“The most beautiful books, paintings and works of art are always born when they speak of something personal.”
— Baptiste Bouygues (co-founder; translated from the Japanese article)
A wooden ring, a red sphere, a yellow geometric form. Each ORMAIE fragrance has a different sculptural cap on its bottle. Twelve glass facets reflect the light, while the wood retains the texture of a hand-finished surface. These are containers you might want to keep within sight even when not using the perfume.
Their form was created by a perfume house started in Paris by a mother and son. A grandparents’ home, a childhood school, a father’s perfume. Their intimate memories become starting points for fragrance, connecting with material choices and bottle shapes. To understand ORMAIE, it helps to begin with that family’s history.
- Essential Information
- The Founders and the Brand’s Beginnings
- Early Childhood in Thailand and the Countryside of His Grandparents’ Home
- A Mother with a Career in Perfume and Her Son’s Proposal
- Two Years to Make Perfume from Natural Materials
- Communicating Shared Memories of a House and School to Perfumers
- Naming the Brand for a Family Landscape and Building a Parisian House
- The Brand’s Particular Commitments
- An Aside…
- References
Essential Information
- Founded:2018
- Founders:Baptiste Bouygues and Marie-Lise Jonak
- Based in:Paris, France
- Fragrance creation:Marie-Lise works with perfumers, drawing on family memories
- Official website:ORMAIE
ORMAIE centres its fragrance-making on natural materials and considers perfume and its container as one creative work. Its seven founding fragrances were made with 100% natural fragrance materials, but some current works also incorporate synthetics. Distinguishing the material philosophy from the specifications of individual current products makes the house’s evolution easier to understand.
The Founders and the Brand’s Beginnings
Early Childhood in Thailand and the Countryside of His Grandparents’ Home
Baptiste spent his early years in Thailand, followed by much of his childhood with grandparents living in the French countryside. In a 2022 interview, he recalled how strongly these two environments influenced his way of seeing. Before visits to city shops or art museums, the landscapes and smells around him had formed the foundations of his senses.
His grandparents’ home had a garden and his grandfather’s workshop. His grandfather carved wood at night, and Baptiste reportedly loved watching him work. Art was not only something viewed in a special place. It was also the act of making forms by hand in everyday life. This family background overlaps with ORMAIE’s later wooden caps.
A Mother with a Career in Perfume and Her Son’s Proposal
His mother, Marie-Lise, had long worked in perfume. The Fragrance Foundation France’s 2022 interview described her experience as spanning thirty years. Through her work with brands, she knew the process of conceiving fragrances and giving them form with perfumers.
Baptiste himself worked for Louis Vuitton in Asia and Givenchy in Europe. Drawing on that experience, in 2016 he proposed to his mother that they start their own perfume brand. A mother experienced in the perfume industry and a son who had worked in luxury sought to use their respective skills for the memories they shared as a family.
The division of roles did not mean that Baptiste wrote every formula himself. He communicates the stories and images that inspire the fragrances, while Marie-Lise develops them with perfumers. Collaboration with specialists was needed to turn their perceptions into fragrances that could actually be worn.
Two Years to Make Perfume from Natural Materials
The challenge they chose in preparing to launch was to create the fragrances they wanted using only natural materials. Even for his mother, this was not a task in which past experience could simply be applied unchanged. Time was needed to examine the properties of natural materials and retry their combinations. Baptiste has said in several interviews that development took around two years.
According to the Doolittle interview, the first fragrance his mother completed and showed him was Les Brumes. It layered bright citrus with the suggestion of trees in the morning. On experiencing the result, Baptiste began considering a bottle worthy of its contents. The concept for the container became concrete from this fragrance onwards.
ORMAIE launched in 2018 with seven fragrances. Its beginnings followed work on a creative challenge: how far could combinations of natural materials express the memories they wanted to convey? Synthetics would later be used too for expressive purposes, but the method of repeated trials and dialogue continues in its present work.
Communicating Shared Memories of a House and School to Perfumers
One strength of mother and son working together was the ability to shorten verbal explanations. They shared memories of the same grandmother’s home and had attended the same school. When discussing a room or a person, they could share even the fine details of its background. Fragrance concepts could begin with specific scenes rather than being diluted into generic “freshness” or “glamour.”
