Here’s How Louis Vuitton Makes a Next-Level Cologne

Noah Johnson
Updated

We used to think making a designer cologne meant little more than combining a pinch of bergamot with some musk and a splash of water, outsourcing the production, and letting the money flow in. But then Louis Vuitton invited us into its scent lab and—turns out it's way more complex than that.

Hire the Best Man for the Job and Set Him Free
Every cologne needs its sensei. Ideally he'll be a master perfumer, like Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud, the olfactory wizard responsible for more than 80 designer fragrances. His father, also a perfumer, taught him to identify and describe scents the way other precocious kids learn to play piano.

Search the Globe for the Best Ingredients
Don't just phone in some citrus. For Nouveau Monde—one of Vuitton's first men's scents in the company's 164-year history—Belletrud combined precious oud, worth its weight in gold, from Bangladesh with inexpensive cocoa from Guatemala. “It's the meeting of those two cultures,” Belletrud says. “The Mayans were drinking the chocolate hundreds of years ago, and the oud has been used for over 1,000 years on the other side of the planet.”

Turn the Raw Materials into Oils and Start Mixing
First you've gotta infuse, distill, and extract the usable oil from the raw materials. When it's time to mix, science goes out the window and it's all art. The goal is to find the right balance. The biggest pitfall for a fragrance is if it turns cloying or obnoxious. For this one, Belletrud needed some spice to finish off the oud-and-cocoa combination, so he added saffron.

Test Until the Universe Tells You It’s Ready
There's no better way to test a fragrance than to put it on and walk around. Belletrud was at the airport when the woman at check-in stopped him to ask, with genuine curiosity, what he was wearing. He couldn't tell her, but he knew then that he'd landed on the right mix.

Bottle It in a Design Masterpiece
Legendary industrial designer Marc Newson developed an innovative vessel for the new Louis Vuitton cologne. It's simple and heavy, with engraved branding and a satisfying magnetic topper. “Like luxury,” Belletrud says, “it's full of details that you don't see.”