Domitille Michalon-Bertier
Creating perfumes with such a strong identity that they absorb their wearer, keep them in the grip of the imaginary worlds they summon, letting them savor every texture, feel every effect and explore a new sensory realm.
The best way to understand Domitille is through play. You have to enjoy revealing a little of yourself, and then hide, or the other way round, depending on your mood. You have to sparkle with mischief and dazzle with culture to, a second later, dive into the depths of her work. You have to love to navigate between words, to look beyond the immediately obvious, to re-evaluate everything, to express a sense of curiosity, to ask questions, endless questions, to try to get to the ultimate essence of an idea.
Before she knew that professional perfumery existed, Domitille wanted to be an architect, to create buildings for other people while maintaining a kind of distance. When she first heard about Isipca, everything clicked: "When I discovered that perfumery was a real profession, I didn't hesitate. I have always expressed myself with references to smells and in olfactory terms. When I was little, I used to say I wanted to go to a place because it smelled good".
When she met Isabelle Doyen, her teacher at Isipca, it was a dream come true: "Her classes were all about discovering smells. We had blotting paper and we couldn't talk. So we had to write it all down, our impressions, sensations, memories, imaginations, everything in each scent, and everything behind it. The exercise was an ode to freedom, without sensory suggestions emanating from language, purely from scent and nose. A tightly focused world that ignited all the senses. And only then, the words. The words she has loved all her life: "I have always been surrounded by books, there was even a Michalon publishing house, the passion for books is a kind of family inheritance, I literally get stressed when I don't have a book or two or three in my reading pile, I read a lot, I don't have a TV at home".
