Patchouli

Patchouli was born in 1970, the year Zoé Coste and Nino Amaddeo founded Réminiscence in Juan-les-Pins, alongside Ambre and Musc. The house presents it as its first perfume and recalls that a perfume built around a single material was a new idea on the market at the time.

The patchouli of Portobello

According to Lili, of Needs and Moods, it all began at a London market, Portobello, where merchants slipped Indonesian patchouli oil into cashmere to keep moths away. Struck by the scent, Zoé Coste turned on her return to the perfumer Maurice Sozio.

For Élisabeth de Feydeau, in Les Parfums, Patchouli is the work of Maurice Sozio and Zoé Coste. She names it the house’s best seller, with 156,000 units sold in 2008.

A perfume of its time

Kafkaesque held it in 2013 as the reference patchouli, the one against which all others are measured, and calls it inseparable from the hippie spirit of its era. She reports that, among people she knows, it is called simply by the name of the house.

Today’s Le Patchouli

Relaunched by Gaëlle de Prunelé and David Lozano with the backing of Robertet, the brand now sells Le Patchouli as an eau de toilette intense. Lili notes that the relaunch kept the original formulas and changed only the bottles and the colorants.

The perfume has its variations, including Patchouli Elixir, an eau de parfum launched in 2007 that the house presents as its intense version. It also offers a limited edition, Le Patchouli Limited Edition 1970, which recalls the year of its birth.