Louis Vuitton’s Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud On His Love For The Region And The Art of Fragrance Making

As the French fashion house launches a bespoke haute fragrance service, Bazaar gets a rare audience with the maison’s master perfumer himself…

I’m at the very start of my Zoom call with the maître parfumeur, ready with a list of enquiries, but unlike any other interview I’ve ever conducted, I’m not the one asking the questions. “Tell me about the smell that most reminds you of your childhood,” asks Jacques Cavallier Belletrud. “And your favourite dish to cook.”

And so, the first ten minutes of our chat about Louis Vuitton’s new made-to-order perfume service involves me reminiscing about hot, sticky summers as a kid, running through freshly cut fields in England, explaining how I can’t cook anything without adding copious amounts of rosemary and thyme, and that I never eat garlic. I tell Jacques about my favourite perfumes, and how I’ve recently discovered they all have woody bases as their common denominator, that I don’t really love any particular flower but prefer the fresh aroma of trees and grass, despite suffering with hayfever. And if I’m honest, I’m thoroughly enjoying this type of interview.

Louis Vuitton’s master perfumer, Jacques Cavallier Belletrud

There is a good reason that we’ve switched roles, as even from these tiny nuggets of information, Jacques starts building up a picture of the sort of fragrance he would help me create if I was one of his bespoke perfume customers. For me, his starting point would be “something not too heavy,” but rather “caressing, natural flowers with freshness,” he concludes.

“My first job is to make a portrait; one that is more than just an olfactory portrait, it’s a social portrait, a kind of psychotherapy,” he laughs. “Experiences from your childhood, good moments, things that have made you happy, unhappy, the things you hate, what you like in cooking, the colours you love – this information is what starts the inspiration, and then the creation for me.”

And if the man who is behind the creation of some of the world’s most famous scents knows what tones should be included in the fragrance, he is also a master of what to leave out.

“Avoid being gregarious,” jokes Jacques, who is also the name behind legendary perfumes including Givenchy Hot Couture, Giorgio Armani Acqua di Gio, and Issey Miyake L’Eau d’Issey. “My role is to say to stay away from gimmicks, and my job is to say that if you love the smell of hot milk, it doesn’t mean you will like it all day, every day. You can love strawberries, but if we create a full strawberry perfume, you may grow tired of it.”

The creative atelier at Les Fontaines Parfumées

Jacques, who joined Louis Vuitton in 2012, is naturally intrigued by all the little details of your past, your personality and what makes you tick, and has become well-versed in the sort of Zoom conversation we’re having after this intimately personal service was forced to move online because of Covid. The bespoke service currently works with customers calling in to Jacques from specific Louis Vuitton stores that carry the full library of scents, so they can take in the aromas as he talks them through the various notes. The original concept, that the brand hopes to return to next year, involves meeting Jacques at his creative atelier at Les Fontaines Parfumées in the French Riviera town of Grasse, which has been synonymous with perfumery since the 16th century.

Jacques’ desk and workspace at Les Fontaines Parfumées

“They will come to this unique place in the world, where we are in the network of natural, rural materials – the perfect place to evaluate the scents,” explains Jacques, who has created a thorough record of notes and scents from around the world, as well as those grown specifically in Grasse. “We will talk about the floral notes and about the feelings in person, and they will discover some secrets ingredients like a special kind of sandalwood. And then we will have a directional visit of the garden at Les Fontaines Parfumées: it’s about 10,000 square metres, with more than 400 different plants, depending on the season we have the citrus trees, jasmine field, rose field and many other flowers.”

The unique fragrance formula can take a number of months to compose, and is done so by hand at the Atelier d’Art, a new space dedicated to bespoke perfumes in the heart of Les Fontaines Parfumées. During this time, the perfume trunk, which holds four 100ml bottles, three 200ml bottles, a 100ml travel case, a travel spray, plus 16 refills, is specially crafted at Louis Vuitton’s historic workshop in Asnières. The €60,000 (Dhs268,000) price tag reflects the ultimate exclusivity of the experience, an aspect that Jacques knows will do well with the Middle Eastern audience who take their fragrances very seriously.

“What I love about this project is that we will have a lot of clients coming from the Middle East – a place that is very important, and close to my heart, because I started working for the Middle East more than 20 years ago,” he points out. “I’ve always been interested in the passion and the culture around perfume coming from the area. I learned a lot working with famous brands in Saudi, Oman and Dubai and it changed my creative life. The way people approach and appreciate the perfume is really incredible: women and men have been practising the layering [of scents] by mixing different perfumes for centuries. In the Middle East, they love ‘true’ perfume, they don’t like gimmicks and marketing, they are connected to their perfume from birth, they have seen their mother and father using perfume a lot and creating their own signature perfume, the scent is really part of their personality. It isn’t a commodity – it’s part of their identity.”

And much like the Middle East, fragrance is very much in the DNA of Jacques himself. Born and raised in Grasse – the perfume capital of the world, both his father and grandfather were perfumers. Jacques had already decided he would join the profession at the tender age of seven, and then three years ago, his daughter Camille decided to join the industry and work alongside her father.

“My daughter will become a perfumer later this year,” he smiles. “She is working close to me, as I need youth and the point of view of a woman. She will be the first woman in the family to become a perfumer, so she’s under some pressure! It is fantastic to have my daughter so close to me, so we can have different points of view and share the creativity together. It’s in our DNA – we’ve been speaking about, and living, perfumes since we were born. It’s in our blood, and in our minds as well.”

And the bespoke service offers clients this same opportunity to make fragrance a part of their DNA in a way too, with each unique formula being forever inscribed in the Louis Vuitton archives at Les Fontaines Parfumées, so that the client’s olfactory signature will be available indefinitely.

“It’s something that nobody is doing,” explains Jacques. “With anything that we make that is made-to-order, we follow the product for life. I like the idea that the perfume will be around even after you. It’s your signature if you wish, something that is a part of you and will express what you are. And for the people around you, they will know that you are in the room just by the smell of you.

We are creating things not just for the moment, we are creating things for life.”And that’s one of the joys of this service; it not only offers you a bespoke part of you to enjoy right now, but a lasting legacy for the future.” 

From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s January 2021 issue