D’ORSAY

The Founder and His Successors

Founder Alfred d’Orsay

Alfred d’Orsay (full name: Alfred Guillaume Gabriel Grimod d’Orsay) was born in 1801, the second son of a general and a patron of the arts, someone who provided artists with financial support. As he grew up, he became acquainted with some of the great figures of the 19th century, including Lord Byron, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Charles Dickens, the future Emperor Napoleon III, and Franz Liszt. His career flourished, and he eventually became principal of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Apparently, he was also talented enough to earn a living as a painter.

In the summer of 1821, the 20-year-old d’Orsay traveled to London for the coronation of George IV. Beau Brummell, the great leader of fashion, had left the city for exile, and d’Orsay would soon become the most famous dandy in London society. There he had a fateful encounter with a woman: Marguerite, Countess of Blessington, the London poet and novelist. She was the wife of the Irish Lord Blessington and was around 32 at the time.
It was the beginning of a forbidden love. Having fallen in love, the two hid the perfume d’Orsay made for her in 1830 in a secret bottle and wore it together. This was the fragrance later released as Etiquette Bleue, originally called Eau de Bouquet.

It was a beautiful fragrance expressing love, but the Marquis d’Orsay could only wear it when he deceived her husband, Lord Blessington, to go and see her.
According to legend, before the perfume had a name, the bottle bore only a blue label, an “étiquette bleue” in French. Blue was Marguerite’s favorite color.

Marie Huet

London newspapers, however, reported endlessly on this love triangle. In 1827, d’Orsay married the 15-year-old Harriet Gardiner, Lord Blessington’s daughter from his previous marriage. Lord Blessington died in 1829, leaving Marguerite a widow. In 1838, the Marquis d’Orsay and Harriet separated.

In 1849, d’Orsay went bankrupt and moved from Britain to Paris. Marguerite apparently sold all her possessions and followed him, but shortly afterward died of a heart attack at 59. Count d’Orsay needed to find a way to support himself. However, his opposition to the coup d’état of his friend Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte damaged their relationship. Apparently, rather than being entrusted with affairs of state, he was made principal of the art school mentioned above. Soon after taking up the post, he developed an inflammation of the spine and died at his sister’s home on August 4, 1852. He was buried with Marguerite in the pyramid-shaped tomb he had designed for her at Chambourcy. Napoleon III, who was not yet emperor, attended the funeral, an indication of the Marquis d’Orsay’s importance.

The visionary Count d’Orsay designed the first androgynous perfume in history.

From Wallpaper.com

Alfred d’Orsay himself only made perfumes; he was not actually involved in founding the house. After his death, his family found his formulas, and the brand continued through subsequent acquisitions and rebrandings, as shown in the timeline below. What has remained unchanged to this day, however, is that its perfumes, including their names, are sold in keeping with Alfred d’Orsay’s tastes and philosophy.

Another important figure who worked there was Chanel’s future second in-house perfumer, Henri Robert. He composed the legendary Le Dandy (1923) and worked there on an ongoing basis from 1926. Around that time, Baccarat and Lalique apparently supplied the bottles.

Successors Amélie Huynh & Mélanie Huynh

D’ORSAY is now owned by the ÆRA NOVA group, whose name means “new era.” Amélie Huynh, whose name has two different phonetic renderings in Japanese, started the group in 2011. Alongside D’ORSAY, it owns Amélie’s jewelry brand STATEMENT, Mélanie’s beauty brand Holidermie, and Château de Malromé. The group envisages developing principally in France and Asia, which appears to explain why D’ORSAY placed one of its few boutiques in Japan.

Amélie Huynh

Amélie, the chief executive of ÆRA NOVA, was born to a French mother and a Chinese father, two years after her older sister Mélanie. From 2000, she studied marketing for the luxury industry at ISC Paris Business School, with the diamond industry as her ultimate goal.

After graduating, Amélie, who loved jewelry, joined Chaumet as a product manager in 2006. From 2008, she spent five years as marketing manager at DC&BV, headed by her father Kim Huynh. Apparently, it was during this period that she founded ÆRA NOVA. Various media accounts say she spent eight years at Chaumet, so she may have worked there while still a student.

Her interest in perfume apparently developed because her father owned a small fragrance brand, giving her frequent exposure to perfume, and because she liked collecting miniature bottles. She seems to have experimented with various fragrances, including CK One, from her teenage years.

In 2018, she introduced STATEMENT, a jewelry brand inspired by Art Deco and Brutalist architecture. In 2019, she opened D’ORSAY’s flagship in Paris’s 7th arrondissement, designed to evoke a post office and the letters exchanged by d’Orsay and Marguerite. On December 20, 2020, she opened its second boutique in Aoyama, Tokyo.

