Portraits of Perfumeurs

Alexandre Makhloufi is a self-taught perfumer based in Paris. After an initial career in culture and audiovisual media, he devoted himself entirely to olfactory creation. His studio, first named Sacré Français, became Dissident Parfums in April 2026. He created three perfumes: Sleep No More in 2024, Coeur Fauve in 2025, and Umbra Veris in 2026. Each formula is born from a story to be told and plays on contrasts between shadow and light, softness and tension, memory and imagination. His...

Grandson of Jean-Paul Guerlain, Paul Guerlain discovered the ylang-ylang, vanilla, and spice plantations of Mayotte at the age of five. At fifteen, he began composing fragrances in the family laboratory, before training at ISIPCA and then at IFF under Anne Flipo. Heir to a name steeped in history, he has built his own language. His writing seeks a dialogue between materials, their attractions and their oppositions. Sensitive and precise, he draws on memories, travels, and everyday gestures to...

Born in Strasbourg and trained as a chemist, Antoine Lie learned perfumery in Grasse under Jean Guichard. After twenty-seven years within major fragrance houses, he chose independence and founded his ALOE studio in Paris. His style, direct and willingly provocative, explores the less conventional facets of olfaction: metal, leather, smoke, animalic or mineral notes. He is drawn to expressive materials, bold contrasts, and strong creative choices that provoke a reaction. Behind this radicality...

Jean-Claude Ellena prefers ellipsis to emphasis. Born in Grasse into a family of perfumers, he joined Antoine Chiris at the age of sixteen, where he learned about raw materials through contact with the old masters. His olfactory style seeks clarity, movement, and the right emotion. Each formula seems stripped of the superfluous in order to let its central idea breathe. Former exclusive perfumer for Hermès, he approaches his craft with the precision of an artisan and the sensitivity of a...

Born into a family connected to the perfume industry of Grasse, Vincent Ricord grew up in Nice surrounded by stories of raw materials and travel. Dyslexic, he found at a very young age in the laboratory a logic that suited him: smelling, combining, trying, and starting over. A senior perfumer at TechnicoFlor, he creates from an image or an emotion, much like a musician searching for the riff that can carry a song. A guitarist, bassist, and painter, he feeds his formulas with colors, rhythms,...

Marine Ipert grew up in the south of France, between sea and mountains, to the rhythm of lavender, mimosa, jasmine, and orange blossom blooms. A mother passionate about perfumes, a father attentive to the family garden, and, at the age of thirteen, a decisive encounter with a perfumer from Grasse awakened her vocation. After studying chemistry and at ISIPCA, she trained at IFF and then at the Symrise school, before joining Takasago in 2023. A draughtswoman since childhood, she conceives...

Luqman Hakim is a senior perfumer at LUZI, a Swiss fragrance composition house. He is a creator with a keen sense of balance between sophistication and minimalism, with an approach focused on end use and olfactory emotion. Before joining LUZI, he worked for several years in perfumery at KEVA. Reserved by nature, he belongs to that generation of perfumers whose work highlights technique just as much as creative precision.

Maxence Moutte is a French perfumer, a graduate of ISIPCA and Senior Perfumer at Givaudan. Since the revival of Le Jardin Retrouvé, he has continued the work of its founder Yuri Gutsatz by adapting his historic formulas to current requirements while preserving their identity. He has also created new fragrances, including Mousse Arashiyama, Osmanthe Liu Yuan, Violette Kew and Immortelle Babylone. His olfactory style favors balance, emotion, and inspiring landscapes, in keeping with a vision in...

Mirella Pomina is a Swiss perfumer whose career illustrates the power of perseverance and high standards. After joining the fragrance house LUZI in 2001 as an apprentice perfumer, she rose through the ranks until she was named Principal Perfumer in 2026. Inspired by nature, the Swiss mountains, travel, music, and the arts, she has developed an olfactory style characterized by balance, finesse, and sensitivity. Her creations emphasize luminous harmonies and lasting emotions, driven by an...

Urs Castelletti creates fragrances that reflect his personality: precise, balanced, and deeply harmonious. A perfumer at LUZI since the late 1980s, he favors an olfactory style in which each ingredient naturally finds its place. His creations eschew spectacular effects in favor of building a lasting emotional impact, carried by woody, amber, oriental, or floral accords of great fluidity. His career path—which began in the laboratory before he became a perfumer—has given him a technical...

Lauriane Guignon has a unique background. She is a perfumer, winemaker, and producer of perfume plants. She practices these three professions at Mas Ricardenque, a family estate in Callian, in the Grasse region, where 8,000 Centifolia rose bushes grow alongside 2.5 hectares of organic vineyards. She comes from a century-old lineage of winemakers and perfume flower growers, and her creations are born from the terroir before they reach the bottle. Each fragrance she creates for her own brand...

Born in 1985 in the province of Milan, Claudio Zucca grew up in a home where scents held a special place, thanks to his mother’s love for the world of fragrances. This informal education shaped an olfactory sensibility that his career as an architect would only refine, without ever extinguishing it. It was during a personally challenging period that he shifted from architecture to fragrance creation, through a self-taught process marked by late-night experiments, the study of raw materials,...