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). 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 (in Japanese)’s Truth, Carolina Herrera’s Chic, and Givenchy’s Hot Couture. He also worked on enduring worldwide favorites such as Issey Miyake (in Japanese)’s L’Eau d’Issey, from 1991, and Giorgio Armani (in Japanese)’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 Japanese), 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.

The Fragrance Range

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

Five men’s fragrances themed around adventure and self-discovery joined the range the following year, in 2017.

“The perfume market is full of stereotypes of masculinity. I wanted to break them, because I believe men are ready to wear perfume with the same sophistication as women.”​

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Les Extraits Collection, Since 2021: Perfume as Architecture

Launched in 2021, Les Extraits took Louis Vuitton’s fragrance philosophy to another level. The collection’s defining feature was its dismantling of the conventional perfume structure of top, heart, and base notes.

Cavallier explains his intention:

“I wanted to go where no one was going anymore: to reinvent the concept of extrait, or essence, in a contemporary way. To bring in light, expand the material, and make it lighter. I wanted to dismantle the architecture of perfume itself. That is how Les Extraits Collection was born: five perfumes without top, heart, or base notes, revealing the essence of each olfactory family.”​

For the bottles, architect Frank Gehry, known for designing the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, undertook fragrance-bottle design for the first time. Building on the original bottle lines created by Marc Newson, Gehry formed the caps by folding sheets of aluminum like paper, expressing an organic movement reminiscent of sails stirring in the wind. Gehry says:

“I wanted to approach it from a sculptural perspective and bring something different to perfume. This is not a finished geometric form. It is simply movement: visual movement with the added quality of fleetingness.”​

The original five Les Extraits fragrances were Dancing Blossom, Cosmic Cloud, Rhapsody, Symphony, and Stellar Times.

In 2022–2023, Les Extraits Murano Art Edition followed in collaboration with master Murano glass artisan Simone Cenedese, further extending the boundary between fragrance and art.

Parfums du Monde: A Traveling Collection

There is also a Parfums du Monde, or perfumes of the world, series themed around the scents of regions, cultures, and places. Its Voyage au Moyen-Orient collection, inspired by the Middle East, features fragrances centered on oud, or agarwood.

Announced as a new fragrance for 2026, Ambre Levant is the latest addition to this series. Amber and Louis Vuitton’s distinctive oud are layered over a bouquet of mandarin, cardamom, cinnamon, white pepper, and saffron. Cavallier told Esquire:

“Amber is one of my signatures, a material that never ceases to inspire me.”​

LV Lovers, Since 2024: A Collaboration with Pharrell

In 2024, LV Lovers, also styled LVERS, emerged from conversations with Pharrell Williams, Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director. Conceived as the scent of sunshine, it combines lively green galbanum, a herb of the Apiaceae family, the clean character of ginger, and the woodiness of cedarwood and sandalwood. The collection continues to expand. In 2025, for example, a thirty-bottle limited LVERS Copper Edition was released, made with the expertise of goldsmiths outside Florence.

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.