There is a delicate high-wire act to walk as a retailer. One I'm always striving to steady my balance on. Not only in sustaining Sainte Cellier itself, but in negotiating between heart and ledger: what I see in brands I choose to stock, my devotion to them and the reality of customer perception. Sometimes our visions align. Sometimes they don't. But when I've already invested money, time and belief, guarding slow-burning flames of artistry can become really precarious.
Modern perfume lovers, I believe, are looking for more than perfume from their perfume. We're past the point of vague notions of luxury. With fragrance, luxury is the lived experience. It's what happens on the skin and in the heart, the feeling it ignites. Perfume speaks to us through scent, yes, but the deepest ones extend their spell across every sense, creating worlds we can actually inhabit.
This is where the work of Odette Parfum Co.'s Odette Fontaine feels so vital to me. Her fragrances aren't just perfumes; they're players in a choreographed constellation spun out of frothy tulle, Chantilly cream and satin ribbons. Each composition reflects her uncanny ability to translate aesthetic vision into scent with clarity and coherence. Every accord, every image and every note ties back to the universe she has built. In an industry crowded with mausoleum-like notions of "heritage", Odette's work feels alive, nimble and joyfully modern. She shows us that independent perfumery can be deeply serious in its artistry while also unafraid to delight, enchant and invite us to play.
Although each has crafted singular worlds with their own distinct landscapes, there's a shared coherence in the galaxies shaped by creative visionaries like Neela Vermeire, Barbara Herman at ERIS, Isabelle Larignon, Marissa Zappas and Odette Fontaine. Their universes are vastly different yet all navigate certain invisible laws. And from my own precarious vantage point as a retailer, one of the quiet privileges is being able to witness these laws at work and how they resonate with those who love to inhabit them.
Odette’s language is an aesthetic vernacular braided from ballet and patisserie where choreography meets confection. The crossovers themselves create the meaning: frothy tulle like whipped Chantilly, pointe-shoe satin glossed like fresh glaze, cake-box ties echoing the pull of ribbons around an ankle, dragée pearls tucked into a ballerina bun, powdered sugar falling like stage dust,.
In the hands of anyone else, this language might ring hollow; however, prior to becoming a perfumer Odette Fontaine, who is also a French pastry chef, was a classically trained ballerina. She was already fluent in these twin disciplines before she composed in perfume. Every fragrance in her collection is a variation in that idiom: delicate yet structured, light to the eye yet exact in design.
Odette proves that lightness is not weakness. Her perfumes may read as spun sugar, air, and chiffon, but they are constructed with discipline. Think of the ballerina’s ballon: the illusion of weightless suspension achieved only through relentless technique. Her best-selling perfume Pas de Chat borrows its name from the leaping step, a flash of air, feline and playful, yet only possible through drilled control.
Odette’s dream language insists that delicacy is not fragility. It is mastery. Weightless forms anchored in rigour. The lightness of the aesthetic never collapses into fluff. It is an architecture disguised as air.
World-building is not a monologue, it is a conversation. It isn't about casting the widest net, but about speaking with clarity. Many brands dilute themselves in the pursuit of universality, dissolving into a vague middle ground. Odette lovingly speaks to her community, whom she calls swans, a name that transforms them into characters within her dream language. It is both inclusive and precise: an invitation to belong, to take part and to return.
In a crowded field of “luxury” promises and empty adjectives, clarity is radical. World-building demands edges. Without them, a brand dissolves into fog, indistinguishable from the rest. Odette’s edges are precise and unmistakable: aesthetic clarity in place of generic opulence, specificity instead of illegible aspiration. Odette's world is not interchangeable. It is authored, recognisable, and wholly her own.
Perfume houses cannot exist as mausoleums. They are living worlds that must be inhabited. To build one is to write a living text, each fragrance a chapter in an unfolding story, each launch a scene change that draws the audience deeper into its spell. This goes well beyond branding or ornamentation. It is authorship that gilds the lifeblood from which worlds are spun.
Through an aesthetic language of tutu froth and crème anglaise, mille-feuille layers and choreographic counts, perfumer Odette Fontaine has composed a corps de ballet croquembouche, a tower of precision and delight, rigour and confectionery flourish, that has captured the devotion of her swans all over the world.
In translating her passions into fragrance, Odette has created a world people want to step into. Each bottle is a stage alive with choreography and confection, part of a wider universe where swans gather and the feeling of belonging is part of the magic.