L'Artisan Parfumeur

Success stories often start with a curios incident, and that of L'Artisan Parfumeur is a case in point. Sometime in the 1970s, a friend of chemist Jean-François Laporte asked him, half in jest, if he could create a banana fragrance to accompany a banana costume that the man was planning to wear to a gala at the Folies Bergères. You guessed it: Laporte mastered the challenge with bravura. He then went on, applying equal measures of passion and skillful craftsmanship, to create further unique naturalistic fragrances, made with the highest possible proportion of nature-identical essences. His very first collection was a success, and the world of perfumery embraced Laporte as a passionate fragrance artist, as «L’Artisan Parfumeur», the fragrance craftsman.

Paris, 1979: Laporte opened his first boutique to serve as a dedicated proprietary venue for his fragrances. It was the first time in decades for a perfume brand to emerge that was not the collateral business of a fashion label or a designer. The artisanal perfumery “niche” was born. My curiosity was immediately piqued by the innovative fragrance concepts with their poetic and sometimes audacious names, such as Voleur de Roses, Méchant Loup and Chasse aux Papillons.