Nez: From Auparfum to Publishing the Culture of Smell

People do not listen enough to what they feel when they smell.
Jeanne Doré — Nez co-founder and editor-in-chief, 2019; translated from French

You smell a perfume and like it. Putting what comes next into words suddenly becomes difficult. What does it resemble? Why does it draw your attention? What era and what work produced it? Nez is a French publishing and media initiative that has turned such questions into the pleasure of reading.

Perfume is the entry point. Turn the pages, however, and the discussion expands to plant cultivation, the brain, literature, food, photography, and social values. Nez brings criticism of scent as a creative work together with the ways people understand the world through smell. Its origins reveal a free perfume-criticism website, readers’ participation, and an encounter with a designer who understood print publishing.

Essential Information
The Founders and the Origins of Nez
The Editorial Work of Putting Scent into Words
What Can You Read and Experience Today?
References

Essential Information

Name and pronunciation: Nez, pronounced “nay,” means “nose” in French.
Beginnings: Nez’s publishing and olfactory-culture activities began in 2016. Its predecessor, perfume-criticism website Auparfum, launched in 2007.
Co-founders: Jeanne Doré, Dominique Brunel, and Mathieu Chévara, now responsible respectively for editorial work, sales, and creation and business development.
Base: Paris, France.
Main activities: A twice-yearly magazine; books on perfume and smell; online articles; podcasts; publishing projects accompanied by scents; exhibitions and events.
Official website: Nez — the olfactory cultural movement

The initiative named Nez, the magazine Nez, la revue olfactive, the publishing imprint Nez éditions, and the company Nez Média have distinct roles. The publisher Le Contrepoint was incorporated in 2014, before Nez’s launch. Treating the magazine’s birth and the publisher’s foundation as the same event obscures the sequence of their encounter.

The Founders and the Origins of Nez

Auparfum Created a Place for Perfume Criticism

Jeanne Doré had two interests: smelling and writing. Having studied at the perfume school ISIPCA and worked in fragrance, she wanted to discuss perfume in language different from the sales descriptions supplied by brands. Music, cinema, and literature had criticism. Perfume, too, deserved a place where people could smell creations, reflect on them, and exchange opinions.

Brunel, meanwhile, appears in an early account of the pair as someone who struggled to choose his own perfume and bought what others recommended. The initiative began not only with an expert’s perspective but also with that of a reader wanting to learn.

The idea began to take shape in the mid-2000s. When Doré emailed her proposal to write criticism, Brunel promptly registered a domain. EauParfum.com was unavailable, so it became Auparfum.com. Recounted with the pair’s characteristic lightness, this episode later led into the story of acquiring the Nez website’s name.

Auparfum went live in 2007. Alongside Doré and Brunel, co-founder Emmanuel Remise supported its technical development. People who initially only read began commenting, became regulars, and started writing criticism and other texts themselves. Readers outside the editorial team became contributors. The group behind Nez grew through that exchange.

Doré sought not to restate advertising language but to give readers words with which to judge perfumes for themselves. That experience of criticism would become the foundation for projects extending beyond perfume as a product.

From a Free Website to Reader-Supported Print

Auparfum was free, carried very little advertising, and relied on volunteers. Even as readers and contributors multiplied, this offered a fragile economic basis for continuing the work. Print provided a way for readers to pay for a publication. There was also a desire to cover science, art, history, and food beyond the limits of perfume criticism alone.

Neither founder, however, had experience publishing a print magazine. Designer and editor Mathieu Chévara and the publisher Le Contrepoint entered at this point.

Because we did not know how to publish. Quite simply.
Dominique Brunel — On partnering with a publisher, 2016; translated from French

Chévara studied for four years in the typography workshop at École Estienne and built a career in design and publishing. Marge Design, which he founded, had been active since 2004, accumulating work in culture and publishing. Le Contrepoint also produced the food publication Omnivore. Brunel and his colleagues recognized the experience needed to give their idea the form of a book.

Besides graphic and publishing expertise, Le Contrepoint handled publicity and the relationship with Interforum, which distributed books to bookshops. Having writers alone does not bring books to readers. Editorial work, design, production, and distribution came together to make Nez a printed publication.

The 2016 Launch and the First Contributors

Crowdfunding for the launch raised approximately €25,000 against a €20,000 target, with around 500 supporters. A community that had long read a free website now helped fund a new publication.

