FORTY years after perfumer and pianist Annick Goutal founded her namesake brand in the French capital, it celebrates its birthday under a new name, Goutal Paris, a change that took place in 2017.
In 2011, Korean cosmetics giant Amorepacific — that also owned Sulwhasoo and Laneige, among others — acquired the brand, known for its groundbreaking scents like Eau d'Hadrien, a unisex perfume created in 1981, when such concept was unheard of.
Trained as a pianist, Annick left for London at the age of 18 and worked briefly as a model, before returning to Paris and starting her fragrance boutique. It happened after she spent some time in Grasse, where she fell in love with the art of perfumery.
In 1999 at the age of 53, Annick died after battling cancer, leaving her daughter Camille Goutal to carry the torch of her legacy.
A DIFFERENT JOURNEY
The journey of the brand may not be linear or expected, but Camille, who is the brand ambassador, says freedom is a big part of the house.
To Camille, who is soft-spoken and gentle, life is an open book whose journey is to be embraced. While in some areas, she would like to preserve the heritage that her mother started, there is also a need to not be so confined to the past.
"My mother holds freedom dearly to her heart. Even at the time she started Annick Goutal, she was unusually free.
"She never cared about trends or marketing, and that is something she passed down to me. Freedom may be something that we enjoy now, but there were times that it was something people had to fight for," she says during a virtual event from her office in Paris.
The same freedom allows the brand to take its time to create a scent, and not do so to suit a launch calendar.
"Songes, for example, took five years to make. The duration is very unusual, but this freedom allows us to create a fragrance that corresponds exactly to our ideals," she says.
SCENT OF MY MOTHER
Songes, Camille says, is very close to her heart. It was a fragrance journey that she took to heal after losing her mother.
"Six months after she was gone," she had said in an interview, "her scarf still smelled the same."
Camille went on holiday to soothe herself after her mother's passing where, every evening, a strange smell hit her. She did not know what it was but soon found out that there was a huge frangipani tree at the resort, that emanated the scent.
And so she began to create Songes, her favourite scent to date. "There were so many images in my mind and it took me so long to create it. It was a very emotional process to me," she says.
For Camille, the creation of a scent depends solely on emotions. "Emotions are at the heart of our creations. We use only our emotions and memories... that's why we are different (from other fragrance brands). We try to put our emotions in the fragrance," she says.
CHANGE IN SCENT
Camille says our choices in scents change as we get older. She says she might be fond of some fragrances, but 10 years later, when she smells them again, she doesn't feel the same fondness.
"I wear fragrances by other brands too, but 10 years after, they sometimes are no longer up to my liking.
"As a perfumer, I view this as a quest for perfection, not simply something I used to like but now I no longer do. But as consumers, yes, what you like when you were younger may not be the same as when you grow older.
"We change for many reasons. We are not the same women we were when we were young. For some women, maybe they were used to commercial fragrances and they learn to choose better scents for themselves.
"Maybe you are more confident or maybe you want to be more discreet. And for some women, after pregnancy, their preference in fragrance completely changes," she says.
"After all, it's about the freedom for you to grow and decide on your preference," she says.
