Olfactive Studio

Olfactive Studio is a French niche perfume brand created by Céline Verleure in Paris and launched in September 2011. Verleure had previously worked in perfume creation at Kenzo, where she helped develop scents such as Kenzo Jungle with Dominique Ropion and Jean-Louis Sieuzac and L’Eau par Kenzo with Olivier Cresp. After leaving Kenzo she launched a crowdsourced blog about a “fragrance that does not exist yet,” which gathered input from more than 5,600 participants and ultimately led to the birth of Olfactive Studio.

The central idea of the brand is a structured collaboration between perfumers and contemporary photographers. Each fragrance is built around a specific photographic work, with the perfumer given carte blanche to translate the image into scent. The brand’s own materials highlight that these perfumes are composed as “perfumer’s proofs,” using high-quality raw materials in eau de parfum concentrations (typically 12 to 18 percent) or extrait formulas around 20 percent. Signature lines such as the Sepia Collection showcase recurring notes like rose, bergamot, coffee, saffron, and tea, while individual scents like Selfie (incense, maple syrup, tonka bean) and Panorama (fig leaf, lemon, grass, vanilla) illustrate the brand’s emphasis on clear, memorable accords.

Olfactive Studio positions its creations as gender-neutral and is distributed in more than 30 countries. The brand has gradually expanded from its early core releases (such as Autoportrait, Close Up, and Lumière Blanche) into themed collections and newer launches like the Sepia series, while keeping the photography-plus-perfumer pairing as its defining framework.