CHAPEL FACTORY: Creating Sanctuaries of Every Kind with Frankincense

“Of all perfumes, frankincense is the noblest. History has conveyed its importance across ages and civilizations. My curiosity about noble raw materials led me to places of prayer, where vibrating olfactory acoustics resonate as an invitation to meditation.”
— Anaïs Biguine, founder of Chapel Factory

Essential Information

• Founded: 2020
• Founder: Anaïs Biguine​
• Official website: chapelfactory.com
• Boutique: 15 rue des Tournelles, 75004 Paris (the Marais)
• ​Where to buy in Japan: Le Sillage Kyoto

The Founder and the Origins of the House

Who Is Anaïs Biguine?

Anaïs Biguine is a self-taught French perfumer and artistic director based in Paris. Her career began in branding, marketing, and communications in the beauty and fashion industries, and she also worked as an actors’ agent and a fashion and still-life photographer. By the time she launched Chapel Factory, she had already founded three fragrance brands, making her an unusual figure in the field.​

Her roots lie in literature. She grew up in a household where “the entire family spent Sundays reading in silence, respecting one another’s reading time,” and developed intellectually in the company of nineteenth-century French Romantic writers.​

The Birth of Jardins d’Écrivains: A “Moment of Grace” on Guernsey

To understand Chapel Factory, one must first know how its predecessor came into being. In the summer of 2011, Anaïs took her two daughters to Hauteville House, Victor Hugo’s former home on Guernsey. She recalled this house, the only one Hugo owned during his exile, as follows.

“Seeing my two daughters sitting in the garden, I thought: I have to preserve this moment in something. When I returned to my manor house in Normandy, I decided that the medium would be olfactory, even though I had never previously had any involvement with the world of perfume.”
—Anaïs Biguine​

She ordered raw materials from Grasse, the perfume-making center in southern France, and began teaching herself by making candles. She then developed her work into perfume creation in collaboration with a laboratory in Grasse. The result was Jardins d’Écrivains, meaning “Writers’ Gardens,” a fragrance brand inspired by the lives of writers and the gardens they loved.

A Succession of New Houses

Anaïs continued energetically founding brands. Next came Les Cocottes de Paris, conceived as a tribute to the courtesans of the Second Empire and Belle Époque, and Gri Gri (2016), inspired by tattoo cultures and rituals around the world. Speaking about Gri Gri, Anaïs said:

“My creativity has an incubation period, and then one day I suddenly immerse myself in a project. The reason is often unclear at first, but eventually it begins to make sense. Through yoga, I started seeing wonderful tattoos and wanted to know more. Tattooing is a kind of rebellious language, and I was drawn to that idea.”
— Anaïs Biguine​

Chapel Factory: Entering the Temple of Incense

In 2020, Anaïs established Chapel Factory as her fourth fragrance house. This time, the theme was “frankincense (incense),” the oldest and most sacred aromatic material for burning, shared by all civilizations and religions.​

Chapel Factory brought to fruition Anaïs’s long-standing interest in the history of religions and spiritual language. Just as her literary brand translated writers’ souls into fragrance, this new venture sought to reconstruct the “place of prayer” itself through the sense of smell.​

“Chapel Factory interprets, in its universal dimension, a caravanserai returning along the incense route. Each religion associates the ritual of fumigation with a true offering to the gods. Within this sacredness of scent, the range of perfumes establishes a personal sanctuary.”
—Anaïs Biguine

A “caravanserai” is an inn for caravans, of the kind scattered along the incense-trading routes of the Middle East and Asia, serving as meeting points for civilizations and religions. By drawing on this imagery, Anaïs positions Chapel Factory not simply as “incense perfumes,” but as a spiritual journey across civilizations.

The House’s Commitments

Frankincense: “The Noblest Material of All Perfumes”

At the heart of Chapel Factory’s philosophy lies “the universality of incense (frankincense).” Anaïs repeatedly refers to the historical fact that incense has been used as an “offering to the gods” in every religion and civilization, including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and ancient Egypt. Rather than honoring one particular religion, Chapel Factory’s perfumes therefore seek to embody humanity’s spiritual heritage beyond religious boundaries through scent.

Each fragrance builds its story from one aspect of incense: the palo santo of South American shamanism in Holy Stick, the temple incense of ancient Egypt in Kyphi, the Eastern way of incense in Oud Pagode, or a Christian monastery garden in Erborista. The approach is thoroughly research-based, driven by the intellectual curiosity Anaïs has cultivated through many years of engagement with religious history.​

An Eco-Friendly Approach

The official website displays the words “ELEGANCE ECO FRIENDLY,” showing that the house places environmental consideration alongside aesthetics. The Sanctus home-fragrance page includes the phrase “A deliberate choice for luxury and sustainability.” Its soaps are said to be handmade in France using organic vegetable oils, including olive and coconut, together with beeswax and shea butter.

Incense Host (a beeswax warmer) uses 100% vegetable soy wax.

Creating a “Personal Sanctuary” Beyond Perfume

Chapel Factory offers not only wearable fragrances but also products intended to turn a space into a sanctuary: home-fragrance diffusers, candles, incense for burning, and scented lava stones. The phrase “builds a personal sanctuary” expresses the house’s mission itself.​

The Fragrance Collection

Chapel Factory’s perfume collection is entirely unisex. Centered on incense, each creation opens a door onto a different civilization, religion, or era.

