Nicolas Beaulieu: An Olfactory Archaeologist Exploring Everyday Smells

“You have to be happy to create beautiful things.”

Nicolas Beaulieu

A Career in Perfumery

A Boy Who Wanted to Be an Archaeologist

Nicolas Beaulieu grew up in Seine-et-Marne, France, in a house with a large garden in the countryside not far from Paris.

Wednesday afternoons were spent mowing the lawn and watching flowers grow. The opera his parents loved was part of that landscape too. Although not from a family of perfumers, he says smells were always close at hand.

“I spent most of my time smelling the things around me: the scents of the garden, my mother’s scent, and the smell that surrounded my grandmother’s home, filled with Lanvin’s Arpège.”

Nicolas Beaulieu, from a profile in the perfume magazine ParfumPlus

In another interview, he also names the Lanvin Arpège worn by his grandmother as his first olfactory memory. Alongside garden and family smells, it was a fragrance that stayed with him from childhood.

Even so, at 14 Beaulieu wanted to become not a perfumer but an archaeologist. Interested in old buildings and history, he did not even know the profession of perfumer existed.

The turning point was a meeting with a careers adviser, who told him about ISIPCA, the perfume, cosmetics, and food-flavor education institution in Versailles. Beaulieu attended an open day and returned with a clear desire to become a perfumer.

He studied chemistry, then perfumery, graduating from ISIPCA in 2000. While still a student, quality-control work and training at IFF, International Flavors & Fragrances, gave him experience with raw materials.

The Demands of Formulation, Learned through Laundry Scents

After graduation, Beaulieu worked in raw-material quality control for IFF in Ireland. He subsequently entered its in-house perfumery school, studying fragrances for detergents, fabric softeners, and similar products in the Netherlands.

This is not work that is complete simply because something smells good in a perfume bottle. One must consider how the scent changes throughout the process of using a product.

“You have to manage the formula from the moment someone opens the bottle in the shop to ironing the clothes and putting them in a wardrobe. Not forgetting when damp clothes are taken out of the washing machine. Meanwhile, you also have to bring costs down.”

Nicolas Beaulieu, from the ParfumPlus profile

According to Beaulieu, the constraints in this field were stricter than those of fine fragrance. Water, heat, the condition of the fabric, and elapsed time: the intended impression needs to remain even as conditions change.

He says the thinking acquired through this training remains useful in his daily work. His short, focused formulas seem supported not only by free-ranging ideas but also by practical experience in making scent perform.

He was subsequently posted to New York and then Shanghai. After experiencing Shanghai’s vibrant atmosphere, he returned to Paris in 2008 and began new creative work.

Flower Harvests and Curiosity about Synthetics

Among his IFF experiences, Beaulieu names training at the natural-material specialist Laboratoires Monique Rémy (LMR) as unforgettable.

In Grasse, he attended the rose harvest, and in Lozère he experienced the narcissus harvest. Plants previously known as labels on material bottles became connected with places, seasons, and the work of production.

Yet learning about naturals did not mean moving away from synthetics. Beaulieu also likes aldehydes and is drawn to materials with sharp green impressions, including violet leaf, galbanum, and Triplal.

At the same time, asked which material he enjoys working with, he names sandalwood. He enjoys the possibilities of both piercing green scents and smooth woods.

“I am drawn to powerful trails and short, simple formulas that convey the essential idea directly.”

Nicolas Beaulieu, from the ParfumPlus profile

The aim is not reducing materials for its own sake but clarifying the intended impression. These words, reconciling olfactory volume with concision of formula, offer a key to reading his creations.

Aromatics in White: Depicting White Warmly

Clinique’s Aromatics in White (2014) became an important project in Beaulieu’s career.

It began with the question of how to reconsider Aromatics Elixir (1971) for the present day. Clinique reportedly sought a reinvention rather than a flanker that merely altered the existing classic slightly.

Beaulieu spent about ten months on this challenge. At the center of the composition he placed a complex musk accord running through the fragrance from beginning to end. Around that backbone he layered rose and orange blossom, a patchouli heart, and benzoin.

It was an attempt to reconsider the original’s powerful patchouli presence through the expansiveness of musk.

“I did not want a ‘cold white.’ The white I wanted was a warmer, more enveloping sensation with a rich texture.”

Nicolas Beaulieu, from the ParfumPlus interview

The image he had in mind was a white Phalaenopsis orchid: soft in texture, yet a flower with a strong personality of its own. He reflected that impression in the musk accord.

One important material was IFF’s proprietary musk Edenolide. Beaulieu explains that it allowed musk to be perceived from the opening, not just the later stages, and gave an effect of softly unfolding.

White here is not an empty blank. It is a white with a flower’s tactile quality, a feeling of being enveloped, and quiet strength. It is an example of Beaulieu’s perception of color and texture through smell becoming a creation.

Concrete and Another Expression of Wood

In 2017, Comme des Garçons released Concrete.

Named after a commonplace urban building material, it is also frequently cited as a representative Beaulieu creation. It finds entrances to new fragrances not only in beautiful flowers but also in things not usually associated with perfume.

For a broader market, meanwhile, he contributed to Rabanne’s Invictus Aqua, from the brand formerly called Paco Rabanne, and to Invictus Legend (2019), created with Julien Rasquinet.

Carolina Herrera’s Bad Boy Le Parfum (2021) was also a collaboration, with Fanny Bal and Bruno Jovanovic.

Beaulieu’s breadth is evident in a career encompassing both avant-garde brands’ challenges and fragrances chosen by many people.

Bastille: Rethinking a Formula through Constraints

His work with Bastille is also striking as an encounter with new conditions. For the brand, Beaulieu created Bataille and Paradis Nuit.

