Delphine Lebeau: Translating Paintings and Texture into Fragrance

“Because the possibilities are endless.”

Delphine Lebeau, when asked why scent was chosen as a means of expression

Born in Paris, France.

The tension in a painting, the plump texture of daifuku, the cold air and warm steam of Iceland: Delphine Lebeau’s creations reveal a practice of translating what the eyes, hands, and tongue experience into scent.

Light and darkness, cold and warmth are placed side by side, their separate impressions brought together in a single perfume. The opening words succinctly express that breadth of creativity.

A Life in Perfumery

From Medicine to the World of Fragrance

Lebeau grew up in Paris. With family roots in Spain and Italy, Lebeau is described as spending childhood around Parc Montsouris. On trips to the market with Lebeau’s mother, the young Lebeau would investigate the smells of food and flowers one after another.

Guerlain’s Météorites powder in perfume shops also held a special fascination. That closeness between scent and touch relates to a later desire to give perfumes softness and fabric-like textures.

Lebeau’s father was a doctor, and Lebeau initially headed toward studying medicine. Reading an article about perfumers, however, prompted a change of direction. Here was work that could express emotions and memories while handling materials scientifically. Discovering it led to studies in chemistry and a step into the world of perfume.

After practical experience in Guerlain’s quality-control department, Lebeau trained at the Givaudan Roure perfumery school. Alongside learning with fellow students, Lebeau reportedly tried out personal formulas. Sensibility alone cannot make a perfume; this was where the skills to turn it into a reproducible formula were developed.

From Givaudan to Takasago, Then IFF

Beginning a career at Givaudan in 1993, Lebeau worked on projects for Kenzo, Lacoste, Grès, Avon, and other brands. During about 15 years at the company, the work included not only new personal creations but also reformulating historic perfumes.

In 2008, Lebeau moved to Takasago’s European operation, then to Fragrance Resources in 2010. The latter was acquired by International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) in 2017, after which Lebeau has worked as a senior perfumer at IFF.

Asked about a greatest strength in Pitti Fragranze’s 2020 questionnaire, Lebeau gave a brief answer.

“Perseverance.”

Delphine Lebeau, from Pitti Fragranze’s questionnaire

The same questionnaire names a lack of self-confidence as a weakness. Behind the quiet contours of a finished perfume, one can glimpse someone testing, thinking, and making it again.

In 2023, Lebeau also participated in fashion education in Antwerp, engaging in creativity across disciplines. Drawing ideas from clothes, paintings, and food rather than remaining within the world of perfume is another characteristic of the work.

Bandit: Inheriting Another Creator’s Work

In 1999, Lebeau reformulated Robert Piguet’s Bandit. The original is a leather chypre created by Germaine Cellier in 1944.

With a sharp green impression and the dark contours of leather and moss, it possessed a strength unlike a pretty floral perfume. After it had been discontinued, Lebeau, then at Givaudan, was involved in reviving it with a new formula.

This work should not be confused with credit as Bandit’s original creator. It involved making Cellier’s fragrance work again with the materials and production conditions of a later era. It shows that a perfumer’s role includes not only making something new, but understanding and passing on another person’s expression.

Fan di Fendi: A Contrast of Flowers and Leather

Fendi’s Fan di Fendi (2010) is one of the works that brought Lebeau’s name to a wider audience. In collaboration with François Demachy, it combined a bright fruity opening, flowers including tuberose, and impressions of patchouli and leather.

It offers neither floral splendor alone nor simply the strength of leather. Behind a bright, approachable exterior remains a slightly tauter texture. Together with a bottle shaped around Fendi’s double F, it translated the contours of fashion into fragrance.

For the subsequent Pour Homme (2012) and L’Acquarossa (2013), Lebeau also collaborated with Benoist Lapouza. The work involved not only creating a new perfume, but considering how its personality should change within a series.

Turning the Louvre’s Le Verrou into Lily and Musk

In 2019, Officine Universelle Buly announced a project to turn works in the Louvre into fragrances. As eight perfumers each selected an artwork, Lebeau chose Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Le Verrou, or The Bolt.

The gestures of a man and a woman in an interior of strong light and shadow: the tension of the scene was expressed through a fragrance centered on lily and musk. It was finished as an alcohol-free Eau Triple.

