Pierre Guillaume Paris

Quick answers

History of the house

The house was born in 2005 as Parfumerie Générale, a play on the initials of its founder, Pierre Guillaume. At twenty-five, this trained chemist set out to recreate the smell of his father’s cigar cellar; the resulting spicy-tobacco accord, 02 Cozé, became his first perfume, built on the so-called Épicène-Gamma base of chilli, clove and nutmeg.

02 Cozé was quickly noticed. Chandler Burr hailed it in American GQ in 2005 as the work of a young French chemist behind one of Europe’s coolest new fragrances. That early acclaim launched the house in the emerging fragrance blogosphere and set its signature at once: a chemist’s perfumery, at once technical and poetic.

The house is organized around a numbered collection. Each olfactory theme carries a figure that Pierre Guillaume explores then varies: tobaccos sit under theme 02, musks under 04, aromatic flowers under 09, figs under 16, orange blossoms under 19. Variations of a theme take a decimal, as with 04 Musc Maori giving rise to 4.1 Le Musc & la Peau. This numbering, inherited from Parfumerie Générale, remains the backbone of the catalog.

Pierre Guillaume claims complete independence. In 2010 he created the company Pierre Guillaume Diffusion with its own production tool: a composition studio, a raw-material cellar and a packaging line dedicated to his creations. A second workshop opened in 2015, then a new Manufacture in Auvergne in 2023, at Clermont-Ferrand. The house reports distribution across more than 400 points of sale in 38 countries while keeping design and manufacturing in-house. Over the years he gathered his work under the Pierre Guillaume Paris label. He structured the Numbered Collection (the heir to Parfumerie Générale), the Black Collection (heir to his Huitième Art line, launched in 2009 and since folded into Pierre Guillaume Paris), the Cruise Collection (2015) and the White Collection (2019). He also took artistic direction of the house Phaedon Paris from 2010, acquiring the trademark in 2013.

The chemist, the boutiques and distribution

Pierre Guillaume was born in 1977 in Auvergne (France). After his studies, he joined his father’s company, a laboratory of formulations for industry, aeronautics in particular. He worked there as an industrial trainer, tasked with developing a cosmetics unit.

The house has its own laboratory and its own packaging plants, thanks to the base of the family company. Its first Paris boutique opened in early 2017 at 13 Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, in the 1st arrondissement of Paris (France). The long black space was designed by architect Hugo Franck. The house later moved to number 10 on the same street, into premises it bought, with more than 100 square metres designed by Pierre Guillaume with architect François Lebel.

In January 2018, the brand was carried by 250 retailers worldwide and had two boutiques, in Paris and in Clermont-Ferrand (France). In 2017 it entered the Printemps de la beauté in Paris, its first department store counter.

In 2011, Pierre Guillaume also opened Haramens, a multibrand niche perfume boutique in Clermont-Ferrand. In February 2018 he launched Superlady, his first clearly feminine perfume, built on magnolia and candy apple.

As of 4 November 2026, the Parfumo database lists 136 perfumes under the Pierre Guillaume brand and credits 155 creations to the perfumer. Osmetheca publishes 69 perfume pages for the house, from 02 Cozé (2002) to À l’Heure des Catleyas and Métarosme (2026).

The collections

Pierre Guillaume Paris arranges its work into several collections set apart by their world and their bottle: the Numbered Collection, the historic matrix of the house, then the Cruise, Black, White, Confidential and Contemplation collections. The Numbered Collection serves as the backbone, while each of the others develops one precise intention (travel, olfactory photography, light, intimacy, the exceptional) in a dedicated flacon that signals its belonging at a glance.

The Numbered Collection

The Numbered Collection is the matrix of the house and what sets it apart in niche perfumery. Inherited from Parfumerie Générale, it rests on a simple principle: each family of inspiration carries a figure, and Pierre Guillaume returns to it freely, without chronological logic, to explore new facets. The number precedes the perfume’s name and works as a key to reading the catalog.

The system allows explicit lineages. Theme 04, devoted to musks, gathers 04 Musc Maori (2005), a milky, chocolatey gourmand. It also gathers its skin-close rewriting 4.1 Le Musc & la Peau (2016), where the musk accord is stripped of its cocoa coating to leave only a second-skin trail. The decimal signals the olfactory kinship that other houses would scatter under unrelated names.

This numbered grammar gives the house a rare coherence: it reads as a work in progress rather than an assortment of launches, and offers the visitor a clear entry point organized by materials and accords.

