Julien Rasquinet: Stories Encountered on His Travels, in a Single Drop

“Explore the world. Creation comes from encounters with people, cultures, and landscapes.”

Julien Rasquinet, from an interview with Nose

He loved perfume without knowing there were people who created it. A young Belgian man, fresh out of business school, entered the world of perfumery thanks to a business card his father brought home.

His mentor was Pierre Bourdon. What he learned was not only how to memorize ingredients and construct formulas, but also how to think about what he wanted to convey and give a fragrance a story. From Normandy to Dubai, then to Paris, Rasquinet’s creations carry the imprint of the people he encountered in each place and the time he shared with them.

Career in Perfumery

The Grass of Normandy and the Belgian Seaside

Rasquinet’s early olfactory memories lie in Normandy, where he spent weekends and holidays as a child. In an interview with Nose, he described the smells he experienced there.

“I fondly remember the smell of freshly cut grass, walks in the forest, leaf mold, and overripe apples covering the ground in September.”

Julien Rasquinet, from an interview with Nose

Another memory comes from Knokke-le-Zoute in Belgium, where he visited his grandparents every summer: the seaside smell of damp stone mingled with iodine. Such memories later became clues that could bring emotions back when he created perfumes.

As a child, he was also absorbed in drawing and making costumes for plays and puppet shows. He began collecting perfumes in his teens. He could not afford to buy many and owned only a few bottles. Yet those few came to feel like an extension of himself.

His favorites included Dior’s Fahrenheit, Kenzo’s Pour Homme, and Chanel’s Égoïste Platinum. He also had a strong attachment to Clinique’s Aromatics Elixir, which his mother wore.

The Business Card His Father Brought Home: Pierre Bourdon

Rasquinet graduated from the Paris business school ISG in 2003. A turning point during the transition from his studies to graduation was a six-month marketing internship at Firmenich in New York.

Although he wanted to work in the perfume industry, he could not yet see a clear path. But discovering perfumers’ work in the fragrance laboratory made him realize that he wanted to be on the creative side.

“I was not destined to become a perfumer. I did not even know the profession existed.”

Interview with Flannie, 2023

He returned to France without a background in chemistry or perfumery school. Then his father happened to meet Bourdon at an airport, and they exchanged business cards. Not knowing how famous a perfumer Bourdon was, his father passed the card on to his son.

Bourdon was the creator of perfumes such as Yves Saint Laurent’s Kouros, Davidoff’s Cool Water, and Dior’s Dolce Vita. For Rasquinet, it was as though the maker of fragrances he admired had suddenly come within reach.

He called the next day, and they soon began meeting for conversations over breakfast or coffee. After about a year of these meetings, Bourdon offered to train him as his last apprentice during the three years before his retirement.

Three Years Learning Scents, and the Road to Independence

His apprenticeship at Fragrance Resources began with smelling raw materials. For the first year, he explored the different facets of each ingredient and connected names with smells. Over the following two years, he reproduced basic fragrance bases before progressing to masterpieces of perfume history.

Julie Massé studied alongside him. Rasquinet recalls learning in an atmosphere of mutual support as colleagues, rather than being driven solely by competition.

Bourdon taught him to choose ingredients rigorously, keep a composition clear, and sometimes use bold quantities to give form to imagination. Above all, he taught him to tell stories through perfume. Techniques reaching back to Jean Carles and Edmond Roudnitska were passed on through this daily training.

He later had the opportunity to work with Christine Nagel before becoming independent. He opened a laboratory, Note de Cœur, in Normandy. In a 2013 interview with his alma mater, he explained that the laboratory had been open for about two years and that exports accounted for 85% of sales.

His clients ranged from German television-shopping brands such as Judith Williams to candles for Inès de la Fressange. Alongside the ability to devise fragrances, he needed the skills to find clients, negotiate terms, and keep a company running. What he had learned at business school now translated into practical work.

From Creed to Dubai

During his independent years, he also composed perfumes for Creed for about four years. A signature creation from that period was Royal Oud in 2011.

Creating this perfume sparked a deeper interest in Arabian perfume culture. He visited Dubai and began to think about working there for a while, just as IFF invited him to join its local creative center.

Rasquinet moved in 2013, spending about five years in Dubai and then about five years in Paris. During this period, the richness of the scents he experienced in the Middle East was layered onto the storytelling he had learned from Bourdon.

There was not only oud, but also rose, saffron, musk, and amber wood. There was the culture of mukhallats, blends of perfume oils, and bakhoor, which scents rooms and clothing. Working directly with brand owners and responding to their tastes and instincts was another powerful stimulus.

