This Canadian Fragrance Brand Is Going Wild
Picking up the scent.
According to research by Harvard University biologist Venkatash Murthy, the olfactory bulb in the front of the brain, which detects scent, has a direct route to the limbic system, which handles emotion and memory. So it’s no wonder that Raphaël Gaspard, the founder of the fragrance brand Gaspard Premier, has some formative memories around smell. “I grew up in unconventional ways, born in Germany, grew up in South America in the jungle,” he says. “And my first childhood memories are really linked to scent—the smell of the earth after a shower, rain in the tropics, fruits, smoke—and all of that was really ingrained.”
Gaspard, whose company is based in Montreal, says that as an adult, he could never find a fragrance that captured that. “I never found a perfume I really liked that had that kind of vibrancy,” he says. “It’s like what analog music has, or when you go see a concert, you know, when the music stops, you still have those harmonies going on.”
Some people might sigh a gloomy sigh at not being able to find just what they want, and others would continue the search. Gaspard decided to make it himself. He identified what he was looking for as more natural, botanical raw ingredients rather than the kind of chemical compounds that are often found in classic scents.
He is not a trained perfumer but worked with a well-known one in Montreal. He had a clear idea of what he wanted to do with his brand and Chalet, the first fragrance. It took five years to make his initial idea a reality, with many iterations of juice before he was happy with Chalet, a genderless scent available as eau du parfum, oil, and room spray. Meant to represent a stay in a forest hideaway, it has notes of sweet smoke, burnt wood, vetiver, moss, and cedar, and it reveals itself in an unconventional way—one he describes as wild.
That means it isn’t constructed the way a conventional one is, with top notes that you smell for a short while just after you’ve sprayed, evolving to heart and then the base notes that stay. “Chalet is pure base—something that will linger and develop complexly and really nicely throughout the time you apply it.”
The term “wild” also applies to the types of ingredients he uses. “There’s no dilutions or fixatives or hydrolats, which are replicas of natural olfactive molecules that are replicated in that they’re the same, but they don’t have the same vibrancy,” he says.
It takes two to three months to make the concentrate for a 10-litre batch, which is then diluted with oil or natural grain alcohol to make the final product, which then has to be filtered too. “It’s a long process, but it really assures the vibrancy I’m looking for,” he says.
The handcrafted feel of the fragrance is also in the packaging—each bottle is handblown by a local artist. “It makes no sense if you talk about the financials, but for me, that was so important that I was really happy to take less of a profit on everything I sold just to have that experience,” Gaspard says.
A lifelong entrepreneur who started a poetry publishing house at 19 and then a bike flower-delivery company, his mission is to work with fellow creatives to create more joy in people’s lives. Gaspard Premier’s newest products are car air fresheners. The first, Cadillac Moon, was created in collaboration with Montreal artist Philippe Mathieu and pays tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat. He’s also working on Blanche, a new perfume that he describes as “chaotic,” and he plans to continue making more and more fragrances.
The main theme is making people feel a bit better once they interact with the fragrance, he says. “A bit like an artist, you know, who has that approach with their own craft or medium. Perfume for me is really a story in a moment. What I love about this creation and scent or fragrance in general is it’s a shared work. I put something in their hands, and then where they bring them is totally not up to me, but they travel with me, and I find that really beautiful.”
