Les Parfums Louis Vuitton: The Art of Travel Becomes Perfume

“Perfume is like Aladdin’s lamp. Once you open it, it has to create some kind of magic.”
— Jacques Cavallier​

Basic Information

• Fragrance business relaunched: September 1, 2016
• Master perfumer: Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud
• House founded: 1854, as a trunk maker
• Fragrance production base: Les Fontaines Parfumées, Grasse, southern France
• Official website: https://eu.louisvuitton.com/eng-e1/stories/world-of-fragrances

The Founder and the Brand’s Origins

Louis Vuitton and the Spirit of Travel

Louis Vuitton began in 1854 with a trunk workshop on Rue Neuve-des-Capucines in Paris, giving rise to a French luxury house dedicated to the Art of Travel. Its move from a foundation of leather goods and trunks into the entirely different sensory realm of perfume may seem surprising, but its ties to fragrance are, in fact, longstanding.

The First Perfumes: Lost Memories, from the 1920s to the 1940s

In the 1920s, Louis Vuitton began producing crystal perfume bottles known as Editions d’Art. Records show that artists including Camille Cless-Brothier and Gaston Le Bourgeois decorated them.​

In 1927, under Gaston-Louis Vuitton’s direction, the house’s first fragrance, Heures d’Absence, was born. Named after the Vuitton family’s country house, only three hundred bottles were made. Each bore the design of a small airplane, embodying the era’s fascination with air travel. A trio of fragrances, Je, Tu, Il, followed in 1928, with Réminiscences and Eau de Voyage appearing in 1946.

These early fragrances, however, soon disappeared. None of their formulas was preserved, and no clues remain from which to recreate their scents. Jacques Cavallier put it succinctly when speaking to the Los Angeles Times.​

“That was a little disappointing, but at the same time it set me free.”​

After Seventy Years of Absence: A Fateful Encounter in 2012

After 1946, Louis Vuitton stayed away from fragrance for nearly seventy years. To fill that gap, the LVMH group appointed a perfumer in early 2012: Jacques Cavallier of France.

According to FashionNetwork, Cavallier was given the mission of creating the world’s finest perfumes when he took up the role. The project was highly secret from the outset. He himself has said:​

“As I explored the house, got to know the people working there, and discovered the designers, leather goods, and craftsmanship, I was already writing down my first formulas.”​

The Nose of the House: Jacques Cavallier

Born into a Family of Perfumers in Grasse

Jacques Cavallier was born on January 24, 1962, in Grasse, southern France. Known as the center of the world’s perfume industry and inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, the town is said to have been home to his family for at least five hundred years, since the fifteenth century.

Both his grandfather and father were perfumers, and his mother worked for the legendary perfumer Edmond Roudnitska. In Japanese terms, it was rather like being born into the family of a hereditary master of kōdō, the art of incense. Learning fragrance materials from his father as a child, he absorbed each ingredient as a young musician practices piano scales. By the age of ten, he had begun working in Grasse perfume factories during summer holidays. He is said to have started work at a perfume factory the day after finishing secondary school, learning to distill flowers.

“In Grasse, working in perfume is natural. Everyone knows someone involved in it.”​

Twenty-Two Years of Innovation at Firmenich

After obtaining his baccalaureate, Cavallier first joined the Grasse fragrance company Charabot, moving three years later to the Dutch company Quest International. He joined PFW Aroma Chemicals in 1988 and the major Swiss fragrance company Firmenich in 1990.​

During his twenty-two years at Firmenich, he collaborated with Alberto Morillas on fragrances including Calvin Klein’s Truth, Carolina Herrera’s Chic, and Givenchy’s Hot Couture. He also worked on enduring worldwide favorites such as Issey Miyake’s L’Eau d’Issey, from 1991, and Giorgio Armani’s Acqua di Giò, creating or co-creating more than eighty fragrances.

He earned the company’s title of Master Perfumer in 2000 and received the prestigious French perfume award, the Prix François Coty, in 2004.

Moving to Louis Vuitton and a Technology That Made the Impossible Possible

Just before joining Louis Vuitton, Cavallier-Belletrud had spent five years at Firmenich developing a groundbreaking extraction technology: supercritical CO₂ extraction, in which carbon dioxide is brought into a supercritical state to extract scent from flowers.

