Domitille Bertier

From ISIPCA to IFF

Domitille Bertier studied organic chemistry before entering ISIPCA, the perfumery school in Versailles. In 1994 she joined IFF as a trainee and chose to continue her training there, drawn by the creative freedom of the profession. She recalls learning for four years alongside four of the company's perfumers.

Now a senior perfumer, she in turn mentors students at IFF's in-house school, where each apprentice follows a three-to-five-year program with a mentor. “Nobody is a perfumer when they leave ISIPCA,” she says: each apprenticeship is tailor-made, from raw materials to the most complex accords.

Flowerbomb and Four-Handed Signatures

Flowerbomb, launched by Viktor & Rolf in 2005, was co-created with Olivier Polge and Carlos Benaïm. With Olivier Polge, she also composed Noa Perle in 2006 and Liberté in 2007 for Cacharel, and Midnight in Paris for Van Cleef & Arpels in 2010. She co-created Lancôme's Ô d'Azur with Sophie Labbé and Paco Rabanne's Invictus Legend with Nicolas Beaulieu.

She also created Boss in Motion for Hugo Boss in 2002, Miroir des Secrets for Thierry Mugler in 2007, Me for Lanvin in 2013, Celluloid Galbanum for Comme des Garçons in 2019 and Perfect for Marc Jacobs in 2020.

A Perfumer in Phases

She says she works the way painters do, in phases each devoted to a family of notes, and finds inspiration in encounters, exhibitions and everyday flavors. She prefers briefs that open a real conversation with the brand to a simple order.

A Parisian, she names the city's gardens and street smells among her first olfactory emotions, along with two years spent in the tropics as a child, which sharpened her sense of smell.