Most brands lack DNA and a concept, and exploit consumers’ fears. Given the carbon impact of extracting, rendering, and manufacturing natural ingredients, it is difficult to call natural ingredients 100% clean. To me, a clear and transparent position is better than simply choosing synthetic or natural.
Coralie Frébourg
Basic Information
Founded: October 2021
Founder: Coralie Frébourg
Official website: English-language official website (Official Japanese distributor)
Founding History
“Versatile” means someone whose mood changes often. As the name suggests, we like to change our feelings and moods. All our fragrances depict real-life situations everyone knows, such as breakfast, teatime, a hangover, or an aperitif.
Coralie Frébourg
In 2021, a young woman named Coralie Frébourg launched a brand with six perfumes, named after someone whose mood changes easily: “versatile.” It was a reflection of Coralie’s own story.
After graduating in 2019 from L’École Supérieure du Parfum, a perfume school established in Paris and Grasse in 2011, Coralie completed internships at Shiseido (in Japanese), Givaudan, and Coty (in Japanese), then looked for a job with a luxury brand during the pandemic. However, COVID had left almost no jobs available, and she spent six months unemployed. Eventually, she decided to start her own brand. She had grown tired of the rules and the luxury conventions of the perfume industry: assumptions and nonsense such as “a higher price means higher quality,” “flowers are for women,” “the heavier the cap, the more luxurious it is,” “100% natural means 100% environmentally responsible,” and “transparency is not luxury; luxury is a dream.” Also fed up with everything smelling alike, she launched Versatile in October 2021 to break free from the perfume industry’s stereotypes and offer scents with freedom.
The beliefs of Versatile Paris are expressed below.
- Free: Freedom from luxury’s boring codes and rules.
- Creative: Individual perfumes, no more olfactory clones.
- Authentic: Complete, information-rich transparency.
- Committed: No choice between people and the planet.
- Accessible: An end to regret and guilt.
- Bold: The f*cking challenge of combining all of this.
- Unique: Do you know many people like us?
What is interesting is how the brand’s own story completely rejects the natural-is-best myth, so common among recent brands that emphasize sustainability and insist nothing is better than 100% natural. It calls “100% natural” an opportunistic concept that exploits consumers’ fears and lack of information. Its equally blunt dismissal of established brands is refreshing.
Rather than choosing only natural or synthetic ingredients, we make conscious, thoughtful choices. Combining the two allows our perfumes to last on the skin while protecting environmental systems from excess.
In perfume, size does not matter.
Official website
Who has ever regretted buying a 100 ml fragrance because they became tired of its scent or could not carry it around to reapply it? No more tricks! Brands use weight and shape to create the illusion of greater volume and better quality.
Our bottles are small, light, portable, and practical. Anytime, anywhere, whenever you like.
Aiming to create the opposite of what is considered “normal” in the established perfume industry, Versatile makes alcohol-free oil fragrances using sweet almond oil, in 15 ml roll-on bottles, at concentrations of 30–38%, twice that of a typical eau de parfum (in Japanese). Small yet powerful: these are the perfumes behind Versatile’s constant insistence that size does not matter.
The fragrances are composed by Anne-Sophie Behaghel (in Japanese), who also creates perfumes for Liquides Imaginaires, BDK, Frapin, and Obvious.
Generally, most perfume brands, whether mainstream (in Japanese) or niche, have margins of 70–90%. Ours is 70%. At Versatile, every formula costs €300–600 per kilogram. Whereas mainstream perfumes cost around €80 per kilogram, ours cost €300–600. On a €55 perfume, €10 is VAT, €9 is the product cost, and we donate 3% to French associations. We also have expenses such as office space and apprentices, but retailers do buy the products for €27, half the price excluding tax.
Coralie Frébourg
Commitments
Beyond the points above, the brand makes its commitments clear in a variety of other areas.
- No need for a pretty story.
- No limited editions, flankers, or alternative concentrations.
- No supermodels or conventional advertising campaigns.
- Everything is genderless, without separating men and women.
- A challenge to combine quality with accessibility and creativity, rather than equating it with a high price.
- Transparent communication that gives everyone access to information, a genuinely comprehensive approach that is as responsible as possible, and optimized, though not perfect, products.
- No animal-derived ingredients, animal testing, endocrine disruptors, colorants, UV filters, or CMR (carcinogenic, mutagenic, or toxic to reproduction) ingredients.
- Minimal, optimized packaging: contents > container.
- Materials: recycled (labels and shipping packaging), upcycled (cases and perfume cards), and recyclable (bottles and shipping packaging).
- 100% recycled and recyclable protective paper (no bubble wrap), and no cellophane. The only plastic is in the cap and roll-on holder (under 5 g).
- Made in France: the perfumes are conceived in Paris and manufactured in Grasse.
- Small runs: produced and reproduced according to demand.
