STYLE Edit: Henry Jacques’ uncompromising perfume vision – its Les Classiques collection is the first step into decades of French tradition, the finest quality and the luxurious art of living

Apr 29 , 2022

The Henry Jacques Les Classiques collection includes 50 fragrances. Photos: Henry Jacques

CEO Anne-Lise Cremona, daughter of the brand’s founder Henry Jacques, opened the French maison’s first retail outlets, including one located in Hong Kong’s Elements mall

The maison’s Les Classiques, a special collection of 50 essences that can be used to compose unique scents, acts as a gateway to the magic of Henry Jacques

No country is more closely associated with the art of making fine fragrances than France: its perfumery tradition is one that dates back to the 17th century and beyond – and Henry Jacques is its living embodiment. These days, the luxury perfume house keeps that tradition alive with an uncompromising, meticulous, refined approach to the business of perfumery that recalls a time when the gesture of applying perfume directly to the skin was an established part of every beauty routine, without which no sophisticated ensemble was complete.

The production of Les Classiques fragrances in a laboratory.

For several centuries, the beautiful, historic town of Grasse in the south of France has been the centre of French perfume making, and it’s there that Henry Jacques makes its home to this day. The company was established in 1975 by the globetrotting Henry Jacques Cremona, who based his perfumes on his many travels, and whose love of the traditions of French perfumery was sparked by an encounter with one of the people who were formerly its heart and soul: the so-called “noses”, individuals whose mastery of the olfactory arts is so complete that they are able to dream up scents out of the blue.

Henry Jacques Cremona founded the French perfume brand in 1975.

The traditional principles to which the maison adheres include a dedication to exceptional quality in everything it does. It sources the finest raw materials from around the world, complementing them with equally magnificent flacons and accessories. It then expertly blends them entirely by hand using no-compromise methods at its home in Grasse, where it houses more than a thousand scents and an archive of 3,000 formulas.

Henry Jacques’ Les Classiques collection, a very special range of 50 essences.

The company is run to this day by Henry Jacques Cremona’s daughter, Anne-Lise Cremona, who has combined an absolute respect for the principles and adherence to perfumery tradition established by her father, while also embracing innovation.

One innovation has been the opening of its first retail outlets, including one located in Elements in Hong Kong. Moreover, traditionally the house only made custom perfumes for individual clients, but these days the magic of Henry Jacques has been refined into a very special collection of 50 essences that the maison refers to as Les Classiques.

Henry Jacques’ royal cabinet is designed to house a personal assortment of perfumes.

The ideal way for anyone to be introduced to the world of Henry Jacques, these perfumes are a distillation of everything the house has achieved over the past half a century. A complete suite of scents, which customers can use to compose their own perfume wardrobe, they represent a journey through the world of scent, taking classic combinations and giving them an avant garde spin for the modern age.

They are presented in packages that match them in magnificence and amplify their timeless, sumptuous qualities: crystal flacons specially created by the maison’s artistic director Christophe Tollemer that showcase sleekly minimalist lines. It’s a way of presenting Les Classiques that allows them to be applied directly rather than sprayed on. In so doing, they form a direct link with the lost world of classic French perfumery – a taste of tradition and a window onto a world of rare luxury.