The Different Company: The Story of a Pioneer That Gave Rise to “Niche Perfume”

“All these perfumes have a unique olfactory note. Today, they embody the very quest for olfactory perfection.”
— Jean-Claude Ellena, 2000​

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Essential Information

• Founded: 2000
• Founders: Jean-Claude Ellena and Thierry de Baschmakoff, designer
• Headquarters: Paris, France (37, Rue Louise Weiss, Paris 75013)​
• Official website: thedifferentcompany.com
• A note on the name: In Japanese, the name is commonly transliterated as “Za Difarento Kanpanī.” It is also sometimes abbreviated to “TDC.”​

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The Founders and the Origins of the Brand

It All Begins in Grasse: The Ellena Family’s Perfume DNA

To tell the story of The Different Company, we must first trace the life of the man who conceived its scents: Jean-Claude Ellena.

Ellena was born in Grasse in southern France in 1947. Grasse is the world capital of the perfume industry, and perfumery ran in the Ellena family’s blood. His father, Peter, was a perfumer at Antoine Chiris. As a child, Ellena spent his days picking jasmine with his grandmother and selling it to perfumers. At sixteen, he joined the same Chiris company as an apprentice and began working night shifts operating the stills. He recalls those days as follows.​

“We made a great deal of oakmoss essential oil. Once I had set up the still, I would lie down on a heap of oakmoss and go to sleep.”
— Jean-Claude Ellena​

In 1968, Ellena became one of the landmark first intake of students at the perfumery school newly established by Givaudan in Geneva, Switzerland. He left Givaudan in 1976 for Lautier in Grasse. First, the fragrance he created there for Van Cleef & Arpels, was the first work to make his name widely known. He went on to release many celebrated perfumes as his career took him to the role of chief perfumer at Givaudan Paris and then to Haarmann & Reimer, now Symrise.​

The legendary perfumer Edmond Roudnitska had a decisive influence on Ellena’s creative philosophy. The creator of Diorissimo and Eau Sauvage, Roudnitska saw perfume as “an art that evokes emotions and stories.” Ellena absorbed that philosophy deeply, later expressing it in his own words.​

“I am not interested in reproducing nature. I want to transform it and create olfactory illusions.”
— Jean-Claude Ellena​

The Rejection and Reversal of a Tea Scent: A Fateful Encounter with Bulgari

Surprisingly, the seeds of The Different Company can be traced back to a proposal rejected for Dior’s Fahrenheit.

In the late 1980s, Ellena discovered that combining the jasmine-scented synthetic molecule Hedione with violet-scented alpha-ionone could recreate the scent of tea. This innovative concept came close to winning the competition for Dior’s Fahrenheit, but Dior felt that its commercial prospects were “too uncertain.” Ultimately, Jean-Louis Sieuzac and Michel Almairac completed Fahrenheit using a different formula.​

Ellena took his tea scent to other houses, but all declined, finding it “too creative.” Several years later, Bulgari finally took an interest in the concept. Initially, however, it was intended only as an exclusive gift for the jeweler’s most valued clients.

When it was released to the public in response to strong demand from those clients, however, Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert became a major success, opening the way for the tea-fragrance trend of the 1990s.​

Through this project, Ellena met Thierry de Baschmakoff, who designed the flacon, or bottle. In fact, this was Baschmakoff’s first major commission from a leading brand. The success of Bulgari’s tea fragrance convinced both men of one thing: “There is a market for new, original perfumes outside the established houses.” That shared conviction would eventually take shape as a perfume house of their own.​

The Designer’s Background: Baschmakoff’s “Other Grasse”

Baschmakoff, too, was born in Grasse, in 1960, but chose the unusual path of working not on perfume itself but on its “outside”: bottle and packaging design. As he puts it:

“I am probably the only person born in Grasse who works on the outside of perfume rather than what is inside.”
— Thierry de Baschmakoff​

Baschmakoff’s career followed an unconventional course. He studied civil engineering at Arts et Métiers ParisTech, formerly the national school of arts and crafts, but one day abruptly decided, “I will design perfume bottles.” He carved a bottle model in plaster and set out for Paris. In 1985, he established the design agency Aesthete. The Bulgari project described above brought him sudden recognition, and he went on to create a succession of iconic bottles, including Dior Addict, Versace Eros, and Guerlain L’Homme Idéal. To date, he has brought at least 6,000 designed objects into the world.

