TEAM
Amélie Bourgeois
The smell has always been a refuge for me. As a child, I would bathe in it. I let my nose get lost in the wheat fields or in the coat of the horses I was riding. Dreamy, I found in what I breathed the source of intimate and formidable journeys. And I still do. I breathe in and out.
The refuge turned into a home when I met Monique Schlienger, an intrepid perfumer. With her and my long-time companion Anne-Sophie Behaghel, I learned the basics.
After ten years of experience, I decided, thanks to the support of Martine Denisot, to launch my own creative studio, Flair. Well surrounded, a single objective emerged: to create without limits.
Anne-Sophie Behaghel
I grew up in Paris, city of hot asphalt and crowded subways. As a child sticking his nose everywhere, I knew very early that I wanted to be a nose. After a long and difficult journey, Monique Schlienger, gives the change to my pugnacity and trains me. Amélie quickly joined me in my training. I find in her the best of accomplices. Amélie likes refined and sophisticated compositions, I like the elusive smells that shake things up.
Olfactory abstraction is essential for me. It guides my formulas. Smell allows me not to understand everything. I like to dive into its unspeakable sensations and shape them, to create a juice from which, I hope each time, one cannot detach the nose.
Camille Chemardin
At a very young age, my heart was torn between becoming a perfumer or Indiana Jones in a petticoat. The two could be linked: my passion for history and adventure quickly found its happiness in bottles. Everything went very quickly. As a passionate student, I entered Flair as an intern at the age of 20 and I stayed there. I was so happy there that I sometimes went more to the studio than to class.
Amélie et Anne-Sophie ont pérennisé notre collaboration en faisant valoir ma rigueur, ma précision et ma curiosité pour les parfums d’antan. Et c’est vrai que j’aime l’idée du parfum-secret qui a été nourrie depuis des siècles. La manipulation des jus a quelque chose de très mystérieux qui s’épanouit quelque part entre sorcellerie et science-fiction.
Margaux
Le Paih-Guérin
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You could almost say that I was born in a perfume flask. My mother founded an independent perfumery shop in Bretagne and ran it for 10 years. I grew up with the perfumes, from the classics of the 20th century to the creations of the early 2000s. I was fascinated by these people looking for their olfactive identity. I was dreaming about this day, when I will be able to create this magical liquides, vectors of deep emotions.
Becoming a perfumer was quite obvious. What I really like is the « free spirit » creation, the one which allows you to go beyond the « sent-bon » and turns towards experimental juices. This is also why I love working with plastic artists. With brands, the conceptual dimension is sometime different. The passionate part of this work is to put yourself into the shoes of the brand’s consumer and to catch the brand’s DNA. I always try to create something unusual, find this little twist which will give a unique aura to the perfume.
Sandra Barré
I came to smell through art, and particularly through the aesthetic and artistic experience that it is possible to have while breathing. Breathing refers to the body, it is the body that smells, in both senses of the term. It inhales and exhales.
To write and theorize the history of art through smell is to create other codes and to shake up pre-established dogmas. To consider smell is to question what the eye sees, it is to prove that it is not the only one to hold the knowledge and it is to question all our oculocentric system where the eye is king.
"I strongly believe that we are neither male nor female, just a living body." Paul B. Preciado.
Pauline Jegousse
Pauline Jegousse a eu l’intuition qu’elle voulait travailler dans l’industrie de la parfumerie lorsque, encore au collège, elle découvre un documentaire sur la maison Guerlain et sur son parfumeur, Thierry Wasser. Et à bien y réfléchir tout la mène aux odeurs : son grand-père paysagiste qui lui fait découvrir des essences parfumées dès qu’il en croise, la maison de sa nourrice emplie de fleurs ou sa mère qui a une appétence particulière pour les fragrances…
Pauline Jegousse choisi d’intégrer l’ISIPCA et de se former à la création et au développement des parfums, cosmétiques et arômes. C’est pendant un stage qui se transforme en alternance chez Flair qu’elle comprend que son souhait peut devenir possible « on nous rappelle souvent que devenir parfumeure est difficile, voire impossible, mais les planètes se sont alignées pour moi ».
Martine Denisot
My connivance with fragrant raw materials began very early, when I "sniffed" the ivory kid glove of a very pretty grandmother. Unforgettable.
Des années après, j’ai le privilège de passer du temps dans le laboratoire d’un très grand parfumeur parisien. Je me saoule littéralement des plus belles matières premières. Je les flaire dans tous les sens, les décortique, les dévore, les entrecroise, les mixe et les imprime. Quand je rencontre Amélie Bourgeois, ma curiosité s’accorde à son expertise vive et fine de parfumeur. J’apporte à FLAIR mon imaginaire particulier.