Eight & Bob: Perfumes That Capture History and Legend in a Bottle

Eight & Bob combines a modern fragrance business founded by Luis Bodes with a story set in 1930s France.

Contents

Essential Information
The Founder and the Origins of the Brand
1. The Story Behind the Name
2. From Clothing Retail to a Fragrance Brand
What Defines the Brand

Essential Information

Starting point in the story: 1937 (Côte d’Azur / Paris)
Modern development: Packaging created in 2009; exhibited at Elements Showcase in 2012
Modern founder: Luis Bodes
Founder in the story: Albert Fouquet
Official website: https://eightandbob.com/
Pronunciation: Eight and Bob

The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

The Story Behind the Name

In the house’s story, Parisian perfume enthusiast Albert Fouquet meets a young John F. Kennedy in 1937. Kennedy requests eight samples and another for his brother Bob, giving the fragrance its name. Later, during wartime, the butler Philippe conceals bottles inside books for shipping.

From Clothing Retail to a Fragrance Brand

Luis Bodes, the entrepreneur behind the modern Eight & Bob business, entered fashion through a made-to-measure shirt shop in his hometown of Oviedo. In a 2020 interview, he recalled moving to his wife’s hometown of Valencia in 1998 and opening the store known as Hannover 1998.

In a 2023 interview, Bodes explained that he wanted fragrance to offer an experience of stepping back into the past. That report identified him as the founder and placed the company’s headquarters and bottling operations in Valencia, with manufacturing in France.

For the brand’s early development, Intertrade Europe describes a relaunch by Celso Fadelli. Pati Nuñez Associats records its packaging project in 2009, and the fragrance was presented at Elements Showcase in New York in 2012. Alongside this modern business history sits the brand’s story of Fouquet and Kennedy, recounted above.

Retailer Mattace notes that the brand narrative draws on family oral tradition while incorporating fictional events and characters.

What Defines the Brand

A Philosophy of Fragrance-Making: Slow Perfumery

Eight & Bob’s fragrances are composed through a meticulous process that could be called “slow perfumery.” Ingredients are measured on precision jewelers’ scales, macerated in small vats, and then left to mature slowly in the dark. The perfumers return to the formulas repeatedly, refining them until every layer, from top to heart to drydown, is in harmony.

Eight & Bob describes its guiding spirit as cultured curiosity, valuing careful selection, attention to detail and the pursuit of the extraordinary.

The brand also sets itself apart from conventional perfume houses in its sourcing of ingredients. It travels from the Atlas Mountains to the Aegean coast in search of rare materials not used in conventional perfumery. Its suppliers are primarily family-run farms, with small-batch harvests that follow the seasons and the pace of nature. Sustainability is also a strong consideration: its sandalwood comes from FSC-certified sources in Western Australia, using Santalum album trees grown for 15 years.

Bottle and Packaging: A Perfume Hidden in a Book

The Original’s bottle combines a minimalist, rectilinear form with hand-polished glass, a black cap, and a distinctive striped label. The stripes are said to derive from the pattern on the shirt John F. Kennedy wore at their first meeting. The bottle is hand-polished and numbered.

The outer box is the most striking feature. Shaped like a book, it opens to pages telling the brand’s story, with a hollow cut into the final pages to hold the bottle. Pati Nuñez’s project record identifies its concept as “a fragrance with a story.” This book-shaped packaging was designed by Pati Nuñez in 2009.

Alongside The Original, the Fouquet Collection explores Fouquet’s travels and relationships, while Les Extraits connects materials with the stories of places and people. The fragrances inspired by Fouquet’s life include private memories of holidays and landscapes offered as gifts to friends far from home.

The Original

The fragrance at the origin of the brand. A bright, spicy opening of cardamom, lemon, and pink pepper leads to a complex heart of dry wood, labdanum (cistus resin), and violet leaves that evokes twentieth-century Paris, followed by a refined, warm woody trail of amber, sandalwood, and vetiver in the base. The house links production to the harvest of its Andean ingredient “Andrea.”

The Fouquet Collection

The Fouquet Collection arrived in June 2025 with ten fragrances, bringing existing scents together with four new creations. Named after Albert Fouquet, the central figure in the brand’s story, it draws on gifts to friends, reunions with a lover and the grape harvest as well as his travels. Earlier fragrances and new stories become parts of one collection.

Its bottles were also redesigned by Valencia-based Lavernia & Cienfuegos. A contemporary interpretation of the Art Deco associated with the 1930s combines vertical grooves in thick glass, a symmetrical outline and a glossy black cylindrical cap. Removing the cap reveals a metal collar engraved with the collection’s name. Colored bands around white outer boxes distinguish the fragrances, while the book-like opening preserves the idea of handing over a story with a perfume.

The house’s story of Cap d’Antibes recalls mornings sailing off Antibes, evenings viewed from hotel gardens and long summer holidays. These accumulated days are what Fouquet remembers in a cold Paris. Cool mint, birch and violet leaves meet cedar, incense and vanilla, moving from summer sunlight toward the warmth of night. The perfume is presented as a private way of preserving his own memories.