Middle Eastern perfumes, often viewed as a single category from Europe, differ according to place and creator. Rasquinet sees that diversity as rich material for creation.

Putting Enjoyment Back at the Heart of Work

In September 2023, Rasquinet moved to the UK-based company CPL Aromas. He currently works as a Senior Perfumer at its French operation.

In an interview with Flannie, he explained why he chose a family-owned company:

“I decided to join a family-owned company because I was afraid of forgetting to enjoy myself. That is what drives me. We are here for business, but we are also here to have fun.”

Julien Rasquinet, from an interview with Flannie

In his new environment, his role came to include developing the team and younger perfumers, not just making his own creations. Being able to celebrate when the perfumer next door wins a project. Acknowledging his competitive nature while learning to lose. The view of work he inherited from Bourdon also appears in his relationships with the next generation.

What Stories Can Fragrance Tell?

Choosing Ingredients for the Story

Rasquinet does not aim merely to reproduce the smells of nature accurately. Through encounters with landscapes, people, words he has read, and music, he first gathers emotions and images, then translates them into fragrance.

When something leaves an impression, he makes a note of it, much as a writer records daily life for the next work. Sometimes, he says, an idea that comes in a dream makes him want to try it in the laboratory immediately.

The materials he likes include labdanum, patchouli, rose, leather, spices, and incense. Yet he does not choose to use them every time simply because he likes them.

“A good ingredient is one that is essential to the story I want to tell. I do not want to tell the same story over and over.”

From an interview with Nose

If you always choose the same words, your stories begin to resemble one another. Although many of his creations make a strong impression of smoke and amber, he does not confine himself to that image. Ingredients are chosen not to repeat a signature but to make the work before him come together.

Rewriting Intuition, Again and Again

He sometimes compares making perfume to a writer revising a draft. Rather than treating a formula as finished as soon as it comes to mind, he leaves it overnight, returns to it the next day, and lets it go if necessary. He questions each ingredient as if it were a word in a sentence.

Yet adjusting too closely to test results can also erase the personality that was there at the beginning. Asked about the future of perfume creation, Rasquinet replied:

“We must restore intuition to the center of creation.”

Interview with Flannie, 2023

Neither leaving everything to feeling nor using testing alone to move toward an average fragrance: at the heart of Rasquinet’s work is preserving the original emotion he found interesting, on the foundation of the rigor he learned from Bourdon.

Signature Creations and Their Background

Royal Oud: A Gateway to the Middle East

Royal Oud, released in 2011, is presented as a collaboration between Rasquinet and Olivier Creed.

From the brightness of citrus and spices, it moves to cedarwood, angelica, and galbanum. Oud, sandalwood, and musk form the base. Although oud gives the perfume its name, its character lies in revealing the clear contours of dry woods rather than foregrounding richness alone.

What mattered to Rasquinet was not only that the perfume was well received. Making it left him wanting to know more about Arabian scents. That curiosity went on to change where he lived and worked.

Bois d’Ascèse: Smoke Lingering in an Abandoned Church

Bois d’Ascèse by Naomi Goodsir was released in 2012 alongside Cuir Velours. It was a collaboration with Goodsir, a maker of hats and leather goods, and creative director Renaud Coutaudier.

In an interview with Nose, he explained the perfume’s starting point:

“Naomi’s first studio in Australia was in a disused church, where Naomi burned firewood. The perfume reflects that memory: the very smoky smell of charred wood mixed with church incense.”

Julien Rasquinet, from an interview with Nose

Cade, incense, tobacco, and labdanum overlap to create an atmosphere of burnt wood and a quiet chapel. More than a recreation of smoke itself, it suggests someone’s workplace and time spent there, beyond the smoke.

Cuir Velours, meanwhile, turns to Goodsir’s leatherwork: a soft, relaxed expression of leather accompanied by rum and tobacco. In Iris Cendré (2015), the theme shifts to iris while retaining traces of smoke and leather.

Russian Tea: Turning Teatime into Fragrance

Masque Milano’s Russian Tea (2014) is another work in which encounters with landscapes and people overlap.

Mint and fruity accents join the smokiness of black tea, portraying the air around a warm drink. During its creation, Rasquinet and his wife Irina welcomed the brand’s Alessandro and Riccardo to their Normandy home, making time to work together face to face.

Rather than simply sending formulas to distant places, they talked in the same room and explored one another’s images. The encounters Rasquinet values are also part of the very way he conceives a perfume.

