Le Labo Shops: From Nolita’s Lab to Kyoto’s Machiya

Le Labo reflects the backstage of perfume creation.
Fabrice Penot

Contents

How the shops began
1. A small lab in Nolita
2. Building a relationship with Japan
The thinking behind the interiors
1. Showing the hands that finish a perfume
2. Preserving materials with a past
Shops to explore
References

How the shops began

A small lab in Nolita

In 2006, Fabrice Penot and Edouard Roschi opened Le Labo‘s first shop in New York’s Nolita neighbourhood. They chose a small space on Elizabeth Street. True to the name, French for “the lab”, they brought the work of making perfume into view of the customer.

The idea grew from the reactions of visitors they had shown around perfume laboratories. Raw materials, refrigerators and equipment that had become familiar to the two founders fascinated their guests. Objects overlooked in the course of everyday work could become an introduction to perfume. Investing their savings and drawing on friends’ support, they turned that insight into a shop.

Nolita was not initially a high-footfall location, and the shop’s unusual approach was difficult for people around them to understand. Yet around six months after opening, queues began to form outside. Penot later recalled that the perfumes themselves had spread its reputation, helped by coverage in magazines and newspapers.

Building a relationship with Japan

In 2007, Le Labo expanded to Daikanyama in Tokyo, its first shop outside the United States. In Kyoto, it opened at ShinPuhKan, the complex housing Ace Hotel Kyoto, in 2020. In 2024, a machiya townhouse in Kiyamachi became its new flagship.

Global Brand President and Creative Director Deborah Royer discovered the machiya. Built in 1879, it had been used by a family in the sake-brewing business and later became a flower shop. Plans began to restore the empty house with local craftspeople and give it a new life as a perfume shop.

It felt right to have a significant anchor in Kyoto.
Deborah Royer

The thinking behind the interiors

Showing the hands that finish a perfume

Le Labo’s Fresh Blending service involves hand-blending a fragrance after it is ordered. An already developed scent is finished in the shop, with a name or other personal detail added to its label. This brings customers closer to the process that leads to their bottle; it is different from commissioning a new formula developed from scratch for an individual.

The shops incorporate labs with ingredients and equipment, while the bottle labels prioritise information over decoration. Not every location, including department-store counters, has identical facilities. In Japan, some shops offer blending and refills, while others focus on finishing the labels.

Preserving materials with a past

Exposed architecture, metal fixtures and well-used furniture recur in Le Labo’s shops. But they could not simply be transferred unchanged into Kyoto’s wooden townhouse. Architect Jo Nagasaka and Schemata Architects worked with the brand on details ranging from where visitors should remove their shoes to the height of standing displays and the lighting added to the old building.

Counters, shelves and stairs were adapted to the machiya’s layout. Colours drew on the existing finishes, using aged tones of bengara iron-oxide pigment and pine soot. Japanese antique furniture was combined with Western vintage lighting. Royer wanted the restoration to preserve the character of the old materials rather than erase it.

I love when things are imperfect and a bit cracked…
Deborah Royer

Royer also connects her respect for Japan with the transmission of craft skills and the willingness to make things slowly. In Kyoto, a wooden lab booth made with reclaimed Japanese materials replaced the customary metal lab. The way handwork was shown changed to suit the local materials and architecture.

Shops to explore

Kyoto Machiya

At the Kyoto Machiya in Kiyamachi, a courtyard and café lie beyond the ground-floor perfume shop, with two tatami rooms upstairs. The layout makes room for exploring materials and craft as well as choosing a fragrance.

The upstairs Perfumery Room contains numerous essential oils and perfumers’ tools. Beside it, the Craft Room is an open atelier presenting work by Japanese craftspeople and artists. One room introduces the materials of scent; its neighbour explores the skills people bring to those materials.

An illustration inspired by the craft room at Le Labo Kyoto Machiya

One of the craftspeople invited for the opening was calligrapher Manabu Kamo. He created work using Kurotani washi paper and demonstrated adding lettering to Le Labo labels with a brush. Unlike uniform printing, the handwritten marks left a visible trace of a person’s hand on a bottle of perfume.

Beyond the courtyard, a small café occupies the former storeroom. Serving coffee, matcha and vegan pastries, it allows visitors to spend more time in the building after choosing a perfume. The garden, tatami rooms and craft displays are all part of what makes a visit to this machiya distinctive.

Nolita, New York

The original Elizabeth Street shop retains an old tin wall patterned with fleurs-de-lis. Within the pared-back interior, visitors can watch scents being measured and blended and labels finished by hand. It offers a view of the early lab, different from the wood and tatami of Kyoto.

Daikanyama, Tokyo, and Kyoto ShinPuhKan

Daikanyama was the starting point for Le Labo in Japan. When refilling an empty bottle, some regular customers liked the new label placed over the old one. Like a well-travelled suitcase, the bottle could carry a visible record of its history.

Kyoto ShinPuhKan preceded the machiya and continues to operate separately. At ShinPuhKan, visitors encounter perfume within a complex of shops and a hotel; at the machiya, they can explore craft and a garden. The two Kyoto locations offer different ways to spend time with the brand.

Dubai Mall

One reason to visit Le Labo at Dubai Mall is to try CUIR 28, the fragrance dedicated to the city. Leather, woods and musk are layered with vanilla in a distinctly defined scent. Dubai’s labs offer it throughout the year, without the need to wait for the period when the City Exclusives collection is introduced worldwide.

For co-founder Edouard Roschi, what matters more than the combination of ingredients is the emotion the finished fragrance evokes. Trying a scent named for a destination on your skin while you are in that city: in Dubai, the perfume itself can be the reason to visit the shop.