Astier de Villatte’s founders, Ivan Pericoli and Benoît Astier de Villatte, established the brand in 1993 as a forum for rehabilitating objects forgotten by history and infusing them with a modern playfulness.
The company’s output spans from stationery to textiles and luxury candles. Its signature range of elegant white ceramics is created according to the methods of 18th-century Parisian manufacturers and decorated with cheeky designs or shaped like Peanuts comic book characters, cowboy boots, or a pair of lips. Meanwhile, its printing press in the Parisian suburbs is one of the last in the world to use lead typesetting, and has published books by artist and singer Lou Doillon and the artist Balthus.
Now Astier de Villatte’s latest fragrance series translates that same sensibility into scent. Perfume historian, anthropologist and researcher Annick Le Guérer provided perfumer Dominique Ropion with detailed documents describing the ingredients and their proportions for kyphi and the Roman royal perfume; she also supplied samples of George Sand’s perfume from the bottom of a travel phial, entrusted by one of her descendants, Christiane Sand.
Ropion then worked with Astier de Villatte to recreate the three perfumes as faithfully as possible to the formulas of the time, while also following the regulations of today’s perfumery.
Mary Cleary
Writer and Wallpaper* Contributing Editor