Papillon Artisan Perfumes is what the phrase artisan house ought to mean. Liz Moores is the founder, the perfumer and the only hand at the bench. She taught herself the craft, she works from the English countryside, and she releases a fragrance only when she is satisfied with it, which is not often.
Her compositions reach for materials and structures that the mainstream left behind decades ago: animalic notes, resins, old-fashioned florals given a dark edge. Salome is the one that made her name, a rose and jasmine chypre with an unapologetic warmth beneath it. Anubis is smoke and incense and leather. Dryad is green and mossy and strange. Angelique is the softest of them, an iris that still has her signature underneath.
The character of the house
A Papillon fragrance divides a room, and that is a compliment. These are not perfumes composed to be liked by everyone. They are composed to be loved by the right person, and the right person tends to know within a minute.
Why Stacey admires it
Because every bottle is one person's judgement, unmediated. There is no brief, no committee and no compromise, only a perfumer who knows what she wants a fragrance to do and does it.