Naomi Goodsir came to perfumery by way of hats. An Australian milliner whose pieces were worn on some very well-known heads, she moved to France and, with her partner, founded a fragrance house that carries the same discipline as her millinery: austere, deliberate, and made to last.
Bois d'Ascèse is the one to begin with, a smoky, incense-laden wood that smells like a chapel after the candles have gone out. Cuir Velours is leather softened almost to fabric. Or du Sérail is tobacco and fruit and warmth. Nuit de Bakélite is green and strange and unlike anything else, a galbanum fragrance with a hard, glossy edge. Iris Cendré is iris turned to ash.
The character of the house
Nothing here is designed to be pretty. These are fragrances with structure, built the way a good hat is built, to hold their shape whatever the weather. They reward people who like their perfume to have a spine.
Why Stacey admires it
For the work, first. And for the pleasure of an Australian-born house whose fragrances have found their way onto the most serious shelves in Europe, and who would be coming home.