The Cruise Collection

Launched in 2015, the Cruise Collection takes travel as its theme: not a catalog of iodised smells, but the feeling of the open sea, distant islands and jungle, and above all the idea of movement. Its bottle "cruises" the lines of the house’s emblem flacon, lined with a double skin of translucent blue ceramic injected into the glass that carries water into the object itself. Olfactively it opens Pierre Guillaume onto a solar, escapist register, airier than the founding gourmand musks. It exists to give the house its luminous, nomadic side, the natural complement to a catalog rooted in interiors and warm materials.

The Black Collection

The Black Collection is heir to the Huitième Art line, launched in 2009 as a separate house by Pierre Guillaume and since integrated into Pierre Guillaume Paris, and keeps its guiding idea: "olfactory photographs," figurative captures built like images. Its singularity lies in its raw material: it favors biotech-derived ingredients, which makes it the most contemporary laboratory in the catalog. The compositions, graphic and architectural, are presented in the "Shadow" bottle with a double black-ceramic skin, the line’s visual signature. It matters to the house because it embraces a perfumery of research, where material innovation takes precedence over quoting classic notes.

The White Collection

Introduced in 2019, the White Collection forms the luminous counterpart to the Black Collection, down to its white "Shadow" bottle that inverts the code exactly. Where Black works the graphic and the half-light, White draws on light, sun and well-being, in clear, enveloping compositions. This mirror play between twin collections, one dark, one solar, is one of the most legible ideas in the house. It exists to give the catalog a heliotropic, comforting register, set term for term against Black’s black-and-white photography.

The Confidential Collection

The Confidential Collection unfolds a more intimate, dreamlike side of Pierre Guillaume’s writing, shaped through urban, surrealist worlds tinged with exoticism. Its perfumes are housed in flacons clad in gold and graphite, the most precious objects in the standing catalog. Above all it is defined by its scarcity: it reaches only a very limited network of partner perfumeries, which makes it a connoisseurs’ collection. It exists to reserve, for an informed audience, a more secret and poetic part of the house’s work.

The Contemplation Collection

The Contemplation Collection is the house’s summit, its proposal for haute perfumery. It gathers "creations in the absolute," new works or pieces drawn from the creation studio’s archives, produced in micro-series and in ultra-restricted distribution. Conceived as the quintessence of Pierre Guillaume’s savoir-faire applied to exceptional ingredients, it frees the perfumer from every constraint of volume and cost. Housed in a Klein-blue bottle, it exists to embody, above the other collections, the most ambitious and freest part of his art.

Notable perfumes

The house grew around its numbered collection, where Pierre Guillaume signs every composition. Here are a few landmarks, from the founding tobacco to the gourmand musks and amber woods that made its name.

The fifty-nine other Pierre Guillaume Paris perfume pages on Osmetheca

The table above lists ten landmarks. The fifty-nine other house perfumes with an Osmetheca page are listed here by year, all signed by Pierre Guillaume.

Olfactory signature

The signature of Pierre Guillaume Paris rests first on a chemist’s approach: Pierre Guillaume builds his perfumes around bases he develops himself, such as the Épicène-Gamma accord that opens 02 Cozé. That technical command feeds a perfumery he wants narrative and wearable, where the legibility of the trail matters as much as the boldness of the idea.

The house repertoire favors gourmand musks, amber woods and spices, with a marked taste for milky materials, tobacco, fig and leather. Its accords are recognizable by an enveloping roundness and a measured sweetness that made the success of Aomassaï and Musc Maori.

A chemist’s perfumery, contemporary and wearable, organized in numbered themes and composed single-handedly by Pierre Guillaume in the heart of Auvergne.

Key characteristics

Frequently asked questions

See also

To go further, here are related Osmetheca entries:

Sources

• Pierre Guillaume Paris: official 2025-26 catalog (house document)
• Pierre Guillaume Paris: official company profile (corporate document)
• Pierre Guillaume Paris: official biography (official site)
• Pierre Guillaume Paris: perfumes and collections (official site)
• Now Smell This: Parfumerie Générale, Pierre Guillaume
• Basenotes: interview with Pierre Guillaume
• Sarah Ahssen, “Pierre Guillaume, l’électron libre de la parfumerie”, FashionNetwork, 3 January 2018 (Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau boutique, 250 retailers, Printemps, Haramens, Superlady)
• Parfumo, Pierre Guillaume brand page (136 perfumes), accessed 4 November 2026
• Parfumo, Pierre Guillaume perfumer page (155 creations, born 1977 in Auvergne), accessed 4 November 2026
• Pierre Guillaume Paris, “Paris Palais Royal” page: boutique at 10 Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, former boutique at number 13, architect François Lebel, more than 100 square metres (accessed 5 November 2026)
• Pierre Guillaume Paris, official site, “Discover our Stores” section: Paris, Clermont-Ferrand (two addresses), Toulouse, Lyon, Belgrade (accessed 5 November 2026)