The method had originally been used for processes such as decaffeinating coffee, but applying it to fresh flowers had been considered difficult. Cavallier-Belletrud explains:

“It was impossible to extract scent from something fresh, because fresh materials contain water, and it is impossible to mix water and gas. But, as you know, ‘impossible’ is not a French word.”​

He finally succeeded in extracting aromatic molecules directly from fresh Grasse May roses and jasmine without heating them. Conventional distillation and solvent extraction heat the flowers, causing “the volatile components that carry the delicate scent of flowers blooming in a field to die”, but this method can capture the flower’s original fragrance as a one-hundred-percent natural extract at a low temperature of 25°C. When he presented this innovative technology to Louis Vuitton, the house decided to adopt it, and the Les Parfums Louis Vuitton project began in earnest.

Four Years of Secret Travels and the 2016 Debut

After joining Louis Vuitton, Cavallier traveled across five continents in search of materials: magnolia and osmanthus from China; iris from Florence, Italy; agarwood from Laos and Bangladesh; rose oils from Bulgaria and Turkey; tuberose from India; and vanilla from Papua New Guinea and Madagascar. He reportedly developed at least ninety trial formulas along the way.​

On September 1, 2016, Les Parfums Louis Vuitton arrived simultaneously at approximately two hundred Louis Vuitton boutiques worldwide. The debut, marking the house’s first fragrances in seventy years, made a major impression on the perfume industry, with French actress Léa Seydoux as the face of the advertising campaign.​

The Brand’s Commitments

A Philosophy of Translating Travel and Emotion into Scent

Travel lies at the heart of Les Parfums Louis Vuitton. The collection seeks to express through fragrance the Art of Travel, a spirit consistent with the house since its founding in 1854. Cavallier described this approach after exploring the brand’s workshops:

“I took a great deal from the experience of visiting the brand’s workshops, talking to the people there, and discovering what they were doing. I was completely free.”​

Les Fontaines Parfumées: The Grasse Atelier

The creative home of the fragrances is Les Fontaines Parfumées, or the scented fountains, a group of Provençal residences in Grasse. Acquired and renovated by LVMH, this 9,900-square-meter estate dates to the seventeenth century. Its terracotta bastide buildings, watermill, and stone perfume fountain dating from the 1920s remain in active use.

The facility was once shared with Dior’s fragrance division but now serves exclusively as Louis Vuitton’s fragrance atelier. Its grounds contain rare local plants, with jasmine, roses, tuberose, orange blossom, and violets cultivated under optimal conditions.

The Memory of Leather in Fragrance

Leather, central to Louis Vuitton’s identity, also appears in its perfumes. Cavallier looked to Grasse’s history, bringing traces of the tanning industry that developed alongside perfumery from the twelfth to nineteenth centuries into his scents. Inspired by the soft aroma of the natural leather covering the handles and straps of the house’s trunks and bags, he created a floral, sensual leather note. It lives on as a distinctive signature in certain fragrances, including Dans la Peau.

Bottle Design: Marc Newson’s Vision of Timelessness

Australian industrial designer Marc Newson created the bottles for Les Parfums Louis Vuitton. He explains his intention:

“I wanted to create a fragrance bottle that embodied Louis Vuitton: something classic, elegant, and timeless. The result is tactile and pure, evoking something potentially familiar.”​

The fragrance name appears in striking black lettering on transparent glass, while a black cap bearing brass LV initials recalls antique bottles. Designed to be refillable, the bottles can be replenished at the perfume fountains installed in the boutiques. Louis Vuitton presents this not merely as an environmental initiative but as an expression of the house’s philosophy of creating objects to be passed down through generations.

Les Parfums Collection, Since 2016

The debut collection in 2016 consisted of seven women’s fragrances. With flowers at their heart, each depicted a different emotion or scene from a journey.