Mélanie Huynh

Mélanie, Amélie’s older sister and ÆRA NOVA’s general director, began studying fashion marketing at 17 and joined Maison Margiela. She then became interested in photography and spent eight years as a fashion editor at Vogue France. Now a freelance stylist, she has apparently consulted for Altuzarra since its founding in 2007 and collaborated with brands such as Elie Saab, Lanvin, and Loewe. She joined her sister’s company in 2014.

In 2019, she launched Holidermie, a nutricosmetics brand. Rather than cosmetics alone, it proposes a comprehensive approach to beauty that includes nutritional supplements and exercise. To establish the brand, she drew on her connections and worked with former Clarins executive Isabelle Herbreteau and perfumer Francis Kurkdjian. Kurkdjian created the scent of Holidermie’s products, combining magnolia and rose with ambery woody notes.

In 2017, the sisters restored the family-owned Château de Malromé, which is open to the public. They also created a contemporary art exhibition space and vineyards for wine production on its grounds.

Parfums D’Orsay

Body fragrances explore states of love, while interior fragrances set the scene for amorous encounters. But ultimately, D’ORSAY speaks only of love: self-love, sibling love, love for others, many kinds of love. Whatever the state of love, it is universal. It is the only emotion capable of literally turning us upside down.

Amélie Huynh

D’ORSAY’s perfumes have names connected with d’Orsay. I find them even more evocative when considered with some knowledge of the marquis’s almost legendary life.

For example, the Marquis d’Orsay, a remarkable fashion figure thought to rival all but Britain’s Beau Brummell in dandyism, was known for wearing six pairs of gloves in a single day: reindeer gloves, chamois gloves for hunting, beaver gloves for traveling to London, plaited children’s gloves for afternoon shopping, yellow dogskin gloves for dinner parties, and, finally, lambskin gloves embroidered with silk for evening balls.

Body Fragrances

People say that Japanese customers do not use much perfume, but I think D’ORSAY’s subtle way of diffusing suits the tastes of sophisticated Japanese customers. D’ORSAY uses rare, high-grade fragrance materials, but its scents are not as strong as perfumes generally found on the market. They are skin perfumes, very delicate and close to the skin. That is why we call the products body fragrances rather than simply fragrances.

Amélie Huynh, from an interview with SPUR.JP

We wanted to distinguish ourselves from other brands through a unique idea. We deliberately left room for implication, so that the subtitles suggest the love story surrounding each scent. And because “secret love” underlies the brand’s story, we wanted all the initials to feel mysterious. At the time, letters were the only way to communicate, so people exchanged messages using initials. That is also why we choose phrases for the subtitles that might appear in love letters.

Amélie Huynh, from a December 2022 interview with WWDJapan

At the 2019 relaunch, the fragrances worn on the skin were called “Equivocal Portraits.” The idea was to turn states of mind, such as freedom, trust, and introspection, into scents that evoke individual people. Their initials can refer to living or historical figures, or fictional characters from literature and elsewhere, and their identities generally remain undisclosed. The exceptions Amélie Huynh named were L.B. for Lady Blessington and G.A. for Grimod Alfred.

Anne-Sophie Behaghel began J’approchais un mystère. A.C. with the portrait of a cinema figure born in the countryside. In his features, smile, and sincerity, she sensed someone who lived close to nature, and sought to express that impression through cedar and the scent of crushed leaves. She wanted to evoke a person standing in nature with the beauty and majesty of a tree.

In Songe à la douceur. C.B., Karine Chevallier combines black tea and orange blossom. She experimented with what she calls a “Fleur d’Oranger fantôme,” or phantom orange blossom. Inspired by the way a sentence can remain legible even when some letters are replaced, she explains that she first built the flower’s scent, then removed its constituent molecules one by one. Rather than reproducing the flower intact, the process suggests its outline as held in memory. Woody and leathery facets accompany the brightness of citrus and flowers, retaining a familiarity that recalls childhood sweets.

For Dandy or not. G.A., Sidonie Lancesseur imagined a modern dandy: rebellious, unconventional, and sure of himself. Cardamom and grapefruit lead to a black tea accord and orange blossom, followed by cedar, patchouli, and a leather accord. The composition centers on the contrast between slightly smoky black tea and leather and a soft, innocent flower. Lancesseur describes the love expressed by this perfume as passionate yet unselfconscious.

À cœur perdu. L.B. is Fanny Bal’s contemporary interpretation of the scent said to have been shared by Alfred and Lady Blessington. Amélie dates the release of this reinterpretation to 2021. Its citrus-floral composition opens with impressions of bergamot and iris, followed by orange blossom and neroli, Cashmeran and moss. Bal imagined sheets drying in the sun, bringing together the clean impression of a floral breeze and warmth close to the skin.

