Meet ORMAIE, the Parisian Parfumerie Transforming Memories Into Artisanal Scents
May 14 | 4 minute read
Words by Izzy Wight
Thoughtfulness and intentionality are the guiding principles at their Parisian haute parfumerie maison, ORMAIE – and that means, sometimes, creating a single scent can take close to a decade.
“It's really a long process,” Jonak explains, joined by Bouygues at MECCA HQ to celebrate the addition of ORMAIE to the MECCA Perfumeria. “I'm living with the fragrance day and night, which means you wear it every day. You need to sleep with it. And when I develop a fragrance, I'm not going to wear anything else until this is really done... at that time, it's my favourite scent,” she laughs.
“Because we've got the same olfactive history, and we've been in the same places, every time we make 100 trials of the same fragrance, we both choose the same one, every single time,” Bouygues adds.
The duo launched the brand in 2018, two years after Bouygues initially approached his maman with the idea: “We were close, but we didn’t see each [other] that much... I really got to know her through work,” he explains. “And I got to understand how good she really was. I think all the exceptional maisons come from family units, because they don’t care about profits straight away. They just care about the arts and trying to make something beautiful... I’ve also learned that we’ve got exactly the same taste when it comes to fragrance.
But ORMAIE’s most iconic scents? Those are inspired by the matriarchal figures of the family. Yvonne, an elegant chypre with notes of rose, pink pepper and patchouli, is named after Bouygues’ grandmother (and counts Beyoncé among its fans), while 18-12 is Jonak’s birthday – a celebratory cocktail of jammy rose, sweet cherry and almond.
“Baptiste will tell me a story, and we’ll talk about the moments we’d like to remember. Almost every time you smell something, it reminds you of a moment connected to your past – to someone or somewhere,” Jonak says, explaining the process behind the maison’s poetic scents. “For us, it’s that same process, but the other way around, which means we have to create the scent that forms the memory.”
With his know-how of the luxury fashion world, Bouygues likens the process to creating a piece of haute couture – exquisite, exhaustive and entirely different, every single time. It’s haute parfumerie: “The process is the same, but we don’t know how long it takes. It starts with a lot of creativity... a fragrance has levels to it.”
When it comes to the brand’s future releases, the pair are coy – but reveal there are two scents Jonak isn’t quite ready to share with the world: “Our team in Paris always ask if they can wear them, and Maman says no,” Bouygues explains, with Jonak responding, matter-of-factly, that they simply don’t smell how she wants them to – yet.
The one thing we can guarantee? An ORMAIE fragrance is worth the wait.