Eaux de Parfum: Main Creations

Heresy / 2020​
Inspired by “a word that in antiquity referred to a school of thought, such as the garden of Epicurus.” An incense water suggesting a journey along the desert routes of the Arabian Peninsula. Pepper and incense form the top, cedar, sandalwood, and violet the heart, and vetiver, patchouli, and guaiac wood the base. Its paradoxical concept, “a sacrilege that liberates sacred notes,” is particularly striking.

Holy Stick / 2020
A tribute to palo santo, the aromatic wood used by South American shamans to communicate with the gods, whose name is rendered here as “holy stick.” A spicy opening of cardamom and clove is followed by palo santo’s characteristic creamy, smoky woodiness. The warm base of amber and patchouli has an exotic, spiritual depth.

Baptisma / 2020
Taking baptismal water as its theme, this creation embodies “the scent of childhood.” A bright opening of bergamot, verbena, and ginger leads into a gentle heart of neroli, jasmine, and milk, settling into moss, incense, and white musk. Among niche perfume enthusiasts, it is often introduced as “the most approachable fragrance for a beginner.”​

Pura Lux / 2020​
Described as a creation whose “notes undulate like a psalm dedicated to the glory of King David.” The power of musk is said to awaken spirituality, while sandalwood is said to bring inner peace. White musk, ambroxan, and patchouli weave a woody, powdery trail.

Hermit Coat / 2021
Inspired by the definition of a hermit as “someone who withdraws from society to live alone, often for religious reasons.” Evoking nostalgia for places of the past, it adds an animalic foundation to green, herbal tones of pine, fir, and creosote. A fragrance that paints the colors of autumn through smell.

Oud Pagode​
Moving away from a Middle Eastern interpretation of oud, this creation turns toward the solemnity of Japan’s kōdō, the “way of incense.” Black tea, lotus, and chrysanthemum create a tranquil spirituality, while a core of imperial oud is enveloped in rice powder and cashmere wood.

L’Eau d’Épine / 2022
As its poetic title, “Thorn Water,” suggests, the fierceness of wild roses and the softness of amber balm arrive in alternating waves. It opens with the resinous character of hinoki and galbanum, passes through the mystery of labdanum and incense, and reaches a powerful base of leather, vetiver, and amber.

Erborista​
A fragrance inviting the wearer into a monastery’s secret garden. True to its Italian title, meaning “herbalist,” it begins with fresh herbal tones of bergamot, sage, and mugwort, followed by lavender, rosemary, and an abbey iris. Incense pervades the base. The house describes it as “a cappella and aromatic notes evoking the Italian Renaissance.”​

Extraits de Parfum: The High-Concentration Line

Candor
Opening with neroli and bitter almond, it has a floral heart of orange blossom, jasmine, rose, and incense wood, before settling into musk and cedar. It is described as “a state of grace in which a floral elixir meets bitter almond.”

Scapular / 2025​
The latest extrait takes its name from the scapular, a component of monastic clothing or a devotional object. Anaïs says: “The curtain rises on sacred undergrowth at the foot of Mount Carmel. Roots, resins, and dark bark unleash a telluric, earthbound force, while frankincense settles on the skin to form an olfactory scapular.” Its materials include galbanum, styrax, ambroxan, ho wood, cedarwood, incense, and oakmoss.​

Collaborative Creations

Pilgrim / 2026
The latest creation, released in 2026 and developed jointly with the Parisian perfume community Pisse-Vinaigre. Anaïs describes it as “a genuine co-creation, not a collaboration in the commercial sense.” Smoky incense, cade wood, and mineral silt form the top, seaweed and benzoin a contemplative heart, and ambergris, moss, and leather a warm base. The fragrance depicts, through smell, a pilgrim standing motionless before a chapel on the coast.​

Home Fragrances and Ritual Objects

The house’s scented products extend beyond wearable perfumes.

• Ceremonia: Incense for burning, composed of twenty-five resins and aromatic plants. A kit includes a dedicated burner.​
• Kyphi: An amulet-shaped compounded incense recreating a recipe said to have been used in ancient Egyptian temples since four thousand years ago. It revives a blend that Plutarch described as “encouraging sleep, easing anxiety, and brightening dreams.”
• Incense Host: Melts made from 100% vegetable soy wax, containing bakhoor, olibanum, and styrax (approximately eight hours of burning per tablet).​
• Novena candles: Candles themed around the novena, nine days of prayer with origins going back to ancient Rome. They are scattered with black and gold church incense.​
• Sanctus: A home fragrance of sandalwood, camphor, and sage. 250 ml.​
• Lapis Lava: Sanctuary stones made by impregnating lava rock, used in rituals since ancient times, with fragrance.​

An Additional Note…

• Although Chapel Factory is Anaïs’s fourth brand, she has consistently maintained the position that “I am entirely independent, and all my successes and failures are my own responsibility.” She also learned perfume-making entirely on her own, without attending a formal perfumery school. A well-known anecdote recounts her saying: “I am interested in what I do not know. Learning is my driving force. I dislike delegating things, and I cannot bring myself to ask someone else to do them.”
• The word “Factory” in the name Chapel Factory is an intriguing choice. The pairing of “chapel,” a sacred space, with “factory,” a secular, industrial term, might be said to embody, in the name itself, the house’s philosophy of “a free dialogue between spiritual heritage and contemporary creation.”​
• In March 2026, Chapel Factory announced on Instagram that it had launched its own official online shop, chapelfactory.com. Previously, distribution had centered on the Jardins d’Écrivains e-commerce site and selected retailers. The establishment of an independent digital home at this point is noteworthy as a step into a new phase for the brand.​