This year, we were honored to welcome Voyages Imaginaires to the Fumerie family, adding a second all-natural brand to our beloved curation. Voyages Imaginaires is the result of collaborations between Camille Goutal and Isabelle Doyen, two legends of the perfume world who have a seemingly never-ending combined resumé. Camille Goutal, a skilled perfumer and daughter of the world-renowned Annick Goutal, and Isabelle Doyen, the genius nose behind the masterpiece that is Naomi Goodsir’s Nuit de Bakélite, are longtime partners in perfumery and ardent fans of natural materials. We are thrilled to share with you this interview between these two creative powerhouses and our founder & owner, Tracy Tsefalas.
Tracy • Voyages Imaginaires is such an evocative name for a fragrance line. What was your inspiration?
Camille • Being two big dreamers, we wanted a name that evoked travel, dreams, and the ability to escape the everyday. We also travel a lot to discover unexpected places, sites steeped in history with incredible architecture, museums, and hidden gardens. All of this inspires our creations. In fact, creating a formula is an imaginary journey in itself.
T • The two of you have worked together for so many years, can you outline your process? Do you both have your hands in creation as well as design?
Isabelle • We always start with a clear idea of what we want to create. We understand each other very easily. Most of the time, we create the fragrances together. We don’t actually work together at the same time on a formula, but we smell everything together. Sometimes one starts a formula, and the other finishes it. For Voyages Imaginaires, as we’re a small team and there is so much to do, Isabelle is more involved in the formulas and in the design.
• Camille, early on, you had a career as a photographer. How did you decide to transition into perfumery full-time, and did it feel seamless or were there challenges?
C • Quite seamless! I just felt I was using another sense to express my feelings. And both were intertwined. I use my eyes as much as my nose to create. The difficulty for me was to memorise the complex names of certain molecules. When we create, we use all our senses. The nose is « just » one sense among the other four. We can’t create without it, but we can’t create without the others either.
T • As the daughter of the infamous? Annick Goutal, did you feel as though you had to step out from behind your mother to forge your own path? Was there a lot of comparison in the beginning? How is your approach distinct from hers?
C • I just tried to follow my own path and instinct (which is something we have in common) and never asked myself: would she have loved that, would she have created it like that, and so on. It would have been paralysing. We loved each other very much, but we were very different. The only thing I’ve always tried to do is to be as perfectionist as she was, in order to offer the best to our clients, both in the fragrances and in the design, and to respect the DNA of her brand. I’m sure there was some comparison, but people were really kind; they only told me the good ones!
T • Isabelle, you not only attended the iconic ISIPCA school in Versailles, you have taught there for several years. Were you aware of your talent and skill in perfumery before your attendance at the school? When did you know that this was the path that you wanted to take?
I • All I can say is that from my early childhood, I had big questions about the mysteries of scents: when I was about 5 years old, my mother was sometimes invited for dinner with my father. I was very fascinated by seeing her getting dressed and preparing herself. She would come out of the bathroom with a splendid lipstick, nice earrings, and… something strange floating around her. One evening, I asked my father about that, and he said: « it is perfume »… Wow… What was that ?! I told myself that there should be something happening when you become a mother. From a certain step of a woman’s life, she would sometimes produce what my father called « Perfume ». Maybe it was a fantastic special sweat of mother when they would go out for a special dinner… I liked all that.
I noticed also that some women would also produce the same phenomena… wow ! How was it possible? I didn’t have the answer. Years later, I figured out that it was coming from very nice bottles and you could spray it on you, but still I was thinking that « Perfume » was a single magical liquid in different nice bottles. Then I grew up and once, my uncle offered me a perfume: Vent Vert.
Fantastic: I was the owner of a mystery. Sometimes, I was opening the little bottle, very carefully, and sometimes allowed myself to put a tiny little drop on my neck, but it was so precious to me that I was afraid to waste it, and most of the time I would just look at it, very impressed and honoured. A few years later, I finished a second year of university, studying vegetal biology. One evening, I went to have dinner at a friend’s house whose father was working for Guerlain. We were living in Versailles, and by chance, I don’t know why, he gave me a document saying « if you are interested, there is a school in Versailles preparing students to be perfume creators». It was a shock for me: the mystery could be explained, I could study it, and I said to that man: « THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO : Perfume creator.»
