What is your background and what led you to D'Orsay?

I went to a Parisian business school with a specialisation in the luxury industry, but it was growing up surrounded by little vials of perfume that made me want to embark on the D'ORSAY adventure I guess.
My father had a "small" perfume brand at the time, submissions were scattered all over his office, and I also had a passion for miniature bottles which were very fashionable at the time, my family enlarged my collection at every opportunity, I had them on a whole wall of my room in dedicated display cases and shelves!
Finally, I associated my perfumes with periods of my life very early on, and it's quite funny to be able to trace my life by the perfume I was wearing at the time. At each stage of my life, I choose a new perfume, it's the marker of a change after all.
As a teenager, I wore "love elixirs", then CK One, finally I had the ingredients of D'ORSAY at hand, love and non-gender!

The passion for perfume runs in the family for you. Could you tell us about it?

As I said, my father started a perfume brand which he later sold, however he continued in the industry and particularly in home fragrances. So naturally, home fragrances are an obvious choice for me, not perfuming my home is like going out unscented which is impossible for me! Whether I'm entertaining people, or alone, I like to create an olfactory atmosphere, it influences our perception of a place and what happens there. However, I am not a perfume technician, I admit that I work instinctively and intuitively, I surround myself with people who have a nose and a sharp vision to support me!

What is your earliest olfactory memory?

My earliest memories go back to the 80's... in the Normandy countryside, my sister (Mélanie Huynh) and I spent all our holidays there before we were 10 years old, our grandmother owned a farm, so there was no shortage of smells there! However, I remember her vegetable garden and her garden, the scent of tomato leaves, wild strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, rhubarb... mixed with those of cyclamen, lilacs, carnations, poppies, daffodils, chrysanthemums and so on depending on the season. It was a joyful mix! Specifically, I remember the smell of rice pudding that she would brandish in the fireplace, so the smell of caramel mixed with the smell of toast, sweet milk and rice, it was completely addictive!

What was your biggest challenge when you took over the reins of D'ORSAY in 2015?

D'ORSAY dates back to 1830, when Alfred d'Orsay created the first couple's fragrance out of love for Lady Blessington, whom he had met in 1821. Since then, the House has always been active, it has been taken over successively, has known successes and setbacks, but we are talking about almost 200 years of creations and history, not to mention the fact that Alfred d'Orsay was a man of many talents, so the hardest thing was to decide to refocus the brand on its pure DNA, on the very essence of what gave it birth, to tell it with modernity as much in the juices, the design of the products, the artistic direction, as in the words, because words are important at D'ORSAY...
Our body fragrances explore states of love, while our interior fragrances set the scene for love meetings, D'ORSAY ultimately speaks only of love, self-love, brotherly love, love of the other, love of many, no matter what the states of love are, for they are universal. It is the only emotion that can literally turn us upside down.

How did you come up with the idea of olfactory "instruments"?

Our instruments are called fetishes and totems, and the inspiration for the names seems quite evocative.
On the other hand, what inspired us for the fetish was the notion of lack, the lack of the other... the desire to smell it when it is not there. That's how the fetish was born, an intimate and intimist diffusion, all in a play of transparency with these openwork, that you can slip into your pocket, into a drawer, put on your desk, etc... everyone can do what they want with their fetish!
As far as the totem is concerned, we are on a more intense diffusion, the love of beauty and the play of the openwork characteristic of chiaroscuro, gave me the desire to give life to this object, made of brass, in one piece and without sewing, worked in France in a jewellery workshop. Beyond its powerful distribution, it is an object in its own right.

D'Orsay also offers candles in refillable format. How did you manage to develop them?

Our 250g candle is above all a very beautiful decorative object. The glass sculpted with gaudrons, the gilded brass base, the hot monogram, and its format make it an object that one would not want to part with. It takes a long time to burn out, but that's inevitable, so we wanted to extend the life of this object by creating wax refills that fit perfectly into the glass container. Yes, there were some technical challenges in making a wax bar that fit our mould perfectly, but with our craftsmen we managed to do it and we've done much more complicated things.

Could you tell us more about the iconic unisex fragrance that started the brand? How was it revolutionary?

I don't know if revolutionary is the right word to describe that first juice, but for us it was the foundation of the maison d'ORSAY. You know, this notion of storytelling is very much exploited by all brands in all fields, and sometimes, often, you have the product first and then you write the story...
We didn't need to create a story, to invent it, what we needed to do was to explore it in its purest and most contemporary form. D'ORSAY was born from a heartbeat, as we often say, it is our signature. Two hearts, that of Alfred D'Orsay and Marguerite Blessington. This true love story, forbidden, full of adventure and passion - enough to write a novel - is a true story. This first perfume was created by Alfred for the couple he and Marguerite formed. And this is our starting point for all our creations: What state of love do we want to evoke? Our perfumes are all about couples, about states of love, about love for oneself, for the other, they are vectors of emotions! If there is a valid revolution in the end, it is the one of love, isn't it? It took 200 years until this first fragrance was reinvented with Fanny Bal and relaunched under the name "À cœur perdu. L.B." in 2021.

Where do the phrases on each of the fragrances come from?

That's the great mystery, isn't it? And the maison D'ORSAY is not devoid of it. It's even something we cultivate. Each phrase is a form of declaration, inspired by a person who evokes for us the desired state of love, it can be a quote or a wink to that person, hence the presence of initials that we do not reveal except for L.B for Lady Blessington and G.A for Grimod Alfred (the original family name of Alfred d'Orsay), our next fragrance which will be released in June.
They can be contemporary or very old personalities, sometimes even fictitious but existing through writings.
I think it's a very poetic way of naming fragrances and it sets us apart from many other brands. Some people only use initials to order their perfume.

Each perfume name is preceded by the initials of a mysterious person. Would you have any clues to give us so that we can find out the identity of their owners (real, fictional characters, etc)?

Apart from the two exceptions mentioned above, I prefer to leave that part of the mystery untouched! I think that for some of the juices you can guess with a bit of research, but we prefer to leave it to your imagination. The lucky ones who have the same initials as our fragrances will be delighted to make them their own!

If you were a d'Orsay fragrance, which one would you be?

I am not very loyal to any one fragrance, but I am always very loyal to the maison D'ORSAY.
However, I am very loyal to Je suis le plus grand. M.A. which I share with my lover, to À cœur perdu. L.B., which follows me delicately and manages to blend in with my moods as the seasons change, and Nous sommes amants. M.D. who smells of Palo Santo (a wood I burn everywhere and which accompanies me) and already... already the next one! The next two rather!

What are the future plans for the brand? 

We relaunched D'ORSAY only two years ago with 5 body fragrances and 5 home fragrances, and since then we have worked passionately to offer a selection in which everyone can find the state of love or secret rendezvous that will thrill them.
Now we have 15 body and 15 home fragrances. We have reached a kind of cruising speed in terms of fragrance releases, and our rhythm now favours real olfactory or object highlights. This year we will release 2 body fragrances with Dandy or not. G.A. a Boisé Cuiré imagined with Sidonie Lancesseur which will be released in June and another fragrance, this time oriental, which we will release in September.
2023 is already in the making and we are looking forward to ongoing projects with new perfumers.
A new, very summery candle will arrive in June, and a special edition is already ready for Christmas of course!... We are also continuing to explore distribution methods and will be proposing beautiful creations from the autumn onwards, with collaborations that are in line with those carried out with the architect-designer Isabelle Stanislas or the artist In Love Street art! At D'ORSAY, everything is a matter of heart and encounters.