Jovoy Perfume

Perfumistas who can’t afford their own copyrighted fragrance for life can still capture the sweet scent of exclusivity, by tracking down a perfume so rare, so unusual and so difficult to find that it provides their personal, almost unique sillage. (Meaning a boat’s wake or vapor trail, sillage is the elusive whiff wafting after you once you’ve passed by—a crucial concept in French perfumery.)

François Hénin, the owner of Jovoy, says he caters to clients who are “disappointed by the lack of character in mainstream fragrances” and who “yearn for the days when perfume had an essential mystique”. Although it’s as sleekly designed as a modern concept store, Jovoy has the aura of an old-fashioned perfume shop, where fragrances are sniffed from the glass stoppers of amber apothecary bottles rather than waved around on cardboard strips. Hénin could have been content to resurrect the vintage perfume house of Jovoy (founded by Blanche Arvoy in 1923), but while working on re-creations of fragrances from Arvoy’s heyday he decided to take the revival one step further. “I came up with the idea of creating a ‘temple of rare perfumes’,” he says, “bringing together twenty or so independent brands under one roof.”

Hénin is often to be found in the store himself, sharing his knowledge and unbridled passion for perfume with clients. He is an inveterate storyteller who takes obvious delight in expounding on a perfume’s history or inspiration as well as explaining base and top notes. Dabbing a hint of Casta Diva, by the Italian niche company Nobile 1942, onto the back of my wrist, he explains how the scent was inspired not just by Bellini’s classic aria Casta Diva (from the opera Norma), but by the on-stage requirements of opera singers, who have long been banned from wearing perfume during performances because of the effect it might have on the voices of the entire cast. Casta Diva’s delicate accords of frangipani, Egyptian jasmine and white musk are designed to unfold gradually, so that not a hint of fragrance would be diffused during a performance—but by the time a diva arrived back in her dressing room to greet her admirers, her scent would be in full flower.

Hénin also recounts the story behind Joséphine and Le Vainqueur, two contemporary re-creations by the historic perfume house of Rancé. Legend has it that before his coronation in 1804, Napoleon commissioned master perfumer François Rancé to create two exclusive scents—one for himself, one for his beloved Joséphine. The perfumes were designed so that when the two were in the same room, Joséphine’s fragrance would dominate. But if they moved closer together, the two perfumes merged to create a whole new fragrance. In 2004, François Rancé’s great-great granddaughter, Jeanne Sandra Rancé, revisited the company archives and re-created Joséphine, a romantic floral still surprisingly modern after all this time. But it is the men’s component, Le Vainqueur, that really haunts the senses. Close your eyes and inhale its dark, visceral notes of vetiver, musk and amber gris and it smells as if Boney himself might be standing before you in mud-spattered leather boots.

Hénin’s boutique not only stocks vintage scents by such perfumers as Maison Dorin, the historic British brand Grossmith, and L.T. Piver—a traditional French perfume house that has existed since 1774—but it also carries a number of cutting-edge contemporary creations. These include the exclusive French line MDCI and Hénin’s personal coup de coeur, Technique Indiscrète, a collection of avant-garde fragrances by Belgian couture-designer-turned-perfumer Libertin Louison. Louison draws inspiration from eclectic sources. Santa Subita captures the sensual wood, incense and myrrh aromas of Saint Catherine’s Orthodox church in Brussels while Délivre Moi, a rich mix of anise, honey and almond, began with a day in the country when Louison saved a queenbee struggling to get back into her hive.

Besides relaunching the original perfumes of the Maison Jovoy, Hénin also offers a line of six contemporary Jovoy perfumes—including the deliciously spicy Enfant Terrible—and 12 scented candles charmingly packaged in miniature red hat boxes.

Jovoy 29 rue Danielle Casanova, 1st. 01.40.20.06.19. website

Originally published in the October 2011 issue of France Today; updated in December 2011