Headspace: Creating Perfumes That Layer the Smells of the Air with Scenes

Bodies dancing in a club, the breath of a galloping horse, rocks warmed by the sun. Headspace is a French perfume brand that layers a single material with the smells and scenes arising around it. Technology that analyzes invisible air and the work of perfumers who decide what to depict from it transform a momentary experience into perfume.

Key Information
The Founder and the Brand’s Origins
What Defines the Brand
References

Key Information

Brand name: Headspace
Founded: 2022
Founder: Nicolas Chabot
Based in: Paris, France
Official website: Headspace

The Founder and the Brand’s Origins

From a Family Perfume Shop to Working with Luxury Brands

Chabot’s family connection with perfume goes back to the perfume shop his great-grandmother opened in 1930. His grandparents and mother also worked in the shop, and he grew up with perfume close at hand. At 23, he joined Dior and went on to work on repositioning luxury brands at companies including LVMH, Estée Lauder, and Printemps.

After gaining experience at large companies, Chabot wanted to move closer to the world of perfume again. At an antiques market in Paris, he encountered a bottle of Le Galion’s Sortilège. Drawn to its form, he asked his grandmother about the brand, bought the bottle, and began researching its history. One old perfume became the starting point for his next undertaking.

Reviving Le Galion and Exploring Synthetic Fragrance Materials

In 2014, Chabot relaunched Le Galion. He collected its past perfumes, visited the perfume archive Osmothèque, and sought the help of the daughter of Paul Vacher, the perfumer who once led the brand. While carrying forward the surviving scents and formulas, he also worked on new creations.

His words about the new Le Galion in 2015 reveal a desire to connect its history to the present.

We have to bring Le Galion into the contemporary world.

Nicolas Chabot

In 2016, he went on to found ÆTHER (in Japanese), bringing the possibilities of synthetic fragrance materials to the fore. Reviving traditional perfumes and finding new expression through synthetics: through brands with different starting points, Chabot has explored fragrance materials and ways of turning them into finished works.

Speaking about ÆTHER in 2017, he touched on situations in which he was asked to use oud or increase concentration to gain entry to stores, questioning where commerce and creativity meet.

At what point do the two meet?

Nicolas Chabot

How can new expression emerge while adapting to the conditions of perfumes that are already selling? At Headspace, the technology for capturing surrounding smells itself became an entry point to new expression.

Seven Fragrances Launched in Collaboration with IFF in 2022

Headspace was born in 2022. It was previewed at the Esxence perfume exhibition in Milan that June, followed by a formal launch at the facilities of fragrance company IFF in October. Its starting point was seven perfumes created with IFF perfumers.

Chabot envisioned perfumes combining smells captured through headspace technology with a material at the core of each creation. A horse’s breath and styrax; moving bodies and wormwood; nature after a storm and sage. The atmosphere of the scene, which a material alone cannot fully express, became another subject.

The brand name also carries two meanings. One is the name of the technology used to capture smells. The other is the space within the mind in which imagination expands. Perfumers assemble the scent clues obtained through analysis into scenes. This movement between the two supports Headspace’s creative process.

What Defines the Brand

From Analyzing the Air to Composing a Scene

Headspace technology is a method of collecting and analyzing smells in the air around plants and objects, then reconstructing their scent. Not only flowers in bloom but also the surrounding environment and smells arising for a short time can provide clues for creation.

Headspace perfumes combine those clues with natural and synthetic fragrance materials. By pairing the name of a material with a scene, they give the same plant or resin different expressions according to place and the movement of bodies.

ABSINTHE: Wormwood and Dancing Bodies

The core of ABSINTHE, composed by Nicolas Beaulieu, is wormwood, and its accompanying subject is bodies in motion. It depicts a nighttime club where the volume rises and people’s bodies pass one another and draw close.

The aromatic scent of wormwood is combined with narcissus, patchouli, and a supple leather accord. An accord is a composition of several fragrance materials that creates a single impression. Here, the impression of leather serves to express the warmth of skin and the heat of bodies. The work connects a plant’s fragrance with human movement and the proximity of skin.

STYRAX: Depicting a Horse’s Warmth Through Resin and Leather

Miroslav Petkov’s STYRAX takes a galloping horse as its subject, depicting the moment when the bodies of horse and rider become connected as one. It links the leathery side of styrax to the closeness between horse and rider.

Impressions of labdanum and amber evoke a saddle warmed by contact with the horse’s body, while the apricot-like scent of osmanthus layers over the leathery expression of styrax. The composition connects the warmth of humans, animals, and plants through a combination of resin, leather, and flowers. Whereas ABSINTHE depicts bodies in a crowd, this fragrance focuses on the closeness between a rider and a single horse.

A Bottle Recalling the Reagent Vials on a Perfumer’s Bench

Jules Dinand worked on the Headspace design together with his grandfather, perfume-bottle designer Pierre Dinand. Their inspiration was the small fragrance-material vials lined up on a perfumer’s desk.

The 100mL bottle takes a form reminiscent of a reagent bottle, paired with a black Bakelite cap and a simple white paper label. Bakelite is a type of synthetic resin used for molding. The large white space on the label is also conceived as a canvas on which to imagine scenes through scent. The brand’s idea of moving from analysis toward imagination is expressed in the container held in the hand as well.