Naomi Goodsir

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History of the house

Naomi Goodsir was founded in 2012 on the French Riviera near Grasse (France) by Australian milliner Naomi Goodsir and creative director Renaud Coutaudier, the couple's home studio rather than a Paris office. The Australian-born founder trained as a fashion designer in Sydney (Australia) before moving to Europe, where she built a couture millinery practice across two decades. She extended her work to perfumery in 2012, viewing fragrance as a continuation of the same craft sensibility.

The house launched in September 2012 at the Pitti Fragranze fair in Florence (Italy) with two compositions, Bois d'Ascese and Cuir Velours, both signed by French perfumer Julien Rasquinet. The two releases drew immediate critical attention in English-language fragrance media, with reviews on ÇaFleureBon, Now Smell This and Persolaise treating them as a coherent founding statement rather than a tentative debut.

The founding model relies on collaboration with named independent perfumers. The catalog lists three signatures since 2012: Julien Rasquinet for Bois d'Ascese (2012), Cuir Velours (2012) and Iris Cendre (2015); Bertrand Duchaufour for Or du Serail (2014) and Corpus Equus (2021); and Isabelle Doyen, the long-time Annick Goutal perfumer, for Nuit de Bakelite (2017). Each release is credited publicly on the official site, in contrast with the unattributed compositions still common in the wider luxury market.

Naomi Goodsir and Renaud Coutaudier relocated to the French Riviera near Grasse (France), where the perfumes are hand-packed and the studio operates. The brand follows a slow release pace, with annual or biennial launches rather than seasonal flankers, and treats each composition as a self-contained narrative project. Naming conventions reflect that posture: Bois d'Ascese evokes ascetic woods, Or du Serail a gilded harem, Iris Cendre an ashen iris, Nuit de Bakelite a bakelite-black night. The house consciously borrows from couture vocabulary, where each piece carries a title and a story.

Recognition has accumulated since 2014. Nuit de Bakelite, signed by Isabelle Doyen in 2017, won the Art and Olfaction Award 2018 and the FIFI Awards France 2018 Best Niche and Independent Brand Fragrance distinction, and was selected by Nez la Revue in its list of 111 perfumes to smell before dying.

Notable perfumes

The Naomi Goodsir catalog brings together a small number of compositions released since 2012, each credited to a named independent perfumer. The six releases below make up the lineup the house sells today.

Olfactory signature

Naomi Goodsir practices a narrative niche perfumery built around contemplative cultural settings rather than abstract olfactory themes. Each composition is presented as a precise scene: a tribute to the founder's Scottish family roots for Bois d'Ascese, an Ottoman harem for Or du Serail, a smoky iris in the aftermath of mourning for Iris Cendre, a black bakelite night for Nuit de Bakelite. The house writes by scenario, not by note pyramid.

The compositions favor dense and slow-moving architectures, anchored by smoked woods, leather, honey, tobacco, incense, iris and dark tuberose. Julien Rasquinet built the founding pair on labdanum, cade, incense and tobacco for Bois d'Ascese, then on honey, rum, suede and styrax for Cuir Velours. Bertrand Duchaufour layered honey, beeswax, tobacco and labdanum on Or du Serail (2014), and reworked a tobacco leather axis on Corpus Equus (2021). Isabelle Doyen recast tuberose as a green chypre rather than a creamy white floral on Nuit de Bakelite.

Three stylistic axes organize the catalog. The first is a smoky resinous axis, anchored by Bois d'Ascese, with cade wood, frankincense and tobacco set against amber. The second is a honeyed leather axis, anchored by Cuir Velours and extended by Or du Serail and Corpus Equus, where suede, beeswax and rum meet tobacco. The third is a melancholic floral axis, where Iris Cendre treats iris as ashen and earthy, and Nuit de Bakelite treats tuberose as a green chypre with a suede heart.

The other signature marker is the continuity with couture millinery. Naomi Goodsir frames the brand as an extension of her hat-making practice, with the same attention to material, silhouette and proportion. Bottles share a sober black-and-gold visual identity that echoes a couture vocabulary, and presentations have historically taken place during Paris fashion weeks rather than fragrance trade fairs alone. That cross-disciplinary positioning is unusual in niche perfumery and is consistently noted by English-language critics.

A niche perfume house where each composition is built as a self-contained scene, with named independent perfumers credited on every release.

Key characteristics

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