Our method
There is nothing secret about how we work — only patience and good materials. A perfume that leaves the workshop has usually been more than a year in the making.
We buy from growers and distillers we know by name: the rose and jasmine of the Grasse basin, mimosa from Tanneron, bitter orange from the orchards near Vallauris, and resins and citrus from the wider Mediterranean. When a crop is poor, we make less. We do not substitute a natural material with its synthetic copy to keep a perfume in stock.
Formulae are weighed on a balance at the perfumer's organ — the tiered bench that holds our essences. A new fragrance begins as a handful of trials, each adjusted by a few drops and set aside to be smelled again the next morning, when the nose is rested. Most ideas never leave the bench.
Once a formula is settled, the concentrate is diluted in grain alcohol and left to macerate for several weeks, then chilled and filtered by hand through unbleached paper until it runs clear. This is slow and a little wasteful, and it is the step that gives a natural perfume its roundness.
The filtered perfume rests in dark glass for a further month or two before bottling. Nothing is rushed to market; a flacon you buy has already had time to settle into itself.