The brand’s stated policy was 95% natural perfumes. For Beaulieu, composing under that condition was a new experience.

“This idea of a 95% natural perfume was completely new to me.”

Nicolas Beaulieu, from Bastille’s interview

It therefore required rethinking the way a formula is assembled. Rather than replacing materials while using the same method, the work called for trying a different design from the outset.

For Bataille, the inspiration was Burning Man in the United States. Its artistic, unconventional, inclusive atmosphere led him to imagine a spicy patchouli combining heat and cold.

For Paradis Nuit, the starting point was Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night. Combining cassie flower, New Caledonian sandalwood, and bitter cocoa, he portrayed night not as quiet and colorless, but as a world rich in expression.

In Bastille’s interview, Beaulieu also describes perceiving textures and colors through smells. Smelling a material and translating it into words or memories: this back-and-forth supports such creations.

Good Fortune: Two Perfumers Seeking a New Combination

In 2022, he co-created Viktor & Rolf’s Good Fortune with Anne Flipo.

The fragrance, themed around modern spirituality, is described as featuring a co-distilled material combining fennel and gentian. The brand also highlighted a formula without animal-derived ingredients.

Discovering a new combination and developing it into a perfume’s identity: the curiosity of the boy who wanted to study archaeology now turns toward the possibilities within materials.

The fragrance-culture magazine Nez also discusses Flipo and Beaulieu’s work in an article on collaboration at IFF. Several perfumers bringing together their experience and ideas is an important element supporting Beaulieu’s body of work.

2025: Moving to Symrise

In February 2023, Beaulieu was promoted to Vice President Perfumer at IFF. Juliette Karagueuzoglou and Jean-Christophe Hérault were promoted at the same time.

The company recognized not only the three perfumers’ record of creating signature scents but also their contributions to developing natural materials, new molecules, and technologies. Mentoring younger perfumers was also part of the role.

That same year, Headspace’s Tubéreuse was selected as a finalist in the independent-brand category of the Fragrance Foundation France awards. It was a nomination rather than a win, but an occasion on which the work was recognized outside the context of major-brand projects.

He then moved to Symrise effective October 6, 2025, joining its Paris fine-fragrance division as Vice President and Senior Perfumer.

Accounts of this move use “olfactory archaeologist” to describe Beaulieu’s self-image. The expression conveys an approach of exploring hidden complexity in materials and drawing out new facets.

Garden grass, a grandmother’s perfume, flower harvests, tastes encountered while traveling: Beaulieu’s creativity does not arise only from exceptional events. The opening statement that happiness is necessary to create beautiful things is also a characteristic motto, keeping life’s pleasures within, rather than outside, creative work.

Incidentally…

Beaulieu enjoys both eating and cooking. From childhood, he baked cakes and mixed spices as inspiration struck. He continues to cook as an adult, with interests including marinated raw fish and coulibiac, the Russian dish of salmon, rice, dill, and other ingredients enclosed in pastry.

Wine is another important pleasure. Food, wine, family, friends, travel: asked what he loves, his answers list a rich life beyond perfume.

One unexpected combination of flavors he names is Beaufort-cheese ice cream. The interest of sweet and salty coexisting powerfully seems connected with thinking about combinations in fragrance too.

His favorite smells are freshly cut grass and clean laundry. He says there is no smell he particularly dislikes. Remembering his garden upbringing and training through laundry fragrances, these answers seem especially apt.

Azzaro pour Homme is among perfumes he wore in the past. He also names Chanel’s Égoïste, Issey Miyake’s L’Eau d’Issey, Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb, Serge Lutens’ Féminité du Bois, and Hermès’ Eau d’Orange Verte as memorable creations.

If Paris were one smell, he would choose coffee, because Parisians spend so much time drinking coffee on terraces.

Perfume Creations

The main creations are listed chronologically. “—” indicates that no co-perfumer is listed, not that every such work is necessarily a solo creation. Even fragrances with the same name may differ in formula by release year or concentration.

References

• Bastille, “Perfumed interview: meeting the perfumer Nicolas Beaulieu”
• ParfumPlus, “Enjoying The Good Things In Life: Nicolas Beaulieu”
• ParfumPlus, “In Conversation With Perfumer Nicolas Beaulieu”
• Private Edition, “What inspires world class perfumer Nicolas Beaulieu”
• IFF / PR Newswire, “IFF Promotes Three Perfumers to Vice President Perfumers”, 2 February 2023 (reproduced by StockTitan)
• Premium Beauty News, “Nicolas Beaulieu joins Symrise from IFF as VP Senior Perfumer”, 23 October 2025
• Nez, “Perfumers: A team spirit”
• Nez, « Prix de la Fragrance Foundation France 2023 : les lauréats »
• The Perfume Girl, “Nicolas Beaulieu”
• Parfumo, “Nicolas Beaulieu”
• Basenotes, “Nicolas Beaulieu”
• Fragrantica, “Bad Boy Le Parfum”
• Fragrantica, “Invictus Victory Elixir”
• Fragrantica, “Âme Toscane Intense”
• Aspire Lifestyle, “Born in Roma Yellow Dream: the new fragrances for her and for him”
• Fragrantica, “Valentino Born in Roma Coral Fantasy”
• Now Smell This, “Laura Biagiotti Roma Passione & Roma Passione Uomo”
• The Perfume Society, “Alexander McQueen in bloom on Bond Street”
• ScentAdvice, “Invictus Aqua (2016)”
• ScentAdvice, “Spicebomb Infrared EDT (2021)”
• Fragrantica, “Spicebomb Infrared Eau de Parfum”