011931
Iris · Poudré
The hour after the light has gone.
La maison
A perfume should be composed the way a letter is written: for one person, by hand, and never twice.
Aurèle Vauclair wrote his first formula in a rented room above a Grasse distillery in the spring of 1927. Ninety-nine years and four generations later, the organ he built is still the one we compose on, and the formulas are still written by hand in the same ledgers.
We do not launch. We do not discontinue. The collection has grown by seven extraits in a century, and the private commissions, twelve a year, are sealed under the name of the person who wore them first and no other.
La collection
Seven extraits. No more.
Composed between 1927 and 2024, on the same organ. Each is offered as an extrait only, at 50 and 100 ml, in the maison’s engraved flacon.
01
021954
Cuir · Épicé
The saddlery below the salon, remembered.
031968
Marin · Ambré
Skin after the sea, before the shower.
041989
Rose · Oud
A rose grown in the dark.
051927
Fleur d'oranger · Miel
The first formula. Never revised.
062011
Boisé · Fumé
Vetiver, cacao and the last cigarette.
072024
Résineux · Liturgique
Beeswax, incense, cold stone.
Matières
What we buy, we smell in the field.
Forty-one raw materials are bought by the maison directly from growers we have known for at least a decade. Nothing arrives as a sample. Isaure or her father visits the harvest; the contract is a handshake and a bottle left behind.
Commissions privées
Twelve a year. Fourteen months each. One name on the ledger.
A private commission is a fragrance composed for one person and sealed under their name. It is not a variation on a house formula. It begins with three hours of conversation and ends, fourteen months later, with a flacon that will never be made for anyone else.
- I
L'Entretien
One afternoon
Three hours at rue de Varenne with Isaure. No questionnaire. We talk about rooms, weather, people, the smells you avoid. Nothing is smelled on the first day.
- II
L'Esquisse
Months 1–4
Three sketches arrive by courier on blotters and on cloth. You wear each for a week and write to us. Most commissions choose the one they were sure they disliked.
- III
La Maturation
Months 5–12
The chosen sketch is composed in full and left to macerate in Grasse. It is corrected four times; each correction is worn by you before it is kept.
- IV
La Remise
Month 14
The formula is sealed in the archive under your name and no other. One flacon of 250 ml, engraved, and a book of the correspondence. Refills for life.
From €42,000. The next available entretien is in the spring of 2027.
Depuis 1927
Four generations, one organ.
Tincture, poured. Grasse.
- 1927
Aurèle Vauclair composes Néroli 27 in a rented room above a Grasse distillery.
- 1931
Vespérale, for the soprano Élise Darcourt. The first private commission.
- 1938
The maison takes the former saddlery at 9 rue de Varenne, Paris 7e.
- 1954
Cuir Varenne. The salon's ground floor is smelled, then bottled.
- 1966
The ambergris mother tincture is made. It has never run dry.
- 1989
Ombre Rouge. Rationed to forty flacons a month since 1994.
- 2011
Isaure Vauclair-Mendès, fourth generation, takes the organ.
- 2024
Larmes de Cire. The seventh extrait, and the last for a while.
Les salons
Received, not sold.
Nothing leaves the maison unworn. Consultations last ninety minutes, are without charge, and are limited to four a day.
Paris
Salon de la rue de Varenne
Grasse
L'Atelier des Hauts-de-Grasse
The next available consultation in Paris is in three weeks.
Request an appointment