Scentillating

When it comes to making perfume, the NOSE knows. Just ask artisanal parfumier Blaise Mautin.

Perfume is romantic, yes? But most fragrances today, alas, are created in megalabs where throngs of white-robed perfumers and marketing analysts toil—noses to paper dipsticks, eyes on the bottom line—in an atmosphere as charming as a chemical plant.

Unless you are Blaise Mautin. A bespoke alchemist harking back to the days when a perfume was truly an individual signature, he creates exclusive scents for clients the old-fashioned way: alone. Mautin, the buzz of the international scent industry, has built an empire—from a very tiny Paris apartment.

Arriving at a modest building on a narrow street an atomizer’s throw from the Arc de Triomphe, I expect to find a geezer in a lab coat surrounded by cobwebbed beakers. Instead, a black-clad, dashingly fit, darkly handsome man in his 30s opens the door and invites me into a small, mirrored living room filled with white leather furniture of his design. Champagne is chilling on a sleek wooden coffee table.

Not born to the profession, Mautin began his ascent to the perfume pantheon in his 20s, visiting his family’s Paris toyshop. Watching a man painstakingly select the perfect toy for his granddaughter, Mautin thought, “What better way to make a lingering memory than a perfume? You never forget a scent.” He promptly enrolled in the best perfume schools in France and, in 2000, opened for business (www.blaisemautin.com).

“To create a perfume, I build a story ingredient by ingredient, to make the scent a souvenir,” he says, waving a small paper stick with the latest under his nose. “I always try to understand what environment a client likes to be in, what their best memories are. It’s like solving a little puzzle. How does it smell? And then, you know . . . a little touch. What is missing?”

More champagne? Mais oui! Then to the “lab” where it all happens, 10 steps away: a tiny, windowless jewel box lined with backlit shelves holding hundreds of glass bottles filled with oils and essences (many rare, gathered on worldwide travels). A lit silver candelabra glows on the dark wood table in the center of the room. I resist the urge to genuflect.

A custom-made Mautin fragrance can cost as much as $16,000 for two crystal bottles, which doesn’t faze his elite international clients—the Russian pop star who commissioned 500 bottles for her wedding, the French film icon, the Hollywood bigwig who so loved the scent Mautin created for his wife that he ordered another one for his daughter . . . and yet a third for his helicopter. They flock to Chez Mautin seeking one of the last true luxuries—and they risk rejection. But only, says Mautin, “if I know the client will never, never be happy . . . or if they want to use my creations commercially. I do not want my products sold on the street, out of respect for my customer who makes me work in such an exclusive way.”

Making ancient, evocative magic happen in the 21st century, Mautin sets trends by going against them, one unique formula at a time. There is magic here, indeed. And after sipping, sniffing and swooning . . . I’m saving up.

— Mary Alice Kellogg