2000: The Birth of a House with “Difference” in Its Name

Ellena and Baschmakoff put their long-nurtured idea into practice, founding The Different Company in Paris in 2000. The name itself expressed their philosophy of setting themselves radically apart from existing perfume companies. Baschmakoff describes the brand’s thinking as follows.​

“In 2000, what could bring perfume closer to true luxury? Choosing ingredients of the highest quality, regardless of price. At The Different Company, perfumers have complete freedom, even if a formula costs €1,000 per kilogram. Luxury has to be irrational.”
— Thierry de Baschmakoff​

The official website describes the house as “the first independent niche fragrance brand.” In 2000, neither the concept nor the market for “niche perfume” as we know it today existed. In the words of Luc Gabriel, discussed below, it was “a slightly mad project in a market that did not exist.”

Luc Gabriel Joins: A New Chapter

The Different Company reached a turning point in 2004, when Ellena became the exclusive perfumer at Hermès. Luc Gabriel took over the management of the brand at this time. Growing up surrounded by the perfume manufacturing business his mother ran, Gabriel had developed a deep familiarity with the world of scent. He remains the brand’s president and artistic director.

In an interview with WWD Japan, Gabriel explained his philosophy for choosing perfumers.

“A perfumer must be an alchemist, not a chemist. A true perfumer has the ability to draw out emotion through scent and move people.”
— Luc Gabriel​

In an interview with the French perfumers’ association, he also shared this anecdote about finding a common language with perfumers.

“Sometimes, in discussions about a scent, I express things through shapes and colors. I cannot work with someone unless they understand me when I say something like, ‘It is a little too vertical, and too red.’”
— Luc Gabriel​

It was Ellena’s daughter, Céline Ellena, who succeeded him in creating fragrances for The Different Company. Also born in Grasse, Céline studied at the prestigious ISIPCA in Versailles and gained ten years of experience at Haarmann & Reimer before joining the brand in 2004–2005. Many of its popular creations, including Jasmin de Nuit, Sel de Vetiver, Pure eVe, and Sublime Balkiss, are her work.

Gabriel subsequently sought to move away from dependence on a single perfumer and built a collaborative approach involving several talented creators. Internationally renowned perfumers such as Émilie Coppermann, Bertrand Duchaufour, Christine Nagel, and Alexandra Monet have each expanded the house’s expressive range through their own distinctive personalities.

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Brand Commitments

The Philosophy of Fragrance Creation: Freedom, Natural Materials, and “No Cost Limits”

The Different Company’s creative philosophy could be summed up as “creation without constraints.” Its official website declares: “No compromise, no cost constraints, for pure pleasure and emotion.”​

In practice, this commitment is expressed in the following principles.

• An exceptionally high proportion of natural fragrance materials: Some perfumes reportedly contain as much as 96% natural ingredients. The signature fragrance Bois d’Iris uses an extremely high concentration of Iris pallida absolute, a concentrated aromatic extract. Obtaining one liter of the absolute requires forty metric tons of fresh rhizomes and an eight-year process. It is said that seventy kilograms of Iris pallida rhizomes are needed to make 90 ml of Bois d’Iris.
• Complete freedom for perfumers: Rather than constraining perfumers with a brief or specification, the house leaves the creative starting point to the perfumers themselves. Their artistry, rather than marketing, takes precedence.
• Concentration Designed for Each Creation: The house now offers eaux de toilette, eaux de parfum, and extraits. Introduced in 2026, eXtraits eXtrêmes comprises five creations with concentrations of at least 50%.
• Gender-free: Because natural fragrance materials smell different on different skin types, the brand dispenses with gender-based classifications.​

Bottle and Packaging Design

Baschmakoff’s bottle embodies the house’s identity. Its most distinctive feature is the three-tiered cap, a signature symbol of the brand’s “quest for perfection.” The glass is fire-polished, with attention extending to the smooth feel of the bottle in the hand. The principal ingredients are inscribed in enamel on the front.