Fragrance	Main Notes	Concept
Rose des Vents	Rose, iris, cedarwood	A light floral breeze
Turbulences	Tuberose, jasmine, leather	Sensual florals
Dans la Peau	Leather, musk, jasmine	A sensual closeness to bare skin
Apogée	Lily of the valley, rose, jasmine	A tranquil immersion in nature
Contre Moi	Vanilla, orange blossom, cacao	An oriental fragrance of self-discovery
Matière Noire	Oud, narcissus, blackcurrant	A modern chypre of darkness and depth
Mille Feux	Raspberry, osmanthus, leather	An explosive sensory experience

The first five men’s fragrances arrived on May 31, 2018: L’Immensité, Nouveau Monde, Orage, Sur la Route, and Au Hasard. Their themes of adventure and self-discovery brought the house’s ideas of travel, discovery, and movement to scents intended to capture the energy of a man’s skin. Seeing men embrace color and floral patterns in their clothes, Jacques Cavallier felt that fragrance, too, needed a sophistication that went beyond old models of masculinity.

“The perfume market is full of all the stereotypes of masculinity. I wanted to break this because I believe men are ready to use their perfumes as women do: with more sophistication.”

Jacques Cavallier Belletrud

Journey to California: Light, Landscape, and Lasting Freshness

In 2019, Jacques Cavallier Belletrud introduced Sun Song, Cactus Garden, and Afternoon Swim as Parfums de Cologne. Repeated visits to Los Angeles had drawn him to its light, closeness to nature, and sense of freedom. The proximity of sea and mountains recalled his home in southern France, but here they met the scale of the desert and the city. He found these contrasts creatively stimulating. The aim was to express feelings awakened by California through materials from around the world, rather than assemble ingredients grown in the region.

A second challenge was to make the freshness of cologne last on the skin. Instead of relying on a quickly evaporating citrus opening, Cavallier reworked the structure and the use of longer-lasting materials. At launch, he described the three fragrances as having a concentration of 12 percent. This balance of an airy impression and the depth of perfume carried into the group later known as Journey to California.

Los Angeles artist Alex Israel supplied the visual counterpart. After smelling the finished fragrances, he selected works of his own that resonated with them: a yellow lens for Sun Song, Desperado, with its car beneath a cactus, for Cactus Garden, and a wave painting for Afternoon Swim. The collaboration brought together two different sensory responses to the same city.

Among the original three, the orange blossom in Sun Song connected Cavallier with the happiness of his Mediterranean childhood. For Cactus Garden, he chose maté, with smoky nuances of tea and hay, to explore a wilder side of vegetation. Afternoon Swim centered on orange, bergamot, and mandarin to evoke the exhilaration of an afternoon by the sea with friends. Freshness took three distinct forms: an enveloping floral sensation, the shaded character of greenery, and the energy of bursting citrus.

Work on California Dream began around the time the first three fragrances were being presented in Los Angeles. Completed in 2020 after about a year, it grew from the blue and pink evening sky Cavallier had seen by the sea in Malibu. He imagined coolness wrapped in warmth, pairing fresh mandarin with musks and ambrette, whose facets suggest damp earth and pear, and the vanilla-like warmth of benzoin. Contrasting temperatures capture the moment when daytime energy becomes anticipation of the night.

For City of Stars, nights out with Israel and time spent at the Chateau Marmont suggested a cologne with nocturnal sensuality. Blood orange supplied sweetness and a crisp edge, while bergamot, lemon, mandarin, and lime amplified the sparkle. Tiaré, sandalwood, and musk softened the effect. For the packaging of this 2022 fragrance, Israel located the stars in the lights and people of the city rather than in the sky.

On the Beach evokes a clear day on the coast, with warm sand against the skin. Japanese yuzu meets neroli, while thyme, rosemary, pink pepper, and clove create an aromatic impression of the beach. Cypress provides the woody shade found amid the sunshine. The coastal scene unfolds through bright citrus, dry herbs, and wood rather than a single marine effect.

Pacific Chill grew from time spent with Israel in Beverly Hills. Asked what inspired him most, Cavallier recalled the blackcurrant-like scent of the surrounding trees and the carrot-and-ginger drink he was having. About a year later, those impressions had become a perfume. Blackcurrant and lemon freshness introduce an experience of the senses awakening in nature.

As of November 2026, the Japanese Journey to California listing includes six fragrances: Sun Song, Afternoon Swim, California Dream, On the Beach, City of Stars, and Pacific Chill. This differs from the original trio of 2019. Israel’s car-shaped Colognes Woody Wagon and travel cases extend this world into objects designed to hold the fragrances.