Vouloir être ailleurs. C.G., now sold in Japan as Tilleul d’ailleurs, is an eau de toilette whose lineage runs from the 1915 Tilleul to Olivia Giacobetti’s reinterpretation in 1995. She pictured the countryside in the early morning. Lemon leaf creates a bright opening, while a linden blossom accord forms a translucent, faintly honeyed heart. Acacia wood, beeswax, and cut hay gently support the flower. Linden, also called lime blossom, refers here to the blossom of the linden tree, not the citrus lime.

Une rose au paradis. R.B., now named Rose Paradis in Japan, is a floral-woody fragrance in which Caroline Dumur imagined an encounter between a human being and artificial intelligence. She combines rose, a symbol of love, with elusive, fresh aldehydes to give it a modern, metallic character. Sandalwood and Cashmeran bring a vibrating texture and sensuality to the flower.

Later fragrances with initials continue to take physical sensations as their starting point. In Sur tes lèvres. E.Q., Dominique Ropion sought to express the moment of surrendering one’s lips to another person. Silky, powdery iris envelops an assertive, animalic jasmine, while the coolness of pink pepper contrasts with the warmth of ambrette. Iris appears in two forms: a concrete gives the cosmetic impression of lipstick, while a resinoid contributes a faintly chocolate-like facet. Different materials evoke the tremor before a kiss, the feel of lips, and the memory that lingers afterward.

Sweet Disruption. W.T. was initially conceived for the Tokyo boutique. Jean-Christophe Hérault began with mint, which reminded him of his childhood in the countryside, and gave a prominent role to deep, mysterious incense. Sharp green freshness and smoky depth suggest the sensation of encountering someone unexpected. Jasmine gives the incense a fleshier quality, while vetiver, moss, and olibanum form its woody trail. Hérault cautions that the emotions people receive from a perfume are personal and difficult to predict, but hopes this contrast will bring surprise and excitement.

The table below records the earlier fragrances with initials under their names at the time. Some product names have since changed, and the international website now lists A.C., A.N., M.D., O.W., and T.J. under “Legacy.” The range also includes an eau de toilette such as C.G., so the fragrances should not all be treated as having the same concentration. The “Former Fragrance Name” column indicates historical connections, not that the old and current formulas are identical.

Fragrance Initials	Fragrance Name	Official Japanese Label (Translated)	Perfumer	Former Fragrance Name
A.C.	J’approchais un mystère.	I Was Approaching a Mystery	Anne-Sophie Behaghel
A.N.	Acte d’amour furtif.	A Secret Act of Love	Amélie Bourgeois
A.R.	Les ombres fantastiques.	Fantastic Shadows	Amélie Bourgeois
C.B.	Songe à la douceur.	What “Comfort” Means	Karine Chevallier
C.G.	Vouloir être ailleurs.	I Want to Go Somewhere Else	Olivia Giacobetti	Tilleul
G.A.	Dandy or Not.	Dandy or Not	Sidonie Lancesseur	Le Dandy
J.R.	J’ai l’air de ce que je suis.	Being Myself	Karine Chevallier
L.B.	À cœur perdu.	With All My Heart	Fanny Bal	Etiquette Bleue
M.A.	Je suis le plus grand.	My Best Self	Anne-Sophie Behaghel
M.D.	Nous sommes amants.	Lovers	Bertrand Duchaufour
O.W.	C’est toujours agréable d’être attendu.	Someone Is Waiting for Me	Anne-Sophie Behaghel
P.S.	Jusqu’à toi.	For You	Nicolas Beaulieu
R.B.	Une rose au paradis.	A Rose in Paradise	Caroline Dumur
S.C.	Quelque chose dans l’air.	An Intimation in the Air	Mark Buxton
T.J.	Il n’y a pas de bien ni de mal.	Right and Wrong, Good and Evil	Amélie Bourgeois
V.H.	Te dire oui.	Saying Yes for You	Vincent Ricord

Extraits de Parfum: The Intensity of Love through Materials

Alongside the fragrances with initials, the current range for the skin includes Extraits de Parfum. Each foregrounds a material or accord to express the impact of falling in love, desire, or physical contact. Product listings state concentrations of 30% or more, extending the range beyond delicate skin perfumes. These are individual compositions with their own perfumers and creative subjects, rather than uniformly stronger versions of the existing fragrances with initials.

With Tonka Hysteria, Jordi Fernández aimed for the immediate attraction of love at first sight. He began with generous amounts of tonka bean and vanilla, adding iris and arranging the top, heart, and base to work together in revealing the beauty and richness of these three materials. His Rose Blaze turns to contrasts between light and shadow, tenderness and desire. Bergamot meets peach, followed by two different qualities of rose and iris, leading into the warmth of sandalwood and benzoin.

