. As historian Elisabeth de Feydeau, author of La Grande Histoire du Parfum (Larousse) explains, "For centuries, at the court of kings, perfume was composed for one person". In 1828 the first Guerlain boutique opened in Paris and created unique perfumes for its customers. However, it was neglected for a long time due to the development of "general public" perfumes and the industrialisation following successes such as Shalimar or N°5.
In an era of "do it yourself" and where standing out is becoming the norm, customers testify to a deep desire for a fragrance that stands out from the crowd and personalisation has made a comeback. Today, many reputable workshops or noses offer customers the opportunity to create their own personal fragrance.
Customised fragrances complete the range of high-end possibilities already available, such as niche brands, limited editions and private collections. Francis Kurkdihan, one of the stars of the profession, defines it as the ultimate luxury, even more than the haute couture dress, which only exists in a few units. It is a unique composition, designed to evoke your personality, your memories, your ambitions, your soul.
A dream of perfume that most of the time requires a significant investment. Among the great perfumers, personalising one's fragrance is reserved for an elite, the price being several thousand euros: the nose needs time to find THE perfume that will reveal, through the sense of smell, the personality of its client. The perfume is built from start to finish for him by a master perfumer, such as Thierry Wasser at Guerlain. The perfumer reworks the essences over and over again to capture something the client doesn't know. When the client is ready to pay the price of the concentrate, the financial limit is virtually non-existent. Thomas Fontaine, who worked for Jean Patou, explains, "Instead of using 1 or 2 grams of tuberose from Grasse or Iris Pallida at 140,000 euros per kilo, you use more. The pleasure of creation is total. You have to seduce one person, not 36,000. You can afford great originality". To the price of the raw materials is added the time spent with a nose whose time is priced according to its fame, without forgetting a whole battery of toxicological tests, 2 litres of fragrance having to respect the same regulations as a branded perfume, as well as the price of the container.
Today there are multiple options to create your own custom-made perfume: in perfumery, online and even at home.
Guerlain offers diagnostics to identify the customer's expectations, tastes and personality in order to transcribe them into a totally unique and original fragrance, just like other brands at much more affordable prices such as Parfum Sur Mesure (from a hundred euros to 3,000 euros depending on the time and expertise given to the bottle), The Alchemist Atelier and many small perfume laboratories that are emerging all over France.
For instance, The Alchimist Atelier has developed Scent Creator, a perfume generator designed with the support of Puig (Nina Ricci) and BSH (Bosch, Siemens), using cartridges containing a few drops of a delicate blend (sandalwood spiced with pepper, lemon spiced with green tea, Damascus rose...). For 129€, a client in search of originality can then leave the workshop in possession of a 20ml bottle of his eau de parfum (the next 20ml of the same formula being charged 59€). It is possible for a private individual to buy its own Scent Creator, supplied with six fragrances that they can renew or change for 18 to 24 euros each, the first litre of home-made perfume costing around 6,400€.
Shops also organise creation workshops where each participant makes his or her own fragrance on the spot, with the help of a specialist who guides them through the discovery of raw materials, notes and accords. This is the case for Sillages Paris or Candora, for example.
In this digital age, it is now possible to make a custom-made perfume online. This is what sites such as MyFragrance or the previously mentioned Sillages Paris workshop offer. Customers choose the different notes from a list of proposals and a nose is then in charge of the composition. The prices are more reasonable (starting at 60€ for 30ml at Sillages), but the customer does not benefit from a personal diagnosis or a guarantee as to the result, especially for the uninitiated, for whom the choices can be risky. The MyFragrance website offers creation kits containing practical information sheets, empty bottles, pipettes, perfumer's touches and the raw materials that will make up the perfume for those who wish to experiment the nose trade.
Pop-up store Sillages Paris x Bon Marché
If tailor-made perfumes contribute to the prestige of luxury houses and renowned perfumers, it is not certain that this is a sufficiently profitable business, as these operations are hardly in line with the economic model of the big names in the sector. Patou (taken over by LVMH) and Cartier, for example, threw in the towel last year, which didn't surprise Alain Ferro, director of the Grasse Perfume School: "Custom-made products are aimed at a tiny niche. Even at 50,000 euros, the perfume house doesn't make a living". The very particular business of custom-made perfumes seems to be more aimed at personalized workshops than at the big perfume and couture houses.
By Eloïse Niklaus, 05/11/2020
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