T • Isabelle, you have worked with other fragrance lines such as Naomi Goodsir, Les Nez, and of course Annick Goutal. Do you find that working with various creative directors impacts your focus and approach?
I • I think we cannot really talk about creative directors concerning our or my work on perfumes.
Annick was the creative director for her brand in general and was also a perfumer. With her, we would decide together which idea of perfume we would work on. Most of the time, she would tell me « let’s work on a Gardenia or a Cologne » for example, and we would begin the adventure as a piano creation with four hands in complete freedom. She was the one who knew when to stop and say: the perfume is finished. Then we continued the same way with Camille: we were making proposals (note, concept, name) to the Goutal team and all together, we were building the project.
With other projects such as Naomi, I am also completely free. Naomi and Renaud propose a subject, and then I work as long as needed, up to the point when they say « we think it is great » and Naomi adds « but if you think you need to continue, take as much time you need ». Almost from the beginning, they told me the name would be « Nuit de Bakelite » which was very important.
For René of Les Nez, he gave me complete carte blanche for the 5 fragrances I created. He just suggested the name of one of the fragrances: « Let me play the Lion », and I chose the names of the other 4.
T • The Voyages Imaginaires line of fragrances was conceived during COVID. How did that change or impact the vision and implementation of releasing and introducing the line? Your fragrances take one to both real and imaginary places, which seems an apt offering during a time when we were all stuck at home.
C • Releasing the brand during Covid was a huge challenge. Most of the points of sale we were supposed to work with were closed, and when they reopened, they had so much stock left that they couldn’t take a new brand for almost a year. We also had some production issues and delays in the factories, but everything went back to normal after a year and a half. Our friends, who were the only ones to have our fragrances during the confinement, really enjoyed them and told us they could travel in their minds thanks to them!
T •It takes a skilled perfumer to know how to replace common synthetic notes with naturals. Do you enjoy this particular challenge? I imagine that the costs must be much higher in using all-naturals versus synthetics as well. Why have you chosen to go the all-natural route in perfumery?
I • Indeed, it’s very complex. We don’t have access to most of the classical molecules that are used in each and every single fragrance nowadays. It’s also very, very expensive. So we have to find other paths and know our molecules and essences very well!
We chose to be natural for many reasons, the first one being that natural ingredients are incredibly beautiful, and we enjoy working with them. They evolve differently than synthetic, in a richer and more poetic way. They are also more biodegradable, and from a personal aspect, we prefer wearing a fragrance that comes from nature rather than petrochemicals. But don’t get us wrong, we are not against synthetic, they offer other possibilities to brands.
Another very important point is that our alcohol is organic. In the fragrance industry, the alcohol is most of the time natural, but most of it is not organic. When you realise that at least 80% of your fragrance is composed of alcohol, you can imagine how important it is to have an organic one…
T • Can you explain the different requirements to claiming a fragrance natural? What are your thoughts regarding brands claiming that they are 100% natural when that is not actually true?
I • There are two ISO (International Organization for Standardization) norms (standards) for natural. One only allows ingredients that come directly or are isolated from nature (ISO 9235).
The second one allows ingredients that are transformed from natural ingredients, or that are more than 50% biodegradable, for example, or that are renewable carbon. The second one is less restrictive when it comes to formulation. It allows us to use certain qualities of white muscs, for example (which is not possible with 9235), or certain varieties of woody-ambery notes. Six of our fragrances are formulated based on ISO 9234, 1 is formulated upon 16128 (Comme Un Gant).
We are very transparent when our clients ask. For me, the claim is not a problem as long as the brands don’t lie on the norms to their clients. It is when they play on words or when they are not clear in their response… What is also a bit strange is that, if a client really wants to wear strictly natural ingredients, there is no way for him to know what’s in the bottle only by reading the packaging, unless he asks the brand directly. But that’s not really the brands’ fault, it's the legislation that is not well made.
T • What is your brand ethos, and what would you most like others to experience from the fragrances of Voyages Imaginaires?
C • When they smell our fragrances, we hope our clients experience different emotions and that some of them can also travel in their mind. You can experience very strong emotions when you smell a fragrance for the first time. It’s very touching for us.
So of course, we would like our clients to escape their everyday life through our fragrances, but in the end, all that matters is to really enjoy your fragrance. It should be love at the first!
T • What comes next for Voyages Imaginaires?
C • A new fragrance, of course (but it’s not finished yet), and maybe a new range…
Explore Voyages Imaginaires here