The first issue, Pour une culture olfactive, appeared on April 14, 2016. Its initial print run of 5,000 grew to 7,000 through a reprint. It reached readers through supporters, businesses, perfume shops, and online channels as well as bookshops.

The seventeen contributors to the first issue worked without payment. Brunel also disclosed his promise to pay them from the following issue. This was not the story of a fully established publisher simply adding a magazine. It was an attempt to turn accumulated criticism and human connections into sustainable publishing work.

From the first issue, perfume reviews appeared alongside Aragon’s literature, the smells of the Paris Opera, science, food, and NASA’s work checking odors. The launch already offered a structure in which perfume enthusiasts could encounter other fields and readers from other fields could become interested in scent.

English Editions, Books, and a Growing Publishing Organization

In 2017, issue three, Le sexe des parfums / The Sex of Scent, became the first English edition. The distinction between fragrances for men and women is a familiar question in perfume shops. An issue connecting it with history and society became an entry point beyond the French-speaking world.

Brunel has spoken candidly about the English edition’s economic purpose of expanding readership. Even without a sufficient distribution network at first, they wanted to publish in English quickly. Alongside producing the magazine, they developed relationships to reach overseas bookshops and perfume stores. Italian editions followed, while translated books also expanded beyond the magazine.

Les cent onze parfums qu’il faut sentir avant de mourir appeared in 2017, followed by Le Grand Livre du parfum in 2018. Beyond leading the editorial team, Doré co-wrote and produced books, developing criticism cultivated online into publications addressing perfume history and the wider industry.

Changes in the publishing organization reflect that growth. A 2019 publishing announcement describes the development from Le Contrepoint to Nez éditions. The company Éditions Le Contrepoint changed its name to Nez Média on January 28, 2020. The predecessor website’s launch, the magazine’s creation, the imprint’s development, and the corporate name change were separate stages.

Today, Nez Média operates Mag by Nez, Nez Holding operates the main bynez.com website, and Nez Commerce runs the official shop. Readers encounter Nez as one cultural initiative, supported by several structures for editing and publishing, sales, and events.

A Timeline of Nez and Its Predecessors

Year	Milestones
2004	Marge Design, founded by Chévara, begins operating. Its publishing and design experience later contributes to Nez.
2007	Doré and Brunel’s perfume-criticism website Auparfum launches.
2014	Éditions Le Contrepoint is established, predating Nez magazine.
2016	Following crowdfunding, the first Nez issue appears on April 14. Auparfum’s design is aligned with Nez at the end of the year.
2017	English editions begin with issue three. Les cent onze parfums qu’il faut sentir avant de mourir is published.
2018	The first edition of Le Grand Livre du parfum appears.
2019	The Nez+LMR books on natural materials and the collaborative scent project 1+1 begin. Sentir, ressentir accompanies exhibitions in Lausanne.
2020	Éditions Le Contrepoint changes its corporate name to Nez Média on January 28.
2021	Podcasts by Nez launches in November.
2023	Niche by Nez launches at Esxence in Milan in April. Scientific communication with GDR O3 also begins.
2024	The first Paris Perfume Week takes place. English-language podcasts join the offering.
2025	The English-Chinese Nez in China launches in March. The first Grasse Perfume Week is held.
2026	The tenth anniversary brings issue 21, L’Odeur du futur / The Smell of the Future, and expanded, revised editions of Le Grand Livre du parfum.

The Editorial Work of Putting Scent into Words

Developing Your Own Vocabulary from What You Feel

Doré does not consider vocabulary for describing smell the exclusive possession of experts. Sweet, soft, sharp, pleasant, reminiscent of a particular memory: even with an unidentified odor, emotions and impressions provide a starting point. Student perfumers also use their own experience and vocabulary when learning materials.

Learning olfactory culture is not simply memorizing the correct names first. It also means paying attention to smells, giving words to perceived differences, and comparing them with other people’s impressions. Nez’s writing connects that experience to perfume structure, materials, history, and creators’ choices.

Doré’s 2017 remarks about the book of 111 perfumes reflect this approach. She does not define innovation simply as creating a scent unlike anything else.

Generally, a perfumer never innovates completely. They work within a lineage.
Jeanne Doré — On perfume innovation and history, 2017; translated from French

Rather than merely ranking perfumes, consider what they inherit from earlier creations and where they alter a composition. Greater knowledge does not replace liking and disliking; it enables us to articulate those judgments more specifically.