For Flower Lust, Ropion conceived a warm bouquet and a woody-amber base as two beings meeting and joining together. He chose ylang-ylang for its floral strength as well as its leathery and animalic facets. An orange blossom accord adds a honeyed warmth.

Julien Rasquinet structured Incense Crush along the timeline of a love story. Cardamom and clove form the beginning, like turning to look at someone passing in the street. Leather and creamy notes then depict falling in love, before a base of olibanum, oak, and vetiver develops into a more sensual, provocative accord. In incense, a material often associated with mysticism, he found a physical sensuality.

Holy Berry begins with a strawberry milk accord imagined by Tanguy Guesnet. This fruity-woody fragrance contrasts a milky texture recalling childhood with a white oud accord whose animalic facets are restrained. The central idea is to combine milky roundness with deep woody impressions, rather than emphasize fruit solely through sugary sweetness.

In Vanilla Affair, Nathalie Lorson draws out both the soft, enveloping and the dark, woody sides of vanilla. She uses two differently extracted materials: a Madagascar Vanilla planifolia absolute and a Bourbon vanilla obtained through supercritical CO₂ extraction. Honeyed Balkan tobacco and tonka bean introduce the vanilla’s depth, leading to white musk, patchouli, and amber.

The international lineup also includes Candy Rush, created for the Italian perfumery Campomarzio 70. Patrice Revillard paired orange blossom, with its associations of childhood tastes and smells, with vanilla to create a marshmallow-like accord. Iris and neroli, benzoin, Ambroxan, and sandalwood develop this impression of airy confectionery into a fragrance that lingers on the skin. Like Holy Berry, it explores sweetness linked to memory, but here the center is marshmallow evoked by flowers and vanilla.

Home Fragrances

Introduced around the relaunch as “Stolen Moments,” the home fragrances combine a time and a short phrase to evoke the place where two people meet and the atmosphere around them. While the fragrances for the skin focus on people and states of love, these scents depict the settings of encounters: a studio, a dressing room, or somewhere out of sight.

The range includes beautiful brass fragrance diffusers called Totems, handmade in a French jewelry workshop, and portable diffusers called Fetishes. The innovative idea of refillable candles is also intriguing: apparently, considerable time was spent developing wax refills that fit the glass vessels perfectly.

03:50 Comme la dernière fois is Olivia Giacobetti’s portrait of an artist’s studio at night. She describes a composition built around five elements. Iris butter and musk give it a soft, rounded expansiveness, linen adds brightness, and almond wood and white cedar provide depth.

In 19:50 En coulisses, Vincent Ricord takes the dressing room just before a performer goes onstage as his subject. An ink accord, rose and violet, leather and musk bring together the brief moment of a kiss and the tension of stepping out before an audience. Ricord began with violet and likens the ink added to it to a warrior’s tattoo that summons courage.

Ricord’s 23:15 À l’abri des regards evokes a secret rendezvous away from prying eyes. Heliotrope and lavender meet sandalwood, birch, vanilla, and amber in a warm, powdery composition. Where the fabric and wood of 03:50 create stillness and the ink and leather of 19:50 suggest the moments before a performance, wood, vanilla, and amber intensify the warmth of a private space for two.

The time-named fragrances have also extended to collaborations with artists. 05:33 A Minha Vida Portuguesa is a candle composed by Suzy Le Helley, inspired by Laetitia Rouget’s home. Set at dawn in Lisbon, it evokes sunlit fruit in the garden and the feeling of being enveloped by a house. Lemon, soft neroli, and milky fig reflect both the home and Rouget’s bright personality. The earlier time-named fragrances and their perfumers are listed below.

Name	Official Japanese Label (Translated)	Perfumer
00:00 Au sommet	At the Summit	Vincent Ricord
00:30 En bas de chez toi	In Front of Your Apartment	Vincent Ricord
02:45 Enfin seuls	Finally, the Two of Us	Vincent Ricord
03:50 Comme la dernière fois	In the Same Place as Last Time	Olivia Giacobetti
04:30 Par surprise	By Surprise	Vincent Ricord
06:20 Où tu sais	Where You Know
09:15 En tête-à-tête	Face to Face	Vincent Ricord
13:30 Au même endroit	In the Usual Place	Vincent Ricord
15:00 Entre tes mains	It Is Up to You	Vincent Ricord
16:45 Mine de rien	As If Nothing Had Happened	Vincent Ricord
17:30 Sans un mot	Without a Word	Vincent Ricord
19:50 En coulisses	Backstage	Vincent Ricord
20:15 Presque prête		Vincent Ricord
21:30 Sous les draps	In Bed	Vincent Ricord
23:15 À l’abri des regards	Where No One Can See	Vincent Ricord