Allison Stubbings

About

Allison Stubbings is the Canadian-born founder of Medeau, a clean luxury fragrance house. She is credited as a nose on the four Medeau perfumes, but the brand's own account is that she worked with a perfumer to realise her vision, so her entry is best read as founder and creative director rather than a perfumery career.

The idea for Medeau came in 2017, while she was trying to conceive her daughter. After several rounds of IVF with her husband she began to make more informed choices about health and the products she used, and wanted to replace her favourite designer perfume with something clean and non-toxic that felt just as luxurious. She could not find one, so she decided to make her own.

In the early stages she planned to use only natural ingredients, then came to see that they limited the complexity of the fragrance and could carry allergens. The debut perfume, Origin, was inspired by the freshness of English flowers and French fine fragrance and is described as stepping into an English meadow, with soft rose and cut grass. The four perfumes in the range were later renamed, with the formulas unchanged. Origin became Daydreamer.

Medeau has since been taken on by new owners, Tim Gray and Jo Dalton, who describe it as a London-based brand built around health, transparency and luxury. Stubbings's work is the house's founding idea: a luxurious perfume made with careful attention to what goes into it.