Style Edit: Pharrell Williams’ debut fragrance for Louis Vuitton, LV Lovers, was crafted by master perfumer Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud and aims to evoke ‘the scent of the sun’

This year, Williams embarked on his first fragrance project for the maison: LV Lovers, designed to be “an extract of energy, a perfume of opportunity and enhancement” and to evoke “the scent of the sun”.

The result of a creative dialogue between Williams and French master perfumer Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud, LV Lovers aims to convey the essence of sunlight as a metaphor for love as well as a source of motivation and life on Earth.

“The theme of sunlight that lit up Pharrell’s debut show on Pont Neuf in June 2023 inspired us to convey photosynthesis in a scent,” explains Cavallier-Belletrud. “It may sound abstract at first, but if you look at life, photosynthesis is the starting point for everything.”

The master perfumer took a cross-generational approach, involving his 25-year-old daughter, Camille Cavallier-Belletrud, in the creative process. The younger Cavallier-Belletrud is a perfumer at Louis Vuitton, trained by her father. The fragrance was crafted at the Louis Vuitton atelier at Les Fontaines Parfumées in Grasse, France. Grasse, on the French Riviera, in the hills north of Cannes, is known as the perfume capital of the world.

LV Lovers conveys the familiar scent of the sun illuminating the skin, invigorating nature, and breathing life into the organisms that inhabit our world. Through olfactory alchemy, the master perfumer has given the abstract scent of sunlight tangible form.

What is the scent of the sun? To answer this question, Cavallier-Belletrud Sr identified the natural scents brought to life by sunlight: the richness of leaves warmed by the sun, the sweet aroma of fresh grass, the earthy scent of tree trunks in the forest …

Galbanum, a rare resin of the Ferula plant, is transformed from its wild state into delicate green notes that form the fragrance’s heart.