PREMIÈRE NOTE | From a Single Note to Four Winds | ルシェルシェパルファム

Every perfume begins with a conversation.

— Mélanie Leroux, perfumer

How do you turn the cedars of the Atlas Mountains into a perfume? In Mélanie Leroux’s Cedar Atlas, leather lends texture to the wood, while grapefruit and spices give it definition. The fragrance ties a place to a distinctive smell, an idea that took shape in the first perfumes Première Note released in Paris.

In 2024, the house adopted the compass rose as its emblem. It kept some of its early fragrances and regrouped its perfumes into four collections named for winds.

Contents

At a Glance
The Founders and the Origins of Première Note
How Première Note Makes Its Perfumes
1. Building a Fragrance Around One Note
2. Four Winds in Scent and Bottle Colour
References

At a Glance

Brand launch — 2014 in Paris, France, according to the official history published by its operator, CBI. Pitti’s exhibitor profile dates its creation to 2015; the reason for this difference has not been established.
Co-founders — Hervé Josserand and Thibaut Perrin-Faivre
Collection redesign — 2024
Official website — Première Note Parfums

The Founders and the Origins of Première Note

From L’Oréal to a Fragrance House of Their Own

Hervé Josserand studied business in Toulouse and joined L’Oréal in 1995. He worked in sales and marketing and became sales director of the Lascad division in 1999. In 2003 he started ACTA, a consulting and communications group. In 2014 he founded Création Beauté International (CBI), bringing together the skills needed to develop, make and sell fragrances. The company would build its own perfume brands alongside fragrances made under licence.

His co-founder, Thibaut Perrin-Faivre, was also a former L’Oréal director with expertise in product development. Première Note became CBI’s first in-house fragrance brand. In 2016, Josserand acquired the design agency NA Studio to bring work on packaging, visuals and in-store displays into the company.

My strategy was to bring design and promotional gift development in-house.

— Hervé Josserand, co-founder

Mélanie Leroux and the First Five Fragrances

Mélanie Leroux, the perfumer behind the first five fragrances, was born in Normandy. She studied chemistry before training in perfumery at ISIPCA. After 15 years at a fragrance composition house, working between Grasse and Paris, she founded her independent practice, Mademoiselle Parfumette, in 2010. She starts by listening to the place or story a client wants to convey, then translates it into accords and refines them through successive trials.

At the composition house, Leroux learned how far to intervene when working with a material. She describes it as:

the art of letting a raw material express itself fully, without ever forcing it.

— Mélanie Leroux

The first five fragrances included Orange Calabria, Rosa Damas and Cedar Atlas. Each gave a different subject, from orange to rose to cedar, a geographical name. The clear cylindrical bottles and gold caps made the varied fragrances recognisable as a family.

In 2015 Première Note presented its work at Pitti Fragranze in Florence and Paris Parfums Rares. Two new fragrances by Jérôme Di Marino, Ambre Kashmir and Himalayan Oud, came in gold-coloured cylindrical bottles. At Esxence in 2017 the house presented another Di Marino composition, Aura Tonka. A range that began with citrus, flowers and woods now took in amber, oud and tonka bean.

The 2024 Redesign and the Compass Rose

In 2024 the house regrouped its perfumes around four winds, keeping some earlier fragrances and adding new ones. It adopted an eight-pointed compass rose, the figure used to show the directions of the winds, and redesigned its bottles. The wind gave fragrances already linked to particular materials or places a shared theme. On 8 September 2026, SAKURA Synergy Group announced the launch of Clé Sieste and its offering of five brands, including Première Note.

How Première Note Makes Its Perfumes

Building a Fragrance Around One Note

For Première Note, a “first note” is meant to make an impression at the start and give the scent a thread to follow as it develops. Cedar Atlas opens with grapefruit, pepper and cardamom. It moves through a green touch of violet leaf towards cedarwood and leather. The spices and leather give definition to the wood, the material at the centre of the composition.

The house has also invited people to layer its perfumes since its early years. Giving each fragrance a distinct focus lets it stand on its own and gives the wearer something recognisable to work with when combining scents.

Four Winds in Scent and Bottle Colour

Le Souffle du Mistral captures the light that follows a cold, dry wind clearing the sky through citrus, flowers and fruit. Les Contre-Alizés, the westerlies collection that includes Cedar Atlas, centres on woods and takes its bottle colour from forest wood and mist. The Sahara’s sirocco collection takes its gold from sunlight reflected off hot sand. The winds and blue waters of Lake Baikal give Les Vents du Baïkal its cooler palette.

In the sirocco collection’s Aura Tonka, Di Marino pairs the vanilla and tobacco facets of tonka bean with powdery almond. Tart citrus tempers the sweetness before the fragrance settles into woods and vanilla. Di Marino describes his broader approach to familiar forms in perfumery this way:

I like to work with traditional patterns, but I always give them a modern twist.

— Jérôme Di Marino, perfumer

Bois Selenga, from Les Vents du Baïkal, takes its cue from the cool air of the Selenga River as it flows through the Mongolian mountains. Nathalie Lorson brightens the opening with cardamom and bergamot, then sets sharp ginger against iris and rose. Cedar, frankincense and vanilla bring warmth to the base. Cedar Atlas uses leather to give its wood texture, while Bois Selenga sets the warmth of wood against spices that suggest the chill of the river air.