Loc Dong

Loc Dong is a renowned perfumer who has worked for numerous houses such as Marc Jacobs, Yves Saint-Laurent and Calvin Klein. Yet nothing destined this man from a distant land to become one of the greatest noses on the planet.

The extraordinary journey of Loc Dong

Loc Dong is a perfumer who today works for the house IFF, meaning International Flavors and Fragrances. This is an international company that manufactures perfumes for the fragrance sector as well as flavors for the food industry. Today, it is considered one of the giants of global perfumery and is the third largest company in the world in this sector in terms of revenue. Also, although Loc Dong is today an emblematic figure of this prestigious group, he is far from being from the Grasse region, the world capital of perfumery, as many perfumers are. In reality, he was raised in the shadow of the Vietnam War and grew up alongside his grandfather. He considers that it is to this man that he owes much of who he is today. He lived with him in a remote village located 30 km north of Saigon. It was in this place that he began to develop a nose, learning to recognize the scents of the plants he gathered. Moreover, his grandfather was a local healer and made remedies for the villagers. He was thus immersed from an early age in this world of aromatherapy. Then, at barely 11 years old, Loc Dong decided to take his destiny into his own hands, escaping Vietnam alone on a boat, heading toward Malaysia, a country that would be his first step on a journey of thousands of kilometers before landing in the United States.

The rich and captivating personality of Loc Dong

Loc Dong does not consider himself an artist but rather a survivor. It is from this extraordinary temperament and this unexpected destiny that his talent was born. Loc Dong is the first Asian to work in fine perfumery and to achieve such success and such recognition for his work. He explains that he believes in two types of creativity: the one born of dreams and another born of a need to survive. Thus, he states that his art exists through the harmony between seemingly discordant notes… Love and hate, sweetness and brightness, enigmatic and familiar.

Generally speaking, Loc Dong likes to create fragrances in his own image, both simple and complete. Among his most famous creations, Loc Dong developed Manifesto for Yves Saint-Laurent, Euphoria for women and for men for Calvin Klein, as well as Marc Jacobs Perfume. He often signs powerful compositions, both dark and deep, capable of appealing equally to connoisseurs and to perfume consumers eager to discover new flavors. In other words, it is a little of his rich history that shows through in each of his fragrances.