The intense Pure Extrême couture perfume from the Maison Micallef

In the intensely rich world of perfume, confidential scents emerge, intriguing, beguiling, and at times difficult to find. The Grasse-based Maison Micallef was created in 1996 and is one of those select houses of French high perfume-making where independent creativity reigns free. For over two decades now, the family-owned house, founded and spearheaded by Martine Micallef and Geoffrey Nejman, offers an olfactive experience that includes perfume bars in their own boutiques and a certain mastery of the use in perfume making of the intense natural ingredient oud.

The Grasse boutique opened in 2017 and resembles a beautiful boudoir rather than a banal boutique and is filled with the intense fragrances that emerge from sophisticated detailed lace-like bottles that are the signature of the house. Grasse is a place of choice for a perfume house. It is the capital of perfume making and those skills, including the cultivation of perfume plants,  that go into perfume making in Grasse were recently inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Humanity.

The intense Pure Extrême couture perfume from the Maison Micallef

The Maison Micallef cultivates its own flowers for its perfumes in an exceptional garden in Grasse not far from the house’s workshop and in which jasmine, the emblematic Centifolia rose (also known as the Provence rose), iris, hyacinths and violets bloom in a symphony of colors and fragrances.

These are used in the fashioning of the house’s fragrances which are known for being powerful. Ananda is one of the best-sellers, a blend of plum, violet, white musk and mimosa ensconced in an exotically designed bottle. Its name means Serenity in Sanskrit. The Secrets of Love collection brings together a bevy of six heady fragrances among them two classified in the Oriental family of perfumes. Passion is a strong combination of oud, orange and surprisingly cinnamon with undertones of sandalwood, musk and patchouli, all of the essential ingredients for lovers of strong scents. Another headstrong blend is offered up in Gourmet with its top notes of incense and raspberry, pinned up with violet, leather, laudanum and oud, making for a mystical presence. Heady Collector’s Editions include Pure Extrême, of rose, gardenia, jasmine, amber and white musk in a jewel box bottle. The perfumes of Maison Micallef are found in 75 countries throughout the world.

©The Gourmet Gazette

www.parfumsmicallef.com

Available in Grasse at

14 Place des Aires, Grasse, France

(+33) (0) 4 93 40 13 86

In Paris at

Parfumerie Jovoy

4 rue de Castiglione, 75001 Paris, France

(+33) (0) 1 40 20 06 19

In New York at

Osswald Parfumerie & Luxury Skincare

311 West Broadway, 10013, NY, New York, USA

(+1) 212 625-3111