Paris is blooming with new beauty retail concepts, especially monobrand fragrance boutiques on Saint-Honoré.
A confluence of factors has contributed to international brands such as Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, Nishane and Molinard converging there, not far from the likes of Ex Nihilo and Serge Lutens.
“Beauty is still a very fast-growing category, so there is plenty of interest in physical expansion,” said Neil Saunders, managing director and retail analyst at data intelligence firm GlobalData Retail. “At the same time, the market is very crowded with a lot of brands vying for customer spend, [therefore] many beauty houses are looking to connect more directly with customers through their own stores and concepts.
“Many of these are about showcasing products and deepening loyalty, as well as setting a tone for the brand,” he continued. “Beauty is about buying products, but at the premium end of the market it is also about experience — something that can be delivered through a store.”
Jody Israelsky, principal at Think New Retail, added: “These beauty brands are all affordable luxury — compared to high fashion or jewelry, and easily transportable and accessible to [visitors] — and are locating in high-trafficked tourist [zones]. Rents are high in these areas, but small spaces still can pencil out for small retail formats.”
Here are some new beauty boutiques in the City of Light:
Nishane
Nishane Paris is the Istanbul-based niche perfume brand’s first outpost outside Turkey.
Mert Guzel and Murat Katran, Nishane’s founders, were fascinated by Istanbul’s multicultural aspect and wished to reflect that in their fragrances, which have been created by perfumers such as Cécile Zarokian, Jorge Lee, Chris Maurice and Cara Sylvain. The first collection, with 16 extraits de parfum, came out in 2015, and was meant to channel the chaotic feeling of the Turkish city. Others followed, and today the brand counts altogether 31 genderless scents, as well as candles and hair perfumes. Nishane is present in more than 120 countries. The 1,455-square-foot boutique has Marmoleum cocoa flooring and walls with handmade Zellige tiles.
Nishane, 266 Rue Saint-Honoré, 75001
Molinard
Molinard has opened the doors of its second Paris boutique, on Rue Saint-Honoré, after an outpost on Rue Bonaparte. The new 540-square-meter location is divided into two parts. One is for selling fragrance, then the basement is where around 20 consumers can be initiated into the art of perfume-making.
“We offer the opportunity for people to come and discover the profession of perfumer, by mixing essences and learning how a perfume is structured with top, heart and base notes, during an hour and a half,” explained Célia Lerouge-Bénard, chief executive officer of Molinard, which was launched 175 years ago and has been in her family for five generations. She is the first woman to run it.
Lerouge-Bénard refers to Molinard’s stores as “meeting places.” “It’s where we share, discover, sit, talk, try, exchange, let ourselves be transported — and feel alive,” she said.
This new boutique is a mix of wooden floors and stone walls, with copper tubes forming shelving and nodding to the house’s Grasse, France-based savoir-faire, as well as its signature color purple.
Molinard, 270 Rue Saint-Honoré, 75001
BDK Parfums
French niche fragrance brand BDK just opened the doors of its debut freestanding boutique, on Rue Saint-Honoré. The three-floor, 645-square-foot store was designed to feel like a living space and comes lined with mineral materials, such as Burgundy stone and travertine.
On the ground floor’s wall is shelving to showcase BDK’s creations like an olfactive library. Lining that are the house’s four fragrance collections: Parisienne, Matières, Azur and Exclusifs, with 20 perfumes altogether, including 312 Saint-Honoré, a perfume made for the boutique’s opening. There are also the Les Nocturnes candle collection, hair perfumes and laundry “waters.”
Up one flight, on the mezzanine, is where people can discover raw materials that BDK uses in its fragrances. One floor above that is a small lounge for trying on scents.
David Benedek, who launched the brand in June 2016, always knew he wanted his own retail space. This one is not far from the boutique selling high-end perfumes and luxury products to tourists that his grandparents set up on the corner of Rue Royale and Rue Saint-Honoré in 1959. Today BDK is sold in 500 points of sale in France and abroad.
BDK Parfums, 312 Rue Saint-Honoré, 75001
Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella
Historic Florentine apothecary Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella has opened its first wholly owned retail location in Paris, on Rue Saint-Honoré. Step into the 860-square-foot shop and it’s like being transported to its birthplace on Florence’s Via de Scala.
Elements such as marble flooring, hand-made wooden fixtures and archival apothecary bottles come from Italy, giving an old-world charm. Stocked here are the brand’s face and body care, and personal and home fragrances. These include Acqua Della Regina, Santa Maria Novella’s oldest perfume, created for Catherine de’ Medici’s wedding in 1533, and today’s bestselling Melograno fragrance. Soap, hair care, liquors and terracotta jars are among the offer mixing old and new, including a display of the brand’s antique bottles.
Considered a gem of the Italian beauty industry and one of the oldest pharmaceutical laboratories in the world, the company was founded by Dominican friars after they arrived in Florence in 1221 and settled in the Santa Maria Novella location, cultivating herbs to prepare medicines for their monastery’s infirmary. It officially launched as a commercial activity in 1612.
Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, 318 Rue Saint-Honoré, 75001
Parfums de Marly
Parfums de Marly, which with Initio Parfums was acquired by Advent International in June 2022, has been securing and increasing its luxury positioning, brand equity and aesthetics, according to Julien Sausset, their CEO. “One of the concrete outcomes of this is also an increased investment on retail and opening boutiques,” he said.