Equally noteworthy is the adoption of a refillable design from the very beginning. The pump can be removed, and refill bottles made from 100% recyclable aluminum are available. Baschmakoff conceived the bottle as “a luxury object that should not be thrown away.” This sustainability-conscious approach was exceptionally forward-looking when the company was founded in 2000.

The Different Company’s perfumes combine an exploration of materials that began with its founding with different creative approaches developed through collaborations with several perfumers. Juste Chic, its signature line, has brought together works by Jean-Claude and Céline Ellena as well as incense compositions. L’Esprit Cologne began as an attempt to rework the freshness of cologne in a contemporary form.

As of November 2026, the French website groups fragrances by concentration as eaux de toilette, eaux de parfum, and extraits. It also offers Exclusifs, fragrances sold directly in small quantities. In 2026, these were joined by eXtraits eXtrêmes, five creations with concentrations of at least 50%.

Jean-Claude Ellena’s Foundational Works (2000–2004)

Jean-Claude Ellena’s four creations take different materials as their starting points: osmanthus, iris, rose, and bergamot.

Osmanthus began with Ellena’s memory of visiting the Forbidden City in China. Around the flower, he layered the brightness of citrus, green leaves, the rounded softness of musk, and the bite of pink pepper. Looking back in 2020, Luc Gabriel recalled that it had been the brand’s bestseller across its markets for seven years.

Bois d’Iris (2000) evokes the Tuscan hills where Iris pallida grows. Its woody construction suggests a landscape of dry stones. Cedar and vetiver give definition to the root-like scent, while geranium and narcissus support its floral side.

Rose Poivrée combines Damask and centifolia roses with black pepper, pink pepper, and coriander. Of the rose’s sweetness, warmth, and freshness, it brings the spicy facets forward, adding shadows at the base with vetiver and civet notes. Perfume critic Chandler Burr awarded it five stars. In 2017, it appeared in Blossom, a display of five rose fragrances at the Grand Musée du Parfum in Paris. It was brought into focus again in 2020.

Bergamote is a citrus fragrance evoking southern Italian sunshine and the shade of a bergamot tree. Ginger gives the citrus a spicy edge, orange blossom draws out its floral aspect, and green leaves add a leafy freshness.

Céline Ellena’s Creations (Around 2005–2011)

For Céline Ellena, the starting point can be the atmosphere encountered on a journey or the feel of fabric against the skin, as well as a flower or a wood.

Jasmin de Nuit was one of her early creations. Jasmine is layered with star anise, cardamom, and cinnamon, leading into sandalwood and amber. The warmth of spice overlaps with the white flower; the fragrance was already being introduced as a new release in 2005.

Sel de Vétiver (2006) grew from a memory of entering a shop selling African goods on a rainy day. Rubbing woven vetiver roots between her fingers left a bitter, dry smell on her hands. That sensation mingled with the dampness of rain and the smells of dyed fabrics, spices, and ripe fruit. Ellena recalled imagining the smell left on the skin after swimming in the sea. As water evaporates and salt remains, the skin feels both dry and wet: she connected that impression with vetiver’s bitterness. In December 2006, contemporary perfume media also reported Chandler Burr’s five-star New York Times review.

Sublime Balkiss (2008) is a contemporary chypre inspired by Ireland’s rain, wind, and heather on damp moorland. It moves from fruit and the green freshness of violet leaves to rose, giving patchouli two roles. One brings out the floral heart; the other joins a cocoa note to create a dark, warm trail.

Pure eVe, Just Pure (2011) translates the comfort of white cotton or silk slipping over skin into fragrance. A clear aldehydic opening leads to flax flowers, white rose, and mimosa, with musk and cedar supporting a soft skin scent. A calisson confectionery note adds sweetness to the impression of clean fabric. In his 2020 retrospective, Gabriel named Pure eVe and Sublime Balkiss among the house’s five best-selling perfumes.

Collection Excessive: Bertrand Duchaufour’s World of Oud

In the early 2010s, Gabriel moved away from entrusting the fragrances to a single perfumer and began welcoming different personalities. Collection Excessive with Bertrand Duchaufour began during this period. It started with two dense oud-centered creations and later expanded toward flowers, fruit, violet, and leather.

