“We act as the intermediary between the brands’ teams, the marketing department and perfume houses,” explains Stéphane Demaison about Coty’s Olfactory Studio. This cell of experts focuses on fragrance development, while the marketing team defines the concept, the name or the bottle.
A strong olfactory expertise
The Studio is responsible for olfactory creation and quality, from the ingredients to the final product. This expertise involves various aspects – regulations, consumer tests – and nurtures a close bond with the Consumer & Market Insights (CMI) division responsible for analyzing market trends. Based on quantitative and qualitative studies (anthropologists, philosophers, economists...), and increasingly on Artificial Intelligence, the specialists outline the societal changes that might occur over the next five or ten years. “Perfume is always an answer to the global context,” emphasizes Demaison.
Then, the analyses are converted into olfactory guidance. “The success of Goddess by Burberry exemplifies how the return of vanilla was foreseen, several years ahead,” he claims.
The Olfactory Studio also does research and innovation work, including for developing exclusive ingredients which perfume houses can produce for brands. Ultimately, it ensures olfactory consistency between laboratory testing and the finished product. This is a crucial step, as the transition from the laboratory to industrial-scale production can sometimes throw up surprises.
From brand territory to olfactory DNA
“The Olfactory Studio never develops a perfume for the sake of it, but always for a brand,” explains Demaison. This is achieved with in-house teams, license partners, and sometimes creative directors, in order to shape a brand’s identity through its values, story, and imaginative world.
“Each brand is defined by its own unique narrative,” he adds. The Studio comes up with a consistent, lasting olfactory signature which permeates a whole range.
There are several approaches to signature design. Sometimes it involves rebuilding an identity. The Olfactory Studio has actually taken on existing portfolios from which it has to create a distinct world. This process is often easier with high-end lines, because the writing style is more asserted and readable. On the contrary, launches in the prestige market require more faceted work.
In addition, in such a saturated market, expertise helps differentiate launches. The olfactory signature is built on the uniqueness of the formulas, but also on a recognizable mark which lingers in consumers’ minds – “like a subtle melody unique to each house,” analyzes Demaison. “Our role consists in instilling a distinctive olfactory style in the public’s consciousness,” he says.
Ingredients as the common thread
The Studio can start working with one ingredient, or type of ingredients, and then craft an olfactory signature around it, as can be seen with Jil Sander, an untouched territory which the Studio explored to bring to life Olfactory Series 1, launched last year. “After diving in her story, language and latest shows, we chose clean, vertical, radical lines perfectly expressed by aldehydes,” recalls Demaison.
This option is interesting because these molecules beautify other raw materials like no other. Plus, the spectrum of aldehydes is broad enough to offer a real olfactory palette. “The signature should be easily recognized, without holding back creativity,” he highlights. At the Paris Perfume Week to be held on April 9-11, 2026, Coty will showcase new chapters in the collection for the first time.
Infiniment Coty Paris adopted the same approach, only this time a base was chosen: Ambrein S. To build up the brand’s signature, the Studio immersed itself into Coty’s archives. “Once reweighed, this base – an exclusive blend of bergamot, vanillin and powdery notes – embodied the brand’s amber family. We incorporated it to the three recent Osmium (extracts) to which it lends a patina.”
How to convey an olfactory feeling
Sometimes a brand’s identity lies in an overall feeling. Chloé’s world, for example, is very fluid, feminine and bright, and it is conveyed with a floral, musky, ‘clean, airy signature’. A much ‘skin-like’, cocooning effect, echoing the trail of the eponymous fragrance launched in 2008 (a clean, musky rose, instantly recognizable).
The challenge lies in infusing this signature into other olfactory expressions across the range, for example by playing with musks, fresh spices and an ozonic floral bouquet in Cedrus, in the collection Atelier des Fleurs. Or by transposing the clean, airy signature into a garrigue-inspired landscape tinged with neroli and green, crisp, slightly saline notes, in Sous Les Pins – same line, launched on March 1.
On the contrary, for example for Gucci, Demaison explains they work “in a more opulent, slightly baroque spirit, playing with overdoses.”
Coty’s Olfactory Studio is responsible for the consistency and quality of the group’s brands’ olfactory choices. The work carried out with the visible brand identity will be explored at a Paris Perfume Week conference, on Friday, April 10, at 4:30pm.
