There’s always that one fragrance that immediately whisks you away to the place it conjures up in scent form, whether its to the orange groves in the Mediterranean or by the beach on the Pacific Coast. It’s the kind of wanderlust-inspiring magic in which Atelier Cologne specializes.
Co-founders and real-life partners Sylvie Ganter and Christophe Cervasel launched the niche fragrance brand ten years ago in 2009. The idea was born out of the couple’s mutual love of colognes. When they started Atelier Cologne, they also created the category of the Cologne Absolue, taking citrus-based scents to a whole other level.
Travel has always been a part of the brand’s DNA. Take Orange Sanguine, for example, their very first scent, which was inspired by her family’s sun-drenched sojourns to the Amalfi Coast. When they’re working, the couple are constantly traveling in search of new ingredients and raw materials. Even the brand’s boutiques (they have 23 around the world) inspire wanderlust with moodboards for fragrances brought to life with the ingredients that inspired them and where you can even get personalized leather cases to go with your 30 ML bottles.
It was only fitting to ask Sylvie about the places that inspired some of her fragrances. She shares the stories behind four.
Orange Sanguine
“It’s the first one we launched. This takes me to vacation. We love going to Italy because it’s not far from France, and we’re both of Italian descent. I love the scenery in general—everything is pretty. We go on the Amalfi Coast where Positano is. There are so many citrus trees. This [scent] smells like the Coast and sunshine on your face. I’m in the South of Italy, I wake up, have fresh orange juice and start my day. It immediately takes me to Italy.” [Buy Now]
Vanille Insensée
“It’s a scent I created when I was going to move from New York back to Paris. I wanted to create an homage to the city I was leaving. I had lived in New York for 12 years and it was my home. I wanted a scent that was as warm as the city was to me—very welcoming and embracing with a lot of heart. At the same time, I wanted something that was raw, metallic, cold—the way you picture New York. Vanilla is the star ingredient and everything else is citrus and unexpected. The citrus is lime, but there’s also coriander. In the base we have oakwood, oakmoss—things that give that metallic, raw effect. If you were to cook your raw vanilla bean, it’s very bitter; there’s nothing sweet about it. I wanted to show that you can turn something that’s supposed to be feminine and sugary into something that can be worn by men. It’s a scent my oldest daughter wears who lives in New York, but it’s also a scent that my husband wears.” [Buy Now]
Jasmin Angélique
“When I met Christophe, he had a small apartment in Paris and above his apartment, he had a terrace covered in jasmine. He had high wood panels installed with jasmine intermingling through them. For me, jasmine was the scent of Paris. When I would go visit him, we’d spend time on the rooftop watching sunsets, playing with the kids or having dinner parties. Although I’m terrified of flowers and have a really hard using them in perfumery because they can be opulent and complicated to use, I wanted to re-create the scent of Christophe’s terrace. I wanted jasmine and fresh air. This is the fragrance that took the longest for me to develop—eight years from the idea to the result. We managed to do something that was as green as can be. We blended jasmine with galbanum, which has the feel of freshly-cut green grass, and lots of spices like Sichuan pepper that’s very lemony. You have zesty and spicy things mixed with green and a hint of floral. We did the same thing in our garden and now, that’s the smell of my garden.” [Buy Now]
Clémentine California
“We lived in L.A. for a summer and as we left, we were like, ‘We cannot leave!’ and so we made a fragrance that smelled like the city. The clementine we have in the formula actually grows in California so it was a true ingredient story to begin with. And then we wanted to bottle the scent of the sea, but you cannot use make an oil out of the scent of the sea. So we used star anise from China, which gives a salty feel on the skin like ocean breeze and salt mixed together. And then we used vetiver in the base, which gives it a darker feel because L.A. can also do that.” [Buy Now]