Parfums de Marly’s Paris boutique has had a symbolic upgrade, moving from Rue Cambon to around the corner on Rue Saint-Honoré, according to Sausset. “We thought the time had come for us to have a super-premium address in Paris,” he said. The location measures about 485 square feet and embodies the brand’s new-look retail concept. “It’s a natural evolution to an always chicer luxury environment, which is a little less chateau and a little bit more apartment,” said Sausset.
He described the boutique also as having modern and classical touches, pointing to the parquet Versailles and molding. This store was the first in a series of five to open with the new decor late last year, including in Shanghai and Beijing. Parfums de Marly now has 10 boutiques, while plans call for it to have about 30 within three to four years.
Parfums de Marly, 326 Rue Saint-Honoré, 75001
Marc-Antoine Barrois
Marc-Antoine Barrois comes full circle with his new flagship on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. That’s where he began his couture career 20 years ago, alongside Dominique Sirop, Jean Paul Gaultier at Hermès, Giambattista Valli and Jean-Claude Jitrois. Today, the location serves as home to his entire universe, with fragrance, couture for men and women, ready-to-wear white shirts, jewelry and accessories.
“The idea is recenter everything around the couture,” explained architect and artist Antoine Bouillot, who helped create the space, using concrete and maple sugar-coated glass. The main decorative theme here is mirrors, which on the ground floor crystalize into a monumental wall sculpture made with 85 mirrors by street artist Le Diamantaire.
Barrois’ fragrance collection, which includes five scents (three perfumes and two extracts), such as B683 and Ganymede, are displayed on bespoke carved wooden stands on the ground floor measuring about 215 square feet. The couture showroom downstairs is about three times larger, and an atelier upstairs spans practically 1,080 square feet.
Barrois has two other boutiques selling just perfume, for which he collaborated with Quentin Bisch — in Paris’ Galerie Véro-Dodat passageway and in London’s Piccadilly neighborhood. A candle was made especially for each location.
Marc-Antoine Barrois, 14 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008
Rituals’ Mind Oasis
Rituals opened its first Mind Oasis in France, on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, meant to be a haven of mental relaxation. Here, vibrations, scents, sounds and light are used to recharge people’s bodies and minds. Those are used in two different well-being experiences, which meld ancestral and contemporary breathing techniques, brainwave stimulation and hydromassage.
The ground floor has a 2,150-square-foot selling space, then upstairs is the almost 3,230-square-foot treatment area, with six cocoons with a “zero gravity” chair for mental relaxation, thanks to breathing exercises, 4D sound stimulations and haptic vibrations. A 30-minute session is 29.50 euros, while a 55-minute session goes for 44.50 euros.
There are also nine hydromassage mattresses to help fight stress with circular massage movements. This treatment involves phototherapy, for its positive impact on skin, nature sounds and a scent with lavender and cedarwood, as well. The 20-minute session is 19.90 euros, with an additional 15 euros for a mental relaxation session add-on.
The Mind Oasis pop-up will run through yearend, according to Sandrine Mignaux, director of Rituals France, who said Rituals has been extremely happy with the location, which is intended to show and communicate the brand’s philosophy.
Rituals’ Mind Oasis, 33 Avenue des Champs-Élysées, 75008
L’Atelier Parfum
L’Atelier Parfum, positioned as an accessible and ecologically responsible high fragrance brand, was launched by Masha Russac and Mikolaj Pietrzac in 2020. Its first own, 540-square-foot freestanding boutique, intended to be a “gallery of olfactive emotions,” opened in the Marais. The store’s streamlined, modern decor is punctuated with art.
L’Atelier Parfum has 16 fragrances divided into three collections. “The main entry point to the brand is the emotional link,” said Pietrzac.
“Opus 1 is like a rainbow of colors,” said Russac, of the first collection, with lots of flowery notes. “With Opus 2, we are going to the Orient.” One precious ingredient, such as leather or incense, is highlighted in each of those scents, and packaging comes in deeper hues. Opus 3 evokes nature, with a natural-colored palette. (Think Tuscany.)
“It’s super easy and very intuitive,” said Pietrzac, of the collection now sold in more than 25 countries through more than 400 sales points. An AI-powered digital experience for use in-store and on-line susses out people’s emotion to help with scent choice.
L’Atelier Parfums’ clean, long-lasting scents containing 90 percent to 95 percent natural ingredients are produced by Robertet. Their packaging is eco-sustainable, including wooden bottle caps.
L’Atelier Parfum, 12 Rue de Sévigné, 75004
Granado
Granado’s Marais boutique has gotten a makeover, including giving perfumes center stage. “More than half of our sales are from fragrances,” explained Sissi Freeman, marketing and sales director at the Brazilian brand. The store concept was reworked into a perfumery, whereas in the past it was a hybrid perfumery-apothecary.
“We showcase ingredients that talk about Brazil,” she said. “It’s very colorful and bright.” The store’s wallpaper features XXL multihued flowers, while the black-and-white tiled floor nods to the Copacabana Beach, with a contemporary twist.
“We don’t want to just be a heritage brand,” said Freeman. “It’s this mix and match of what we [do] best.”
Other bestsellers for Granado in Europe include its home collection’s candles and diffusers.
A shop with this format opened in Lisbon in 2022 and it was a huge success, said Freeman, adding all of Granado’s shops are being renovated with its look now. During 2024, two new boutiques are to open in the U.S., including the recently debuted location in New York, and four in Europe.
Granado, 11 Rue des Francs Bourgeois, 75004
