What Goes Into The Making Of An Amazing Perfume!

What goes into the making of an amazing perfume? Parfums Henry Jacques CEO Anne-Lise Cremona shares the secrets with Nicolette Wong

- Nicolette Wong

The commercial perfume industry is one that is full of empty marketing. Since the 1980s, perfume became very much about a face and a bottle—and that’s it. The scent itself unfortunately became something very inexpensive and of no value,” laments Anne-Lise Cremona (right), CEO of Parfums Henry Jacques. Cremona is extremely passionate about perfume. No surprise there—as the daughter of founder Henry Jacques Cremona, her childhood was spent surrounded by divine fragrances and scents of every kind. The house has been creating bespoke fragrances for some of the most eminent individuals in the world, royals included, since its founding in 1975.

Despite this heritage, taking over the family business was never on the cards for Cremona until about nine years ago, when she left her job in the commercial beauty industry to ensure that the house’s decades-long fight to preserve traditional luxury perfumery would not be futile.

But what exactly goes into making a truly luxurious fragrance? Besides top-quality ingredients sourced from a global network of suppliers, and decades of knowledge and experience, the single greatest factor is time. “Time is the greatest luxury today,” says Cremona. “And you need time to make a great perfume.”