Where to Make Your Own Custom Perfume in France
Did you know Grasse, France is the perfume capital of the world?!
Collecting perfumes has become a budding hobby of mine over the past year so when we were in France last summer, I planned our itinerary to include a pit stop in Grasse. We drove from Aix-en-Provence to Nice and Grasse as part of our South of France itinearry. Grasse was about 40 minutes outside of Nice, so it was perfect to break up the drive.
The town was actually really cute and I would’ve loved to explore more, but we came in with one goal: making our own perfume. Buying a scent you love is cool but the idea of making my own custom scent was too good to resist. The major perfumeries in Grasse are Galimard, Molinard and Fragonard. All 3 offer tours and/or workshops. After reading reviews, we settled on Galimard’s perfume making workshop.
GALIMARD PERFUME MAKING EXPERIENCE
Galimard was founded in 1747, making it one of the first French perfumeries. When you enter, you check-in in their gift shop area and then they call each group individually to seat you for your workshop. Each person has their own station, with over a hundred scents to choose from. After a quick history lesson and a brief breakdown of how fragrances are structured, they give you some instructions and you’re free to start making your scent. Even if you think you know what you like, smell everything! I was surprised by some of the things I liked/hated. As you can imagine, after a while a particularly overwhelming scent can linger and impact your sense of smell for everything that follows. If you’re serious about getting your scent right, you’ll definitely want to go outside and smell some fresh air and/or coffee beans to reset your nose. The funniest part was Jordan and I having complete opposite reactions to the same scents. Scents I loved, she hated and vice versa. I guess we won’t be sharing perfumes anytime soon.
Once you select all your favorites, their staff comes over and tells you how much of each to add so you can have a balanced scent. Once you’ve mixed your 100mL, they usher you into the gift shop while they bottle your creation and label it with whatever name you’ve chosen. Then they tell you the truly heartbreaking part. You shouldn’t immediately wear your new perfume to attract your new french husband/wife. You have to wait a month to let the scent mature. Tragic and perhaps the reason I’m still single today but I digress.
You’re probably wondering if we liked our scents once they matured. Unfortunately, neither of us made the scent of our dreams. Mine ended up being too sweet and Jordan’s ended up being too musky. So if we repeated the process, we would probably add some more of the opposite scent profile. For now, if we layered our scents that might be the perfect solution. We still had a great time, and would 100% recommend this workshop for the next time you’re in France!
Say Yes Pro Tip: If you get to Galimard early, you can walk around the corner to Fragonard. We actually didn’t know how close they were till we got there, but we saw a sign and chanced the walk. It was literally 2 minute walk around a traffic circle. We had about an hour to kill before our workshop at Galimard and it just so happened that Fragonard was about to start their free walk-in tour so we were able to join that for bonus knowledge and shopping!
Safe Travels,
Briana