Les Extraits Collection, Since 2021: Perfume as Architecture

Launched in 2021, Les Extraits sought to bring lightness and movement to concentrated extrait de parfum. Cavallier moved away from a conventional progression through top, heart, and base notes, exploring the character of floral, chypre, musk, amber, and fresh scents as expansive, unified forms.

The original five required him to adjust the expression of the fragrances to a concentration of 30 percent. By extending and emphasizing facets of familiar materials, he sought lasting freshness and sensuality without heaviness. He described the idea in these words:

“I wanted to venture where no one goes anymore. To reinvent the notion of an Extrait in a contemporary way. To bring in light, expand matter, and lighten things up. I wanted to deconstruct the very architecture of perfume. That’s how Les Extraits Collection was born: five perfumes with no top, heart or base notes, in order to reveal the quintessence of each olfactory family.”

Jacques Cavallier Belletrud

Architect Frank Gehry, known for the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, designed a fragrance bottle for the first time. Working from Marc Newson’s original bottle, he formed an aluminum cap like folded paper, giving it the organic movement of a sail in the wind. Gehry explained:

“I wanted to approach the project from a sculptural point of view. To bring something different to perfume. It’s not a finished geometric form, it’s just movement. Visual movement with the added interest of ephemerality.”

Frank Gehry

The original five were Dancing Blossom, Cosmic Cloud, Rhapsody, Symphony, and Stellar Times, exploring floral, musk, chypre, fresh, and amber families respectively.

Dancing Blossom expresses changing nature through dense layers of flowers: May rose from Grasse, jasmine sambac, and Indian tuberose, with the apricot-like fruitiness of Chinese osmanthus. Cosmic Cloud gives the leading role to the powdery, fruity diffusion of musk rather than the outline of a bouquet. Venezuelan tonka bean adds a sweetness reminiscent of chocolate-coated almonds.

Rhapsody opens the classical chypre family to a contemporary interpretation. Jasmine and ylang-ylang brighten patchouli, while clear green maté accents the deeper shades of woods and vetiver. Symphony evokes the light of an imaginary island where sky and sea merge, combining grapefruit, bergamot, and orange with ginger’s sweet bite to sustain freshness at a higher concentration. The amber fragrance Stellar Times likewise seeks a soft, white woody-amber effect rather than weight alone.

Added in 2023, Myriad brings that lightness to oud. Cavallier used flowers to illuminate its powerful woody and animalic facets. May rose from Grasse, Bulgarian rose, and geranium lend roundness, while cacao adds softness. Extracting the cacao aroma required removing its fat, making the treatment of the material part of the search for texture. The composition reveals oud’s many facets instead of simply increasing its force.

Fantasmagory transforms vanilla flower and pod into an impression of light and softness. It draws out vanilla’s floral side and subtle leather nuances alongside its dense sweetness, adding the powdery roundness of almond. Ginger creates a vivid contrast and fresh movement, continuing the collection’s exploration of the textures within familiar materials.

Announced in November 2022 for the collection’s first anniversary, Les Extraits Murano Art Edition realized Gehry’s early wish for brightly colored caps. Murano glass artisan Simone Cenedese made them in blown glass. The individual limited-edition bottle held Symphony, while the Bouquet Masterpiece brought the original five together with differently colored caps and a glass base. It developed existing fragrances and their containers into a combined artwork rather than introducing a new fragrance series.

Parfums du Monde: The Fragrance Culture of the Middle East

Within Parfums du Monde, Voyage au Moyen-Orient explores the Middle East. Known in Japan as Journey to the Middle East, it takes oud, or agarwood, as a shared thread. Cavallier’s interest extended beyond ingredients to the ways people wear perfume: a culture in which children grow up watching fragrance being chosen at the doorway before going out.

For Ombre Nomade, he wanted to avoid imposing a Western brand’s interpretation of oud. His aim was to respond to the sensibilities and fragrance habits of people in the region. He gave greater prominence to the Assam oud he had also used in Nouveau Monde, seeking persistence and strength without overwhelming weight. Behind the desert-at-dusk setting lies an interest in both the material and its place in everyday life.

