The Secret Ingredients In Louis Vuitton's Seven New Perfumes

Louis Vuitton wanted to draw on their luxury travel brand roots and create seven scents that captured the emotions of discovering the world.

Since the 16th Century Grasse has established itself as the perfume capital of the world. The area provides the perfect climate for flowers and plants to grow in. And it's here that Louis Vuitton have based their perfume headquarters.

In 2012 the man behind some of the world's most recognisable fragrances was hired as Master Perfumer. Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud grew up in Grasse (his father was a perfumer there too) and he returned to take the dream job of creating Louis Vuitton's new scents.

Les Fontaines Parfumées, or "the scented fountains", is a beautiful old house in Grasse that LVMH brought to create their olfactory creative centre. Inside, there's Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud's office, refrigerated rooms to keep ingredients fresh and space to train new noses. The perfume history here runs deep. This property also has an actual perfume fountain installed where visitors in the 1920s would come to fill their bottles.

The gardens of the house are full of flowers used in the seven formulas. There are citrus trees from all over the world, thousands of  bushes of jasmine grandi orum and centifolia roses.

But Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud didn't just stay in the garden in France. He set off around the world to find ingredients. He travelled to China to verify the quality of a crop of osmanthus and there he also found magnolia and jasminum sambac plantations – plants used to add flavour to tea.

He decided to explore patchouli and the most precious wood in perfumery, Laos agarwood.

A trip to Louis Vuitton's ateliers where leather was being shaped into handbags and trunks inspired the master perfumer to recreate the smell of the natural light material. 

Another visit to the ateliers sparked a new idea: he saw a craftsman transforming raspberry colored leather into a bag. The bright pink skin inspired him to mix the smell of leather with berries.

In the 1920s, Louis Vuitton created vanity cases, hairbrushes, mirrors and perfume vials and asked artists to decorate the little crystal bottles. But the house only ever dabbled in perfume a handful of times in the 1920s, 1940s and 1980s. The Seven are the beginning of Louis Vuitton's move into fragrances.

Like the label's Ready-To-Wear designer Nicolas Ghesquière, Jacques Cavallier -Belletrud is fascinated by technology. On a mission to capture the smell of fresh flowers he created an innovative carbon dioxide extraction technique – it's the first time that a perfumer has been able to technically extract fresh flowers.

It took four years for Louis Vuitton to decide upon their final seven perfumes. Four years of travelling the world in search of ingredients. Four years of tinkering with different combinations before arriving at Rose des Vents, Turbulences, Dans la Peau, Apogée, Contre Moi, Matière Noire and Mille Feux. Quite the adventure. 

Shop the range at Louis Vuitton.