The Moon: An Afternoon in Dubai

The Moon joined Frédéric Malle’s Desert Gems collection in 2019.

In this series devoted to Middle Eastern perfume culture, the depth of rose, oud, and incense meets the brightness of fruit. Aromas suggesting blackberry and redcurrant expand the rich foundation with a vivid flourish.

Behind it lie memories of Arab hospitality, the fruit-laden smoke of a hookah, and an afternoon spent there. Expressions that compare a loved one to the moon, and a culture in which the moon marks milestones in daily life, also underpin the world the brand presents.

Rasquinet names Malle and Olivier Creed as outstanding evaluators who are also exceptionally demanding. Their exacting standards pushed him to the limits of his thinking. The Moon, too, conveys the accumulated experience of such collaborations.

Tabac Rose and Ambre Safrano

BDK Parfums’ Tabac Rose takes rose and tobacco as its themes. Sources give both 2019 and 2020 as its release year, and it is increasingly presented as a 2020 creation.

Working with founder David Benedek, Rasquinet layered Turkish rose with sweetness reminiscent of plum and chocolate, giving tobacco a rich texture. The categories of masculine and feminine shift within the same fragrance.

Ambre Safrano (2022) expresses warmth and density through amber and saffron. In his Flannie interview, Rasquinet names these two works, alongside The Moon and his Naomi Goodsir perfumes, among the creations of which he is proud.

By the Way…

His wife, Irina Rasquinet, is an artist from Chechnya. She creates vividly colored sculptures from wordplay and humor. Rasquinet says that living surrounded by his wife’s work also gives him energy each day.

Perfumes to which he is attached include Guerlain’s Habit Rouge, as well as Fahrenheit and Kenzo Pour Homme, which he wore in his teens. Even after becoming a creator, fragrances connected to his former self remain special.

Perhaps surprisingly, he still names not having made a formal joint creation with Bourdon as a regret. He learned from Bourdon during his apprenticeship and continued to receive advice on formulas after becoming independent, but they never had the opportunity to complete a fragrance under both their names.

“I would have loved to create with Pierre Bourdon. I have always regretted not creating with him.”

Interview with Flannie, 2023

That feeling also connects with Rasquinet’s work with young perfumers today. Teaching the techniques he received, and thinking up new fragrances together: perhaps both are ways of passing perfumery to the next generation.

Perfume Creations

Major creations are listed chronologically. Where sources give different release years, both are shown.

References

• Julien Rasquinet, le virtuose – Flannie
• CPL Aromas: Scent Trail, Follow This Nose | ParfumPlus Magazine
• Julien Rasquinet
• Season 3 – Episode 6: Julien Rasquinet from business student to ‘’accidental’’ perfumer. Master-apprenticeship from Pierre Bourdon to creative mastery! – The MaxChat Fragrance Podcast
• Julien Rasquinet
• Julien Rasquinet of IFF + Naomi Goodsir Parfums Draw – ÇaFleureBon
• Julien Rasquinet – The Fragrance Foundation UK
• Julien Rasquinet, ISG Alumni et entrepreneur
• Julien Rasquinet Archives
• Julien Rasquinet Joins CPL Aromas
• Julie Massé Perfumer at Mane – ÇaFleureBon
• Perfumer – Julien Rasquinet
• Julien Rasquinet Joins CPL Aromas
• OBVIOUS
• NAOMI GOODSIR PARFUMS – A Tip of the Hat to Consummate …
• Naomi Goodsir Bois d’Ascese and Cuir Velours + Sample Draw
• Royal Oud – Creed Free advice and shipments! – Perfumeria Laura
• Creed Royal Oud The House of CREED’S 21st Century Hero
• THE MOON | henri+frank
• #bdkparfums #harrods #tabacrose #ambresafrano | BDK Parfums
• Tabac Rose | BDK Parfums | Site Officiel
• Julien Rasquinet | Nose | Le Secret du Marais
• Perfumes By Julien Rasquinet
• Creative Collaboration with Perfumers Julien Rasquinet & Paul …
• Irina Rasquinet – Le Beau a une Adresse
• IRINA RASQUINET – Series | Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach
• Masque Milano Russian Tea Review (2024) – Scent Grail
• Man In The Mirror – Julien Rasquinet & Paul Guerlain – Perfumers
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• CPL Aromas — Julien Rasquinet
• Fragrantica — Julien Rasquinet
• Now Smell This — Creed Acqua Originale, 2014
• Now Smell This — Costume National Secret Woods, 2021