These are not the nepobabies from the world of perfumes. None of them were born in Grasse nor do they have five generations of noses behind them to support their intuition. Despite everything, Sylvie Loday, Olivier Royère and Benoît Verdier have created Ex Nihilo, one of the most interesting names in a market in which brands do not stop growing, and which was born with the ambition of being the alternative to stereotypical luxury or, as his Saudi clients call him, the new breed of French perfumers.
The founders of Ex Nihilo—a Latin phrase meaning “to create from nothing”—are an MIT engineer (Sylvie), a financial markets expert (Olivier), and a marketing master (Benoît). Verdier precisely tells in a very graphic way what they were fleeing from when they came up with the concept of Ex Nihilo: “I travel a lot and I can identify that uniformed smell of an international airport, that sillage (technical term that refers to the olfactory arc of a fragrance) to duty free. It's the same smell all over the world. I hate it! What a depression!”.
“We've found our niche in the niche,” he says, adding: “And I don't like that word [nicho] because it no longer means anything; The idea was to revisit the French avant-garde and collaborate without limits with artists from all disciplines: fashion, architecture, design, photography.” For the founders of Ex Nihilo, the figure of the “omnipotent creative director” has become outdated. “We are more creative and efficient when we work with people who complement our skills.”
The Ex Nihilo boutique at 352 Saint-Honoré in Paris, the brand's first, could be an art gallery. In addition to the fragrances there are their names, very elaborate and imaginative. Verdier is in charge of naming them. He says that he is inspired by Spotify, he writes down various combinations of nouns and adjectives on his phone, and goes back and forth until ideas like Fleur Narcotique, Lust in Paradise or Explicite come up.
When you enter the store, on the right, is Osmologue, the machine to personalize perfumes in record time. A process that in a laboratory would take several hours. It's about discovering the notes that are most personal to the client. If someone wants to increase the vetiver or musk point of a fragrance, it can be achieved. The result, which must be almost unique, is bottled and sealed with the client's name. A certificate of authenticity records the date, place and ingredients. Every time you want to reissue the fragrance, just hand in that document at one of their boutiques. They have 250 points of sale in the world. In Spain it is sold in Isolée.
To be the vanguard of luxury you have to be disruptive. Or so the founders of Ex Nihilo believed. And they did it through extreme personalization of aromas. “It was strange that you could put your ID number on a pair of Nike sneakers and it wasn't possible to personalize a perfume. A common practice in the fifties or sixties. We have patented Osmologue technology. It is an experience that forces many people to come to us,” explains Verdier.
Ex Nihilo works with 16 master perfumers. “Almost everyone works under the strict guidelines of the big brands, but they know that there are no creative restrictions here,” says Olivier Royère, CEO of the house.
Among those chosen is Quentin Bisch, trained at the Givaudan school of perfumery and creator of the Delina Parfums de Marly series. From a first conversation in 2014 came Fleur Narcotique, Ex Nihilo's first fragrance. He came and kissed the saint. Ten years later he is still the best seller of the house. With Fleur Narcotique, every marketing director's dream came true. One morning in 2018, Benoît Verdier woke up to a tweet from a fascinated Hailey Bieber who admitted she had been addicted to the fragrance for a couple of years. The model repeated the play in a video recorded for Vogue Paris where she emptied her purse and took out a bottle of Fleur Narcotique. “Suddenly it became a cultural phenomenon, we started to have lines to enter the Saint-Honoré boutique, to the points of sale in Moscow, in Eastern Europe, in Israel,” Verdier recalls.
Another obsession of Ex Nihilo is reeducation “in a good way,” they point out. In Ex Nihilo stores they teach how not to use perfume, that aromas are never rubbed into the skin, and that fragrances are photosensitive and should be protected from light. Lately they also educate to get out of that trance called layering (overlaying several fragrances to create a new one).
Its interpretation of the concept of sustainability, so overused in recent years, is also revolutionary. They have put it into practice with Hedonist, one of his new creations that contains a component called Akigalawood, created in a laboratory. “Instead of traveling the world looking for ingredients and leaving an immense carbon footprint for each jar, we find it more sustainable to create them in a controlled environment,” says Verdier. In this fragrance, natural bergamot is combined with ginger extracts and the final touch is achieved with a biotechnological creation. “We love good mixes of synthetic and natural molecules. I think it is what is truly sustainable,” he summarizes.
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