French secrets & Dreams from afar

The Madrid family’s olfactory workshop, La Closerie des Parfums takes its name from those Parisian gardens where the refinement of the senses meets the play of the imagination. The journey begins in France, yet its horizon remains boundless.

Passionate about fragrance, Valérie Madrid spent her childhood surrounded by bottles and stills. As a young girl in the family atelier, she was already imagining the perfumes she might one day compose. At twenty, she joined Antoine and Hervé — her uncle and father respectively — and trained alongside them, patiently learning the art of perfumery, which she later perfected at the prestigious Cinquième Sens school in Paris. Drawing on this experience, she returned to her childhood dream and began envisioning her own line of fragrances.

For inspiration, she would wander through those Parisian gardens once known as closeries: “They are magical places devoted to artistic expression,” Valérie confides. The choice became clear: her fragrance studio would be called La Closerie des Parfums. The name pays tribute not only to the French art of living, but also to her longing for escape. “I’m originally from Bordeaux, the historic harbour of wines and spices, so I’ve always loved dreaming of far-off horizons. With La Closerie as my playground, I can unite French haute perfumery with my taste for the exotic.”