Reading a Theme Through Science, History, and Society

Nez’s editorial thinking emerges less in its choice of subjects than in the structure that examines them from several angles.

Consider issue five’s theme of natural and synthetic materials. It does not close the discussion with a binary verdict about which is superior. Molecules composing plant scents, the emergence of synthetic ingredients in the nineteenth century, research into new molecules, debates over safety, and marketing appeals to naturalness become distinct questions. Images surrounding ingredients are unpacked through chemistry, history, industry, and promotion.

The same issue includes reporting on Calabrian bergamot, an interview with Michel Almairac, literature, and olfactory art. Readers can develop their thinking through the main feature while returning to concrete examples of work and expression.

Issue ten, Du nez à la bouche / From the Nose to the Mouth, connects perfume and food. It moves from the relationship between taste and smell to culinary history, the work of flavorists, food-related issues, and edible associations in perfumery. Rather than stopping at confectionery or fruit in a note list, it expands the question to eating itself.

Print Design Is Also a Reading Tool

Nez combines a magazine’s varied article forms with the lasting quality of a book. Large photographs, prominent typography, explanatory diagrams, and extended texts are combined according to the subject.

Marge Design also created a typeface for Nez. Beyond visual consistency, it gives the magazine, books, and website a recognizable shared identity. Auparfum’s design was updated to align with Nez in late 2016, while the two publications retained distinct content and roles.

Marge Design art director Clément Charbonnier Bouet and colleagues have supported this work since the launch. Alongside the three co-founders, he joined the 2026 tenth-anniversary discussion with Léa Walter, who has written La Boutique imaginaire. Imagining suitable perfumes for creators or fictional characters, that column also offers a way to think and talk about fragrance beyond advertising.

Books Explore Plants and Perfume History in Depth

If the magazine examines a subject from many sides, books provide coherent bodies of knowledge to keep close at hand.

Les cent onze parfums qu’il faut sentir avant de mourir is a perfume-history book by Jeanne Doré, Yohan Cervi, Alexis Toublanc, and colleagues. Rather than simply listing famous fragrances, it includes creations that shaped their eras and others that have disappeared. Periods and creative lineages situate individual perfumes within history.

The Big Book of Perfume is the English edition of Le Grand Livre du parfum. Connecting smell, perfume history, materials, creation, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution, it surveys the work required to bring a perfume to its reader. Translations followed the original French edition of 2018, and the expanded 2026 edition adds interviews reflecting changes in the industry.

The Nez+LMR series Cahiers des naturels / The Naturals Notebooks began in 2019. Produced with IFF’s LMR Naturals, each volume explores a botanical material. The Damask rose volume covers not only botany, cultivation, economics, and chemistry but also literature, art, and cooking. It develops a book for learning an ingredient’s name into a study of the plant’s relationship with people. LCP also has a review of the ingredient-book series.

In The Sense of Scent, Mathilde Laurent and Sarah Bouasse present a perfumer’s career and convictions in book form. Preserving creators’ thinking through co-writing, interviews, and editing is another important part of Nez’s publishing work.

Science on the Web and Reporting Through Voices

The web now offers two entry points with different roles. Auparfum centers on perfume criticism and its reader community, while Mag by Nez covers a wider range of olfactory culture through interviews, essays, features, and event information.

The collaboration with GDR O3, begun in 2023, provides a concrete example of communicating science to general readers. GDR O3 connects researchers across disciplines concerned with odorant substances, odors, and olfaction. Nez began building a bridge between research and readers through interviews with its leaders, neuroscientist Nathalie Mandairon and chemist Xavier Fernandez.

Rather than presenting researchers as an undifferentiated source of “scientific evidence,” it asks who studies what and which disciplines they connect. Subsequent articles also examine research into olfactory receptors. The work allows the same reader to move between sensory discussions of perfume and research explaining smell.

Podcasts by Nez, launched in November 2021, added a way to listen as well as read. Its director Guillaume Tesson is also a journalist specializing in food and drink. It distributes extended interviews, field reports, and Smell Talks conversations, with English episodes added in 2024. A discussion held once at an event can reach people who were not there.

Scented Paper and the Collaborative 1+1 Project

Nez has also devised ways to return written words to actual smells. Its first issue included a scented card themed around school, produced with support from IFF and Arcade Beauty. Brunel and his colleagues recalled the almond-like smell of Cléopâtre glue familiar in French classrooms.

