Considering the perfume as the artistic expression of a science, Pierre Guillaume composes as an autodidact from a decade a sincere and generous perfumery, in his own workshops in Clermont. He likes to think the perfume as an enhancer of oneself, and takes his creative inspirations from cultural references often borrowed from painting and photography.

What is your motto ?

Pierre : "“Hurry slowly”. When you start composing perfumes you soon realize that patience is a fundamental virtue. You may need to allow several weeks of maceration for all the reactions between the ingredients to occur and to be able to judge the actual rendering of a formula before finalizing or modifying it."

What is your oldest olfactory memory ?

Pierre : "Unsurprisingly, my oldest and clearest memory is "Silences" by Jacomo, one of my mother's first perfumes, a sort of chypre hyacinth punctuated by a vibration of sandalwood: an elegant green floral composed in 1978."

What made you want to create perfumes ?

Pierre : "I think it was life that decided for me. I didn’t just wake up one morning telling myself that I was going to become a perfume composer. The hazards of life and the encounters I’ve made have guided my steps towards this profession, springing from my initial career as a chemist and industrial formulator in our family business combined with my personal interest in perfumes. I believe that in the end it is the most logical and rational way to express my artistic vein while applying my scientific training."

What are your inspirations ?

Pierre : "My approach is completely synesthesic. Each new creation is initiated by a desire to give an olfactive form to something visual, be it painting, photo, or film. The way I assemble notes make the ingredients is analogous to colours, subjects, light and shadows. I harmonize scent agreements according to the atmospheres I wish to inject to the compositions: from watercolour to impressionism via abstractism. The process is never premeditated but rather something that happens naturally when I’m confronted with a visual work and become aware of the possibility of giving it an olfactory narrative. For instance, I can give an olfactive rendition of salty skin, add a hint of driftwood to a fig tree note, or bathe a composition in cold light. The composition of "Bois Naufragé 16.1" is my olfactive rendering of the photography Nu au bois flotté by Lucien Clergue."

What is the story of your last perfume, "Neroli ad astra" ?

Pierre : "I stumbled upon a series of photographs of agave flowers mounting to the sky and orange trees contrasting with a saturated blue sky, which gave me the idea of a luminous and aerial floral fusion. Neroli Ad Astra expresses my vision of a floral freshness mixed with astral brightness, the force of the plants reaching for the sky as if they wanted to reach a hypothetical heavenly garden."