Oud Shamash (2011) takes its name from the Babylonian sun god Shamash. Rum-like notes, pink pepper, saffron, and cinnamon open the composition, followed by rose and nagarmotha, before its weight shifts toward Laotian oud, patchouli, resins, and dry woods. Alcoholic and spicy brightness illuminates the resinous depth of oud. Gabriel reportedly commissioned one fragrance but liked both of Duchaufour’s proposals and accepted the two.

The other, Oud for Love (2012), opens the same Laotian oud toward flowers and sweetness. Whisky, saffron, and cumin lead into the full-bodied flowers of tuberose and ylang-ylang, with vetiver, patchouli, immortelle, and caramel notes shaping the trail. Both fragrances are now offered as extraits.

Duchaufour’s work extended beyond oud to Aurore Nomade, with its tropical flowers and fruit, and I miss Violet. For the latter, he described constructing a vegetal leather from violet leaves and flowers, osmanthus, mimosa, and other materials. Gabriel also recalled repeatedly working on the fragrance, setting it aside for about three months, and returning to assess it.

L’Esprit Cologne (2012–2017): Émilie Coppermann’s Innovation

L’Esprit Cologne began in 2012 through a collaboration with Émilie Coppermann. The aim was to layer citrus freshness with flowers, woods, musks, and resins to create complex, lasting compositions. Limon de Cordoza and Tokyo Bloom are eaux de toilette, while the later Majaïna Sin is an eau de parfum.

Coppermann describes perfume creation as play and enjoys beginning with an offbeat idea or an unexpected story. Limon de Cordoza (2012) creates an impression of lemon through mandarin, bitter orange, and mint, leading into neroli, freesia, patchouli, and vetiver. Its setting is an imaginary Cordoza rather than an actual city.

Tokyo Bloom (2012) captures the air of a Japanese garden as spring turns to summer. Basil, dandelion, galbanum, and blackcurrant buds provide a green character, layered with jasmine and cyclamen. Guaiac wood and musk support an impression that moves between freshly cut grass and flowers.

After Midnight turns the same freshness toward the warmth of night. Bergamot and neroli meet angelica root, iris, and cinnamon, leading to a soft trail of benzoin, labdanum, and ambrette.

Majaïna Sin (2017) extended this approach into gourmand territory. Its background includes a journey to Madagascar, where Coppermann met ginger farmers, cinnamon distillers, and producers of vanilla with many different facets. By combining vanilla and chestnut-cream sweetness with the brightness of ginger, cinnamon, bergamot, and neroli, she sought to bring richness and freshness together.

Coppermann has also contributed to Juste Chic. In 2020, Gabriel explained that Al Sahra centered on the softness of sand, the dryness of wind, and the smell of stones experienced in the desert. This Juste Chic fragrance combines salt and mineral accords with violet, cinnamon, amber, and incense.

Christine Nagel and Alexandra Monet

Une Nuit Magnétique, All Night Long (2014) is Christine Nagel’s creation for the house. Against a late-spring setting beside the Seine, with laughter, wind, and the air turning toward night, it develops an image of magnetism: scents attracting and repelling one another. A spicy, fruity opening of ginger and blueberry leads to jasmine, rose, tuberose, and prune, with benzoin, patchouli, musk, and amber drawing the flowers toward them.

In 2014, Nagel described creative freedom as both a sign of the house’s considerable trust and a challenge. Tama Blough’s interview with Gabriel that year reported that Nagel had moved to Hermès just two days after completing the fragrance. It later received five stars in Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez’s jointly authored Perfumes: The Guide 2018.

Santo Incienso, Sillage Sacré (2017), by Alexandra Monet, takes palo santo as its subject. Following a fragrance celebrating the house’s fifteenth anniversary, it joined Juste Chic in 2017. Around cedar, it places the brightness of bergamot and petitgrain and the warmth of nutmeg, moving into incense, myrrh, and milky musk.

Monet explained that she wanted the fragrance to convey surprise and peace, like a prayer directed toward the sky.

