Haute Parfumerie · Grasse · Depuis 1931
We do not bottle scent. We bottle the hour before dusk.
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Manifeste
Light has a smell. It is warm glass, cut hay, the skin of an apricot left on a windowsill. For three generations we have chased that impossible accord — la lumière habitée — light, inhabited.
Founded by Élise Lumen in 1931 in a shuttered chapel above Grasse, the house releases no more than one extrait per decade. Each is composed at 6:41 in the evening, in summer, facing west.
La Collection
Extrait No. I — 1931
bergamot doré · mimosa · flouve odorante
santal blond · cire d'abeille
Extrait No. II — 1948
encens fondu · abricot confit · iris pallida
ambre gris · fumée de chêne
Extrait No. III — 1973
violette nocturne · cuir d'orage · fève tonka
poussière d'étoile — accord secret
Extrait No. IV — 2019
safran · miel brûlé · rose de septembre
bois flotté · sel de peau
La Muse
« I wore Verre Chaud to my father's vineyard the autumn he died. Now every bottle of it holds October. »Anouk Ferrant — muse of the house, 1998 —
The house has never advertised. It has only ever been worn — by one muse per era, photographed once, in profile, at the hour the extrait was composed.
L'Architecture d'un Extrait
The top note is the flash of the match — brilliant, apologetic, already leaving. Ours are cold-pressed within one hour of harvest.
The heart is the argument of the perfume — what it believes. Élise called it « the rooms where the light actually lives. »
The base is what your coat remembers. It is composed last, at nightfall, and tested against wool, silk, and the inside of a wrist in winter.
L'Atelier
The atelier faces west because the founder insisted perfume must be judged in failing light — « anything can smell beautiful at noon. » The organ (the perfumer's desk of essences) is arranged not alphabetically but by the hour of day each material evokes.
Nothing leaves the chapel until it has survived four seasons on the wrists of the family. Most compositions do not survive. The house has released four extraits in ninety-five years, and considers this pace slightly reckless.
— É. L.