Olivia Giacobetti

Olivia Giacobetti (born in 1966) is a French perfumer. She has an independent fragrance line called Iunx and has also created perfumes for Diptyque, L'Artisan Parfumeur, Guerlain, and Hermès, among other brands. She is particularly known for her refined style as well as her innovation, such as her pioneering use of fig in perfumery, which helped popularize the note from the mid-1990s onward. She is part of the wave of perfumers who rose to prominence in the 20th and early 21st centuries, highlighting the "nose" behind the fragrance and independent lines that showcase these creators — a shift from perfumes sold under fashion brands or celebrity names.

Early Life

Olivia Giacobetti was born in 1966. Her father, Francis Giacobetti, is an artist. Olivia Giacobetti became interested in perfumery at the age of nine after seeing the film Le Sauvage by Jean-Paul Rappeneau, in which Yves Montand plays a perfumer.

Career

Giacobetti began working in perfumery for Annick Goutal when she was 16 years old. She joined the French fragrance and flavor company Robertet the following year and worked there for seven years as a perfumer's assistant.

In 1990, Giacobetti founded her own company, Iskia, at the age of 24. Working from a garden laboratory in Paris's 9th district, she began receiving commissions from brands such as L'Artisan Parfumeur, Diptyque, and Hermès.

In March 2003, backed by Japanese cosmetics giant Shiseido, Giacobetti launched her own line of perfumes, candles, and body products called Iunx. Located in a large boutique designed with her father, Francis, the original ambition was to create 60 scents, but the line struggled to find an audience and closed after two years. However, starting in 2006, Iunx products became available in a boutique at Hôtel Costes in Paris, where Giacobetti had also created the hotel's signature scent in 1995, one of the first hotels to commission such a fragrance. In 2016, Giacobetti opened a new Iunx boutique in Paris.

In 2017, Giacobetti developed a line of five candles in collaboration with the Comédie-Française.

Style and Impact on Perfumery

Giacobetti was recognized early in her career for pioneering the use of fig as a note in perfume, especially in the 1994 fragrance Premier Figuier for L'Artisan Parfumeur and the 1996 Philosykos for Diptyque, the brand's best-seller. Inspired by the fig tree, many other brands followed her lead, releasing their own fig-based fragrances later that decade. In Perfumes: The Guide, Luca Turin wrote: "Premier Figuier was the fragrance that put Olivia Giacobetti on the map, and deservedly so: its fig leaf note... was a natural for perfumery, and pleasantly offbeat."

Among Giacobetti's most famous creations is En Passant, a subtle floral perfume combining lilac with notes of wheat and cucumber to evoke spring rain on fresh flowers. In The Guide, co-author Tania Sanchez calls En Passant "a perfect example of Olivia Giacobetti's tendency... a delicate white-on-white composition." Released in 2000 by niche French perfume line Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, the fragrance marked a shift toward celebrating the perfumer behind the scent, with Malle including not only the perfume and brand name on his bottles but also the "nose" who created the fragrance. Giacobetti is among the perfumers who elevated the profile and sales of such independent and niche perfume lines, which (with some exceptions) were previously overshadowed by fashion houses and celebrity licensing deals. En Passant was featured in a 2017 exhibition on contemporary perfumery at Somerset House in London.

Giacobetti also earned acclaim for her 1999 fragrance Dzing! for L'Artisan Parfumeur, inspired by the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris. Writing about Dzing! in The New York Times, Chandler Burr called it "one of the most innovative and authentically strange scents of the past two decades," blending notes of sawdust, circus animals, caramel apples, and more into "a comforting and subtly delicious mix." Turin gave the perfume five stars in The Guide, calling it "a masterpiece" and praising Giacobetti's imaginative style.

Giacobetti's fragrances generally employ a balanced mix of natural and lab-developed synthetic ingredients. She describes these elements as "inseparable," with potent synthetics providing the fragrance's "backbone" and natural materials adding "nuance." An exception to this approach is her work for Honoré des Prés, a completely natural perfume line.

Personal Life

Giacobetti lives in Paris. She has a daughter, born in 1996.