A written description of a painting cannot simply be replaced with fragrance ingredients. Which flowers or textures might convey the distance and temperature of this scene? Lebeau’s work was less about cataloguing what is visible in the painting than about capturing its atmosphere.

The Scent of Daifuku and the Luxury of Time Alone

In 2020, the collection of works for collectors by IFF’s perfumers took Slow Smelling as its theme. Lebeau drew inspiration from Japanese daifuku, naming the fragrance Moshi.

Its plump exterior and sweetness within were expressed through vanilla, several musks, and a small quantity of sweet-smelling material. Oak extract added a calm impression, like being beside a fireplace. Rather than simply trying to smell exactly like a sweet, the work embraced the sense of comfort experienced when eating it.

The answer to a question about the greatest luxury in the same year’s Pitti questionnaire resonates with this fragrance.

“One hour alone, doing whatever I like!”

Delphine Lebeau, from Pitti Fragranze’s questionnaire

Amid living and working surrounded by people, there is time to return quietly to oneself. Its value seems to take shape in this soft fragrance.

Reykjavik: Cold and Warmth in One Bottle

Contes de Parfums’ Reykjavik (2022) is based on a journey to Iceland. Green slopes, glaciers, cold air, volcanic ground, and sauna steam: experiences of different temperatures are incorporated into a single scent.

The coolness of cardamom, pink pepper, sage, and rosemary is layered with the warmth of wood and amber. Warmth becomes necessary to emphasize cold. This structure connects the contrasts Lebeau handles so well with memories of a journey.

Fétiche L’Ambre: Unexpected Green within Amber

In Christian Louboutin’s Fétiche L’Ambre (2024), Lebeau reconsidered the expression of warm amber. The intention was described as follows.

“I wanted to reinterpret the character of this amber by adding an unexpected green freshness and the contrast of patchouli.”

Delphine Lebeau, from remarks published by Now Smell This

The green floral facets of tuberose and the warmth of amber are layered with patchouli’s earthy, woody contours. Casting light from another direction onto a rich, enveloping scent brings its texture into relief.

Lebeau’s work is not simply about reducing materials or magnifying contrasts. It is about arranging the elements so that each has a role within the fragrance. From reformulating a classic leather perfume to daifuku, that approach persists even as the subject changes.

Incidentally…

The Pitti questionnaire records Lebeau’s preferences in concrete terms. Orris root is an indispensable ingredient. Among other people’s creations, Lebeau names Cartier’s Déclaration; among personal creations, Blanc Chic.

The best-smelling place was the maquis, the dense scrub of the Mediterranean coast. Read alongside profiles mentioning southern European roots, this suggests that dry vegetation and air close to the sea, not just flowers, are important sensations.

There is also a story that, for Christmas at the age of ten, Lebeau asked her parents for a meal at Maxim’s, then one of Paris’s glamorous restaurants. Curiosity about taste and spaces seems to have appeared early.

And the answer to what brings the greatest happiness was something very close to home.

“The sound of my children laughing.”

Delphine Lebeau, from Pitti Fragranze’s questionnaire

Perfumes for major fashion brands and joys within the home: the ability to move naturally between these worlds may also appear in creations exploring softness and comfort.

Perfume Creations

Major works are listed chronologically. Reformulations are distinguished from originals, and notes identify differences in records of co-authorship.

References

• Pitti Immagine Fragranze — Fragranze’s Proust Questionnaires, Vol.2
• V Perfumes — Perfumer of the Day: Delphine Lebeau
• Nord43 — Delphine Lebeau
• The Perfume Girl — Delphine Lebeau-Krowiak
• Fragrantica — Delphine Lebeau
• Now Smell This — Bandit by Robert Piguet
• Now Smell This — Perfumers L to S
• Now Smell This — Fendi Fan di Fendi Pour Homme
• Now Smell This — Fendi L’Acquarossa
• The Beauty Influencers — Du Musée au Parfum
• The Perfume Society — Buly 1803 at the Louvre
• The Fragrance Foundation France — Slow Smelling by IFF
• IFF — Perfumer Delphine Lebeau: 2020 Slow Smelling Collector’s Edition
• Contes de Parfums — Reykjavik
• Now Smell This — Christian Louboutin Fétiche Collection
• Now Smell This — Hugo Boss The Scent Magnetic
• IFF — IFF to Acquire Fragrance Resources
• Fragrantica — Precious White