Collaborations with New Creators

Marion Costero’s Red Burning Night sets the sweet, dense side of jasmine against dry woody notes, with a night in Córdoba, Spain, as its background. It was sold in Japan ahead of other markets in 2024. Bergamot and pink pepper lead to jasmine sambac, cedar, and a milky accord, while tonka and woody materials form the trail.

eXtraits eXtrêmes in 2026

The 2026 eXtraits eXtrêmes collection was presented at Paris Perfume Week, with new creations by five perfumers. Gabriel wanted fragrances that communicated their subjects directly and clearly. At concentrations of at least 50%, the challenge was to meet the demand for strength and longevity while retaining the house’s refinement. Confectionery, white flowers, smoke, and herbs provide five different directions, rather than a collection confined to sweet fragrances.

Véronique Nyberg’s Maddy is a gourmand at 54% concentration, conceived as a madeleine cocktail enjoyed in a tucked-away bar. Childhood memories of cakes, likened to Proust’s madeleine, are set against the nighttime excitement suggested by rum. The brightness of cold lemon peel leads to a still-warm salted-butter madeleine, while aged rum turns the confection into an adult pleasure. Vanilla and roasted almond leave the rounded warmth of baked goods in the trail.

Cristiano Canali’s Salty Kiss combines the salt left on the skin after swimming in the sea with a craving for something sweet. The scene is four o’clock on a sunlit afternoon: salt is still on the lips as a caramel treat is enjoyed before returning to the water. A mineral opening suggesting salt crystals is layered with salted-butter caramel and pecan, while white musk envelops the toasted character of speculoos. Canali favors concise compositions that find depth in natural materials and contrasts rather than piling up ingredients. Here, salt keeps a lively edge within the sweetness.

Alexandra Monet’s Crazy Tubéreuse, at 50% concentration, depicts the sensuality of white flowers as though moving between a nighttime garden and a private room. At its center is a nocturnal tuberose dressed in black leather. Black pepper and cold aldehydes give the rich flower a sharp edge. Night-blooming jasmine carries its floral impression forward, while Russian leather and styrax create a dark depth with animalic facets.

Serge de Oliveira’s Gothic Incense is set in a city at night. Smoke from burning sacred wood enters steel structures, a scene expressed through the contrast between metallic coldness and the heat of wood. Black and pink pepper and a green, spicy accord create a sharp opening. Notes suggesting incense essential oil and absolute overlap with the smell of charred cedar to create dense smoke. Smoked woods, oakmoss, and Atlas cedar leave a dark trail, extending to the lingering smell of a room where a fire has just gone out.

Meng Gu’s Gin-Seng, at 50% concentration, brings traditional Chinese botanical knowledge together with the perfumery techniques she studied in France. Born in China and moving between Paris and Shanghai, she places ginseng at the center of a contemporary interpretation of herbal culture. The lively spice of goji berry, ginger, and basil leads to red ginseng, blue chamomile, and a juicy fruit accord, creating a soft heart suggestive of water and roots. Vetiver, cedar, and grassy musks carry the freshness into a lasting woody trail.

Incidentally…

• Ellena’s palette grows smaller with the years: In a 2023 interview, Ellena disclosed some remarkable figures. Early in his career, he used 1,200 ingredients; he subsequently reduced that number to 400, then 200, and now uses just 110. “It’s frightening, isn’t it?” he said with a laugh.​
• Baschmakoff also created a “fake brand”: In 2016, he collected 300 vintage bottles from the 1930s through the 1960s at flea markets, covered them in colorful rubber balloons, and created a “pretend brand” called J.U.S. What was supposed to be a pure thought experiment attracted crowds of visitors wanting to buy the bottles at an exhibition, and eventually developed into a real brand.​
• Rose Poivrée’s “underwear problem”: Perfume lovers still tell the story of Luca Turin describing its early formula as smelling of “dirty underwear,” owing to the civet, a secretion from the civet cat, that it contained. This “provocative sensuality” was precisely Ellena’s intention, and is also why the fragrance found a place in a museum collection.
• A connection with Japan: L’Esprit Cologne includes Tokyo Bloom, which evokes spring in Japan through basil and dandelion. President Gabriel also places particular importance on the Japanese market, including launching new fragrances there ahead of the rest of the world.

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