The story of L'Artisan Parfumeur
Jean Laporte was a trained perfumer. In 1976 he opened his house and shop on rue de Grenelle in Paris. The idea was new at the time: selling auteur perfumes built around a single material or a simple idea. Mûre et Musc came out in 1978. Laporte paired synthetic musks with dark fruit notes and it became the house bestseller. He left in the early 1980s and later founded Maître Parfumeur et Gantier. L'Artisan carried on by inviting guest perfumers. Olivia Giacobetti created Premier Figuier there in 1994. Puig bought the house in 2015. The Les Paysages series began in 2016 with Bucoliques de Provence, followed by Un Air de Bretagne in 2017.
An olfactory signature
L'Artisan Parfumeur works with a transparency you notice straight away. The scents are light, almost watercolour, and show one material at a time. Mûre et Musc is still the model: dark fruit over a soft, clean musk. Histoire d'Orangers, by Marie Salamagne in 2017, starts from a memory of travel in Morocco and centres on orange blossom. Un Air de Bretagne, by Juliette Karagueuzoglou, smells of sea spray and moorland. Nothing here is heavy. The flip side of that lightness is often short staying power.
Which L'Artisan Parfumeur perfume to choose?
Mûre et Musc is the obvious starting point. It is easy to wear, fruity without being sugary, and suits almost anyone. Histoire d'Orangers is for lovers of clean, bright orange blossom in spring. Un Air de Bretagne is the most unusual of the set, salty and green, for summer by the sea. Bucoliques de Provence brings to mind dry herbs and scrubland. Mimosa pour Moi, by Anne Flipo, is best worn when the mimosa blooms in late winter. Plan to reapply in the afternoon. If you like Mûre et Musc, smell YSL Black Opium to see how much denser a modern fruity scent can be.