One of our first cards was about school
Dominique Brunel — On the early scented cards

Launched in 2019, 1+1 pairs a perfumer with a creator from another field and presents the making process in the magazine. Dialogue and trials, not only the finished perfume, become publishing material.

Ambre à lèvres, featured in issue ten, paired cartoonist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi with Mane perfumer Mathilde Bijaoui. From their first conversation in June 2020, the cosmetics of relatives Satrapi had admired as a child, particularly lipstick, provided creative clues.

While smelling materials, her response to vanilla, which she thought she disliked, changed. The familiar sweetness she disliked differed from her impression of vanilla absolute. Bijaoui listened to her preferences, presented materials and trials, and brought her reactions back into the next stage of creation. Such exchanges reveal how memory becomes perfume more clearly than a finished note list alone.

Beyond the Page: Exhibitions and International Expansion

Publishing also connects with exhibitions. In Lausanne in 2019, the French-English book Sentir, ressentir accompanied mudac’s Nez à nez. Parfumeurs contemporains and the Musée de la main’s Quel flair ! Odeurs et sentiments. Combining interviews with thirteen perfumers and researchers’ essays, it preserved the exhibitions’ questions in a book addressing both creation and perception.

For A World Tour Through Scent, perfumers, journalists, and photographers traveled to different places, conveying each through scent, writing, and photography. Experiences in twelve countries became booklets, fragrances, and a photographic portfolio, then exhibitions in several cities. The project paired accounts of travel with scents inspired by those places.

Niche by Nez, dedicated to independent perfumery, joined in 2023. Published annually in French and English, this free publication reaches readers through perfume events. March 2025 brought Nez in China, a twice-yearly English-Chinese publication distributed at Notes Shanghai. Separate from the main magazine’s French and English editions, these publications offer entry points to new readers and regions.

Paris Perfume Week, launched in 2024, brings exhibitions, conversations, and scent experiences together. Romain Raimbault, experienced in organizing the Omnivore food event, also joined Nez Events. Perfume Week expanded to Grasse in 2025. Publishing extends into places where readers can hear creators encountered on the page and experience their scents.

What Can You Read and Experience Today?

There is no single route into Nez. The main magazine currently appears in French and English editions. These are separate language editions, not two languages combined in one volume. Books vary, with both single-language editions and bilingual French-English titles.

Entry Point	What to Read or Experience	Language and Availability
Nez print magazine	A twice-yearly publication combining a major theme with ingredient reporting, interviews, culture, and criticism	French and English editions. Single issues and subscriptions through Shop by Nez; also available at bookshops and selected independent perfume shops.
Nez éditions books	In-depth explorations of perfume history, industry work, natural materials, and creators’ ideas	Mainly French and English, with translations and bilingual editions varying by title. Check the language indicated in the official shop.
Auparfum	Perfume criticism, articles, and reader comments	A French-language website offering detailed opinions on perfume.
Mag by Nez	Interviews, features, science and culture articles, and event information	French and English, with both public articles and members’ content.
Podcasts by Nez	Creators’ voices, field reports, and Smell Talks	French and English episodes available through the official website and major audio platforms.
Niche by Nez / Nez in China	Separate publications covering independent perfumery and regional olfactory culture	French-English and English-Chinese respectively, mainly distributed free at perfume events.
Perfume Week and other events	Conversations with creators, exhibitions, and scent experiences	Locations, dates, and participation details are listed in official Perfume Week information.

As of October 2026, the published issue 21 is L’Odeur du futur / The Smell of the Future. Alongside its exploration of olfaction’s future, it includes Texas cedar, an interview with Quentin Bisch, and Japanese perfume culture. Issue 22 is taking preorders for a planned November release.

For purchases, Shop by Nez provides an international entry point, while North American readers are directed to the Nez Éditions US website. Readers ordering print books from Japan should also first check the language, then confirm delivery destination and shipping charges at checkout. Distinguish book-only products from projects accompanied by perfume.

To begin with free online articles, visit Mag by Nez. For criticism of individual fragrances and readers’ opinions, go to Auparfum. Event schedules are collected at Perfume Week.

Beyond perfume names and knowledge, Nez gives readers ways to reflect on and discuss what they smell. Learn about a plant in a book, trace a perfume’s lineage, hear a creator’s voice, then encounter the scent again. That movement is central to the interest of Nez’s publishing activities.