The Atelier
Every formula begins as a question about a place.
The Beginning
I did not set out to make a perfume brand. I set out to understand smell.
Maison Lune was founded in 2019 in a small studio on the Rue des Teinturiers — a street named for the dye-workers who once lined the banks of the Rhône. There was something fitting about that. About materials. About transformation through process.
Before Maison Lune, there were ten years of self-study: distilling wild plants in a small kitchen, corresponding with perfumers in Grasse, travelling to Auvergne to understand the difference between cultivated and wild-harvested gentian. The craft preceded the brand by a decade.
The first collection — four fragrances — sold out in three weeks through word of mouth alone. Nothing has been rushed since.
How We Work
Three commitments we have never negotiated.
Traceability
Every ingredient has a name, a place, a grower or distiller we know personally. We can tell you the altitude at which the lavender was harvested and the year of the last good harvest. This is not marketing — it is the minimum required to make an honest product.
Restraint
We produce no more than we can make well. Our current collection is eighteen fragrances. We will not expand it to fifty because the market demands volume. When a raw material becomes difficult to source ethically, we retire the fragrance rather than compromise it.
Time
A formula takes between one and three years to complete. We macerate, we rest, we revisit. We let seasonality enter the process. The perfume that emerges from that time is categorically different from one assembled in an afternoon from a library of synthetics.
Our Sources
France and Morocco, primarily. The rest of the world, selectively.
Provence, France
Lavender, immortelle, cistus, myrtle. Worked with the same two families since 2020.
Dades Valley, Morocco
Centifolia rose, geranium, saffron. Annual visits during harvest season.
Drôme, France
Fine lavender and lavandin from a small-scale distillery at 900m altitude.
Auvergne, France
Gentian, wild herbs, hay absolute. Gathered with direct involvement from the atelier.
The Process
A formula in six stages, across two years.
01
Observation
A new scent begins with a question or a memory. We sit with it — sometimes for months — before approaching the materials.
02
Material Study
We work with individual raw materials before combining them. Each is evaluated on its own terms — its evolution over hours, its behaviour in heat and cold.
03
First Structure
A rough accord is built — no more than three or four materials. This is not yet a perfume. It is a hypothesis.
04
Maceration
The accord rests. We return to it weeks later with fresh perception. Adjustments are made slowly, recorded meticulously.
05
Blind Trials
We evaluate the evolving formula without knowing its composition — to encounter it honestly, as a stranger would.
06
Release
When the formula is ready — sometimes eighteen months after the first sketch, sometimes three years — we bottle it in a small run. We do not rush this part.