The 2026 fragrance Ambre Levant grew from the hour when the lowering sun turns stone, wood, and even the air amber. Cavallier sought to give that intense light and warmth a sense of movement. Bright mandarin meets cinnamon, cardamom, white pepper, and saffron, with depth from resinous labdanum, white incense, an ambergris-like mineral tension, and woody oud. He described a contrast between mandarin and oud, light and shadow, bringing freshness and depth together rather than treating the Middle East as a world of uniformly heavy scents. Cavallier considers amber one of his signatures and a continuing source of inspiration.

Journey to China: Tea, Calligraphy, and the Ritual of Adornment

Journey to China explores the aesthetics of Chinese daily life through three subjects: taking tea, practicing calligraphy, and the ritual of adornment. Cavallier was drawn to the way natural materials acquire meaning and become part of a culture. The starting point is how people engage with those materials, rather than their rarity alone. The collection comprises Tea Storm, Ink Mark, and Moon Tale.

Tea Storm interprets the experience of drinking Chinese tea within an expansive landscape. Lemongrass and magnolia create a bright, open atmosphere, softened by rose from Grasse. The tea accord suggests hay and honey, supported by woody warmth. It encompasses the setting of the tea ritual, with flowing water and wind, as well as the leaves in the cup.

Ink Mark began with Chinese calligraphy and the water calligraphy Cavallier saw in Shanghai, where poems were written on the pavement with water. Warm, creamy sandalwood translates the depth of Chinese ink made from soot. White incense supplies a contrasting mineral sensation, while amber extends the trail. The movement of a hand across paper and the disappearance of water-written characters bring a living urban tradition into the perfume’s conception.

Moon Tale brings together makeup as self-expression and the legend of one of China’s Four Great Beauties, whose beauty was said to eclipse the moon. Raspberry expresses the force of red, while peony, geranium, jasmine sambac, and magnolia spread floral brightness. Powdery musk suggests face powder, giving scent to the final gestures of getting ready for an evening out.

The bottles combine Marc Newson’s apothecary-style design with the contours of Chinese snuff bottles. Milky glass changes with the light beneath deeply colored lacquered caps. Turning a small practical object into something to appreciate in the hand also connects with the house’s history of making objects for travel.

LV Lovers, Since 2024: A Collaboration with Pharrell

LV Lovers, also styled LVERS, is a single fragrance created in 2024 through conversations with Pharrell Williams, Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director. Pharrell asked Cavallier what sunlight might smell like. The theme of light, also present in Pharrell’s first show on the Pont Neuf in June 2023, led to the idea of expressing life-giving photosynthesis through scent.

Lively green galbanum meets fresh ginger and the woodiness of cedarwood and sandalwood. Rather than physically extracting light, the perfume uses plant greenery and the warmth of wood to express the uplift of being in the sun. Cavallier’s daughter, perfumer Camille Cavallier Belletrud, also took part in its creation.

For the fragrance’s first anniversary in 2025, the LVERS Copper Edition appeared in a limited run of thirty bottles. Artisans near Florence hand-finished the copper vessels and applied the Monogram. Copper had once protected the house’s explorers’ trunks from humidity, and rigid copper accessories also appeared in Pharrell’s first show. The edition contains the same fragrance in a limited container; it is not a new themed perfume series.

By the Way…

• Faith in the Number Five: Asked why he chose five rather than seven fragrances for the first men’s collection, Cavallier-Belletrud replied, “There is no particular reason. Five is simply my lucky number, and all my formulas end in the number five.”​
• A Once-in-a-Lifetime Honor: In June 2024, Cavallier-Belletrud received the Lifetime Achievement Perfumer Award at the Fragrance Foundation Awards, held at New York’s Lincoln Center. A special fragrance he created to evoke his hometown of Grasse, Rose Fields, reportedly scented the venue’s lobby that evening.
• A Perfume Atlas: In April 2024, Cavallier published the co-authored Louis Vuitton: A Perfume Atlas with Louis Vuitton and Thames & Hudson. Across 380 pages, the book documents the origins, harvesting, distillation, and blending of forty-five raw materials he gathered around the world, working with a writer, illustrator, and photographer. A limited-edition boxed set included small vials containing actual extracts of all forty-five materials and was priced at €5,000.