Egypt grows from the story of a 1935 visit to his childhood friend Ahmed. For Fouquet, interested in ancient scents, journeys to temples and a garden of unfamiliar flowers at his friend’s house become clues for a perfume. Lavender, lemon and moss lead into cardamom and nutmeg, then leather, patchouli and sandalwood. The search for scent becomes a chapter in his private collection.

Champs de Provence depicts a gift to friends living far away. In the story, Alessandro and Chiara are an Italian couple with a country house in Provence. When Alessandro, a diplomat, is posted to the Philippines, Fouquet sends the rural scents they miss. Bergamot, orange and pear combine with rose, jasmine, orange blossom, maté and moss to evoke flowers, fruit and greenery. Its Calabrian bergamot material is cold-pressed from the peel.

Nuit de Megève connects cold mountain air and wood in the fireplace with memories of conversation and dancing. In the brand’s story, Fouquet meets Annicke at an evening party hosted by his friend Nicolas, then creates a scent to remember the night after returning to Paris. The current fragrance combines bergamot and nutmeg with clove, violet and tonka bean, followed by cedarwood and amber. That encounter also leads into the Vienna-set stories of Pure Vienne and Belvedere.

The earlier travel-inspired fragrances also include Mémoires de Mustique, an homage to the Caribbean island, with a floral-citrus scent centered on orange blossom and neroli. Although it is not among the ten fragrances of the current Fouquet Collection, it remains part of the house’s exploration of remembered places.

The Annicke Collection

Annicke is a collection of six fragrances developed for women, inspired by Fouquet’s feelings for an Austrian woman. The house places their first meeting in Megève in 1936, followed by reunions in Vienna. In its story, Fouquet gives her a new perfume whenever they meet. Annicke 1 through 6 explore different characters, from floral to oriental.

Annicke 1: A clean floral fragrance centered on lily of the valley and jasmine
Annicke 2: A warm, enveloping floral fragrance of tuberose, immortelle, and ylang-ylang
Annicke 3: A chypre-floral fragrance with gardenia, jasmine, and white rose, distinguished by a meringue dessert note
Annicke 5: A warm, sensual oriental fragrance intertwining rum and honey with vanilla and caramel

The Fouquet Collection’s Pure Vienne and Belvedere feature the same couple. Pure Vienne tells of their reunion in Vienna after an exchange of letters and a perfume offered to Annicke. Peony, lily of the valley and jasmine join white musk around an airy floral center. Belvedere takes their deepening relationship at the palace as its subject. Rum, honey, plum, vanilla and caramel form a woody gourmand, giving their memories a sweeter, warmer expression.

The Les Extraits Collection

Les Extraits is a collection of highly concentrated extraits de parfum, emphasizing time spent selecting materials and limited production. It began with Agneta and Guéthary in 2022; La Musique de Christie and Le Geste d’Edmond followed in 2024. Moving beyond Fouquet’s personal travels, its subjects include life aboard a yacht, a seaside village, the people who nurtured opera and a boy who transformed vanilla cultivation.

Agneta takes its name from Italian industrialist Gianni Agnelli’s sailing yacht. Its starting point is a wooden deck at sea. Oud is layered with pepper and cardamom, coffee, smoky incense and sandalwood, building the substance of wood and resin. Memories of voyages and conversations continuing into sunset accompany the scent.

Guéthary looks to a village on France’s Atlantic coast, with its salt air and flowers. Pear blossom, tagetes and salt combine with jasmine sambac and suede notes, leading to white musk and Ambrox Super. An homage to ambergris meets bright flowers, soft musk and woody textures. Where Agneta evokes the grain of a yacht’s deck, Guéthary explores the contrast between sea air, flowers and a creamy feel.

La Musique de Christie pays tribute to the Glyndebourne opera festival in Sussex and its founder, John Christie. Christie and his wife, soprano Audrey Mildmay, held the first festival in 1934. Greek saffron, nutmeg, leather, patchouli and musk evoke the operatic culture they fostered and the elegance of gatherings on summer evenings.

Le Geste d’Edmond remembers the manual skill of Edmond Albius, whose work changed vanilla cultivation. In 1841, the twelve-year-old Albius, who was enslaved, devised the efficient hand-pollination method still used today. Bourbon vanilla forms the center of the perfume, accompanied by Madagascan ginger, cinnamon and clove. The appeal of the sweet material is joined to respect for the person who helped make its production possible.

The fifth fragrance, Le Gant Blanc, reaches back to the scented-glove culture connecting sixteenth-century Florence and the French court. Green violet leaf and the bite of pink pepper lead into rose, lily of the valley and incense, followed by patchouli, vanilla, tonka bean and amberwood. The craft of perfuming leather and the scent released by a moving hand are reflected in the wearer’s own gestures.

Robert F. Kennedy Special Edition

A limited edition honoring Bob, Robert F. Kennedy, whose name inspired the brand’s name. It contains the same formula as The Original in a 50 ml bottle and was created in collaboration with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation, with a portion of the proceeds donated to the foundation.

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