From there, the process involved exchanges with perfumers. In a 2022 interview, Marie-Lise mentioned work with TechnicoFlor and Robertet, and said she had created Marque-Page with Irène Farmachidi. Even to makers who did not share the family’s memories, they had to convey the intended landscapes and emotions and translate them into choices of fragrance materials.
The reluctance to rush completion also comes from his mother’s working practice. Marie-Lise told MECCA that she wears trials not just during the day but also at bedtime, assessing them within everyday life. Beyond the initial impression on a blotter, she considers how a fragrance remains on skin over time. Such accumulated experience supports their decisions.
Naming the Brand for a Family Landscape and Building a Parisian House
The name ORMAIE comes from the elm trees seen in the countryside where his grandparents lived. The family home, the garden, woodworking: the brand name contains the same scenes of daily life as its fragrances and containers. Even with Paris as its base, what he absorbed from childhood remains at the centre of its creation.
Baptiste has also paid attention to relationships with the people making glass, wood and labels, not only perfume. In a 2022 interview, he spoke of valuing visits to production sites with his mother and conversations with the makers. This means opening a family-founded business to the hands of specialists rather than keeping it self-contained.
Today, ORMAIE has expanded beyond eaux de parfum into extraits and small, portable bottles. In Japan, it is stocked by PHAETON FRAGRANCE, TOMORROWLAND and Mitsukoshi Isetan’s meeco. Even as new outlets and formats appear, the starting point remains handing a personal story to someone else in the form of fragrance.
The Brand’s Particular Commitments
Turning Family Memories into Fragrance Combinations
Yvonne imagines Baptiste’s grandmother. Centred on rose and patchouli, it adds fruit expressions such as blackcurrant to the world of classic perfumes she loved. Rather than copying an old perfume, it reconstructs that world with a contemporary sensibility while recalling her presence.
Papier Carbone turns to the school attended by mother and son. Wood, paper and the liquorice familiar from childhood: these memories are translated into combinations including star anise, cardamom, coffee and guaiac wood. Layering materials creates impressions reminiscent of paper and classrooms.
Le Passant takes its cue from his father’s perfume,Caron‘s Pour Un Homme. Although he had thought lavender alone captured his father, Baptiste has said he then recalled the smell of the Armenian paper his father carried in his pocket. The current official description also records that memory. To turn a person into fragrance, it was necessary to recall not only the name of a famous perfume but also the person’s habits.
Broadening Expression While Keeping Natural Materials at the Centre
The founding policy of 100% natural fragrance materials is not a figure common to every current product. Official product information describes eaux de parfum including Les Brumes, Yvonne, Papier Carbone and Le Passant as 100% natural. By contrast, the L’Ivrée Nuit extrait is explicitly listed as 95% natural. These proportions need to be understood as specifications of individual works.
In a 2025 interview, Baptiste discussed choosing to incorporate synthetics for the sake of what he wanted to express. Rather than ranking the value of fragrances by natural or synthetic origin, the question is how to achieve the desired composition. From that perspective, the conditions they imposed on themselves at the beginning are also being reconsidered.
Comparing L’Ivrée Bleue eau de parfum and L’Ivrée Nuit extrait reveals differences that concentration alone cannot explain. The former layers vanilla with rum, iris and cocoa, while the latter combines vanilla with mango, milky expression and woody elements. Extrait also becomes a format for reconsidering the same story in a different light.
Twelve-Faceted Glass and Hand-Finished Wooden Caps
The bottle’s twelve facets are linked to the twelve hours on a clock. The design translates the time needed for perfume development and handwork into the container’s shape. Baptiste worked on the bottle design with art director Jade Lombard. Beyond its visual impression, he wanted to give the approach to making fragrance a form that could be held.
The wooden caps are made of beech and polished by hand. Les Brumes has a ring that preserves the wood’s natural colour; Yvonne has a red sphere; Papier Carbone has a yellow abstract form. Differences between fragrances are communicated through colour and shape as well as the names on their bottles. This is why each looks like a small sculpture when arranged on a shelf.
The label, too, is more than a stage of adding information to a finished container. Marie-Lise has described visiting the printer Imprimerie du Marais and working face to face with its makers. Seeking the handwork appropriate to each of the different materials, wood, glass and paper, supports the impression of the entire bottle.
Refilling Small Bottles for Continued Use
The portable 20 ml Small Bottles offer a way to choose combinations according to preference and can be refilled with glass ampoules of the same capacity. Rather than simply selling a smaller version of a large bottle, the house considers another format suited to where it will be used and to continued use.
