Julien Rasquinet
Since I began my training, I’ve been driven by a desire to break with the narrative. My dream is to bring something new to the world
of perfumes, to tell stories as they’ve never been told before, to portray a romance, to offer up olfactory tales that are not postcards or literal
transcriptions. Stories that stir the emotions, for sharing and experiencing together.
Julien is a natural. He has always been creative, he has always lived with creative people. "I don't know why I create. Maybe because I am incapable of not creating. I was born into a creative family. My father is a designer, my mother is an interior designer, my brothers are designers…. I don't think I know what it is not to create". Julien keeps the flame alive. He accompanies his wife, an artist, even in her installations. "In art, I like sculpture, sculpture in gardens, the connection between art and nature. I like a work of art best when I see it in a natural setting, it makes me enter into an almost meditative state, it's like after creating or following a fragrance, letting myself be carried away by it". At his home in Normandy, he is always selling, renovating or rebuilding a house. "If I wasn't a perfumer, I would work in house construction, because there's something I love about construction." When he meets his architects, Julien has already prepared all his drawings on graph paper. "My drawings are full of mistakes, but I get them right and we build the house with my mistakes. I'm a bit stubborn, but in a way that's my formula. "I'm a perfumer, nothing more".
Julien's first encounter with perfume was at the age of 14. His brother was doing an internship and was coming home with bottles of perfume. "I thought it was great. The word may sound trite, but coming from Julien, it is almost etymological, suggesting genius, a revelation, an explosion of the senses. It made a deep impression on him.
But life doesn't move in a straight line. Even if the perfume changed Julien, even if it started a kind of collection. "A packet of tobacco from Amsterdam, the smell of horses, the smell of my grandparents' room in Belgium, in their house in Knokke Le Zoute, that incredible smell of stone and salt, the smell of camomile in their house, a coil of boat rope with a smoky aroma like birch wood"…. It wasn't until she was 23 that her path crossed with perfume again. Her first opportunity was to meet a perfumer, and her dream began to take shape. "But I hadn't done the right studies, so I hid the idea in the back of my mind and went back to Paris, where I worked in marketing. It was his father who gave him the key, in the form of a business card. Pierre Bourdon's calling card Bourdon was about to retire. He would take on two pupils and Julien would be one of them. "I couldn't believe it I hadn't done chemistry, I hadn't gone to Isipca I had even abandoned that idea It came from him I had never asked him for anything and then I spent three years with him Today I realise how incredibly lucky I was. Why me, I still don't know".
