Paris Will Always Be Paris
100ml

Paris is unique. Paris is my village. “If you are lucky enough to have lived as a young man in Paris, wherever you go for the rest of your life, it will never leave you, because Paris is a party,” wrote Ernest Hemingway in “A Moveable Feast” in 1964. I have had this luck for 55 years now (I arrived in Paris on January 13, 1969), and it seems to me it is my duty to pay a personal tribute to it. A unique fragrance for this unique place in the world. For the 13th issue of this magazine.

As Maurice Chevalier sang in “Paris Will Always Be Paris,” but also in his song “Fleur de Paris,” even in difficult times, Paris keeps its hope of returning to better days.

The fleur-de-lis first appeared in the Paris coat of arms in 1358 by an order of King Charles V, following the revolt of Étienne Marcel. The king wanted to show the supremacy of the monarchy over the capital.

After the Revolution, the three colors blue, white, and red appeared.

For our fragrance, the blue was inspired by the bouquet of violets that a young blonde girl with blue eyes gave me, free of charge, one day during an important chemistry exam to obtain my Master’s at the Faculty of Science in Paris. The bouquet brought me immense luck. She should be thanked warmly today.

For the white, we certainly use the lily (the rhizome), but above all the flower of the syringa, also known as the poet’s jasmine, which I discovered in Parc Montsouris, but even more often in the Parc de la Cité Internationale in Paris, near the Monaco Foundation where I was staying, and more recently in the square on Place Paul Painlevé, opposite the Sorbonne. Next to the statue of Montaigne, whose toe must be touched for good luck and happiness.

For the red, we must evoke the blood spilled during the Revolution, not just the noble blood of the aristocracy, but also the red blood of revolutionaries who slaughtered each other, especially during the Terror. The May rose is indeed used, but its color and delicate fragrance are too subtle to convey the red of our fragrance. The scent of wild rose (Rosa Canina) reminds me of the sweet fragrance of wild rose bushes at the edge of the village from my childhood. The intense fragrance of Damask rose will be complemented by the red of ivy geraniums on the balconies of Haussmannian buildings.

It is this mysterious alchemy that inspired our fragrance “Paris Will Always Be Paris,” and its creation, realization, and presentation make me so proud.

But this alchemy is not enough to create a dream fragrance. It is necessary to translate into fragrance the emotions we felt and still feel when one evokes Paris. Emotions of delicate memories of blossoming loves, pride in living in a unique place, but also stress for academic and professional success. The stress of not measuring up for such a project. Several times I tried to leave Paris, sometimes with offers hard to refuse, but each time I returned. Elsewhere, in the United States, on the East Coast (in Cambridge, Massachusetts) or the West Coast (San Francisco), in Japan (especially Kyoto), in Polynesia (Bora Bora or Moorea), the scent of Paris was missing. I didn’t know how to describe it, but I missed it.

Once I was back, I found it again. I was home. In my adult village, facing my childhood village with my other Parisian olfactory memories.

That’s when I truly understood the expression “having it in your skin.” For me, Paris is like a woman you have in your skin, even sometimes because of its flaws.

I am happy to share this fragrance with you, to help you discover Paris olfactively. And I hope you will love it as much as I loved imagining it.