A sculptural bottle kept in a room, and a small bottle carried every day and replenished. The ability to choose according to the setting of use, not just capacity, is another interesting aspect of the house’s making. It creates different points of contact with a life that includes fragrance.
An Aside…
The grandmother for whom Yvonne was named reportedly never liked her own name. Baptiste did not tell either his mother or grandmother in advance that he would use it for the perfume. Even with a fragrance made for family, it is impossible to know how its subject will receive it until they are told.
Yet his grandmother was delighted that her name had become a perfume. In Lampoon’s 2022 interview, Baptiste said she had begun asking him to bring the fragrance for her friends too.
A name long disliked became the name of something she wanted to give to others. ORMAIE’s family stories do more than enclose the past in fragrance: they also bring small changes back into the family’s present life.
References
- ORMAIE: About — Opening quotation, co-founders and ideas about family and art — https://ormaie.paris/en/pages/ormaie
- ONE Magazine: Founder interview (August 20, 2022) — Childhood, career and shared memories — https://www.onemag.us/one-online/ormaie
- The Fragrance Foundation France: Interview with Marie-Lise Jonak (July 19, 2022) — Perfume-industry experience, collaboration with perfumers, materials and production — https://www.fragrancefoundation.fr/2022/07/nez-a-nez-avec-marie-lise-jonak-co-creatrice-de-la-maison-ormaie/
- Doolittle: ORMAIE Paris — Development process, origins of the name and family scent memories — https://www.doolittle.fr/ormaie-paris/
- Das Duft-Tagebuch: Interview with Baptiste Bouygues (June 1, 2021) — Grandfather’s woodcarving, school and memories of his father — https://www.alzd.de/2021/06/01/im-interview-baptiste-bouygues-ormaie/
- High Net Worth: Interview with Baptiste Bouygues (May 29, 2025) — The 2016 proposal, 2018 launch, natural materials and synthetics — https://hnworth.com/article/become/trendsetters/baptiste-bouygues-ormaie-perfume/
- MECCA MEMO: ORMAIE founder interview — Testing perfume in everyday life — https://www.mecca.com/en-au/mecca-memo/fragrance/ormaie-founder-interview/
- Lampoon: ORMAIE feature (October 13, 2022) — Seven founding fragrances and the anecdote about Yvonne’s grandmother — https://lampoonmagazine.com/ormaie-organic-perfumes/
- Allure: Art of Glass (December 24, 2019) — Design with Jade Lombard, twelve-faceted bottle and wooden caps — https://www.allure.com/story/february-2020-art-of-glass-bottle-service
- ORMAIE: Les Brumes 100ml — Fragrance, material percentage, bottle and official image for the thumbnail — https://ormaie.paris/en/products/les-brumes-100ml
- ORMAIE: Yvonne 100ml — Fragrance inspiration, composition, material percentage and cap — https://ormaie.paris/en/products/yvonne-100ml
- ORMAIE: Papier Carbone 100ml — School memories, fragrance composition, material percentage and cap — https://ormaie.paris/en/products/papier-carbone-100ml
- ORMAIE: Le Passant 100ml — Memories of his father and Armenian paper, fragrance and material percentage — https://ormaie.paris/en/products/le-passant-100ml
- ORMAIE: L’Ivrée Bleue 100ml — Fragrance composition — https://ormaie.paris/en/products/livree-bleue-100ml
- ORMAIE: L’Ivrée Nuit Extrait — Fragrance composition and the 95% natural specification — https://ormaie.com/products/livree-nuit-extrait
- ORMAIE: Art of Concentration — Approach to eau de parfum and extrait — https://ormaie.paris/en/blogs/art-of-perfume/art-of-concentration
- ORMAIE: The Small Bottles — 20 ml, customization and glass-ampoule refills — https://ormaie.paris/en/collections/the-small-bottles
- PHAETON FRAGRANCE: ORMAIE — Current availability in Japan — https://phaeton-fragrance.com/collections/ormaie
- TOMORROWLAND: ORMAIE Les Brumes 20ml — Current availability in Japan — https://store.tomorrowland.co.jp/item/ormaie/43226222006.html
- Mitsukoshi Isetan meeco: ORMAIE Rose Mosaïque — Japanese brand rendering, founders’ names and current availability in Japan — https://meeco.mistore.jp/meeco/product/7780900000000000000003683839.html
