L’Artisan Parfumeur and Jean-François Laporte

1938–November 7, 2011 (aged 73)

His First Brand: Sisley

Sisley, now famous as a luxury skincare brand found in department stores, actually began as a cosmetics company established in 1972 by the chemist Jean-François Laporte and Roland de Saint-Vincent.

In 1974, they asked Jean-Claude Ellena (in Japanese) to create a scent evoking Normandy, where lettuces and apples grow. This became Eau de Campagne. It was also Ellena’s first commercially commissioned perfume.

In 1976, apparently facing management difficulties, they sold the company to the d’Ornano family. Hubert d’Ornano refocused it on products based on phytocosmetology, or plant-based beauty science, and undertook a rebranding. He gave it the new name Sisley, after the Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley. The business recovered and is now known around the world as a family-owned prestige brand.

Given this history, Sisley itself appears to have consistently maintained that the brand was born in 1976.

Founding L’Artisan

L’Artisan Parfumeur was an unusual brand at the time, and the first to focus on nature.

Fabrice Pellegrin

After selling Sisley, Laporte established L’Artisan Parfumeur in 1976, a fragrance house regarded as a pioneer of niche perfumery. The brand name means “the craftsman of fragrance” in English. The perfumes he wanted to create at L’Artisan were “strongly inspired by nature, elegantly simple, made with the finest materials, and opening up new olfactory paths.”

The impetus for founding L’Artisan came from a friend’s request. While Laporte was working as a chemist, a friend who planned to wear a banana costume at an event at the Folies Bergère music hall in Paris asked whether he could make a banana scent. Laporte duly created a banana perfume, although it apparently did not turn out very well. Nevertheless, the experience ignited his passion for fragrance, and he decided to become a perfumer.

In 1978, L’Artisan released its first perfume, Mûre et Musc. Combining a blackberry accord with white musk, the fragrance is said to have sent shock waves through the perfume industry. In fact, three young perfumers helped and advised on it: Jean-Claude Ellena (in Japanese), Lucien Ferrero, and Jean-Claude Gigodot. The three had met at Givaudan in the 1970s, and even went on to create Yves Rocher’s Trimaran together in 1986. Ellena and Laporte had become friends through their work on the Sisley fragrance.

The first thing Laporte said was, “The scent is beautiful and appealing, but it doesn’t diffuse out of the bottle. What should I do?”

My advice was to combine tarragon with a little lavender and use a citrus blend. We made several trials together and succeeded in finding the right combination.

Jean-Claude Ellena

Mûre et Musc is a perfume that appeals to any woman from 15 to 60.

Jean-François Laporte

L’Artisan is known not only for innovative perfumes but also for its novel, ball-shaped home fragrance, the Amber Ball. In fact, this spherical fragrance product was released before the perfumes. The handmade ball contains a solid amber (in Japanese) blend made from vanilla, patchouli, tonka bean, benzoin, and incense.

Its first boutique opened on Rue de Grenelle in Paris in 1979, followed in 2003 by the “Grande Boutique,” a flagship near the Louvre.

In 1982, Laporte sold L’Artisan and set off on a new journey. The brand was eventually acquired in 2003 by the American company Cradle Holdings, an affiliate of Fox Paine & Company, then sold to Puig in 2015 and rebranded.

Unceasing Exploration and New Brands

Always eager to try something new, Laporte founded another fragrance house, Maître Parfumeur et Gantier, in 1988. Its name means “Master Perfumer and Glovemaker” in English. It takes its name from the royal guild “Maître Gantier et Parfumeur,” established in 1656 in the name of Louis XIV. The order of the words appears to have been reversed because perfume, rather than gloves, was the brand’s principal focus.

What he, Jean Laporte, wanted to create was a new brand that would refer back and pay tribute to the history of French perfumery, which began during the Renaissance under Catherine de’ Medici.

Jean-Paul Millet Lage

The baroque bottle and cap were designed to evoke the 16th and 17th centuries. The red case that holds the bottle uses leather-grain paper reminiscent of the glovemaker’s craft.

In 1997, Jean-Paul Millet Lage, an ardent admirer of L’Artisan and Laporte, acquired the brand. He apparently made contact in 1996 through Roland de Saint-Vincent, who had founded Sisley with Laporte. Having met Laporte and learned perfumery from him, Millet Lage also took over fragrance creation in 1997. He continued making perfumes with Laporte until 2001.

In 2000, Laporte finally founded a company devoted not to perfume but to cultivating fragrant plants: Le Jardin du Parfumeur, meaning “The Perfumer’s Garden,” in Burgundy, France. Visitors can see the plants being grown and their essences (in Japanese) for themselves.