Interview by Cally Cheung
EX NIHILO, a Parisian fragrance house founded by the visionary trio Benoît Verdier, Sylvie Loday and Olivier Royère, is redefining the world of luxury perfumery by breaking away from traditional rules. From its inception, the brand has focused on innovation, creating an immersive olfactory journey that invites clients to discover new and personalized scents. With advanced fragrance testers and expert consultations, EX NIHILO offers a unique in-store experience, enabling customers to tailor perfumes to their personal tastes and skin chemistry.
Guided by the avant-garde spirit of French artistry, the brand collaborates with both renowned Master Perfumers and emerging talents to produce high-end, distinctive fragrances. Their bestselling Fleur Narcotique, a sensual floral bouquet, captures the essence of sophisticated femininity, while Cologne 352, with its addictive freshness, has become a signature for men. Iris Porcelana, their latest creation by master perfumer Dalia Izem, blends modernity with classic elegance, offering a soft, powdery fragrance that feels like a second skin—perfectly embodying the house’s innovative approach to contemporary perfumery. We speak to the founder, who has his hallmark scents stocked at Isetan Scotts.
Popspoken: How did you end up in the perfume industry? Share with us more about what you were doing before.
Benoît Verdier: It was quite organic, we were working in the beauty industry in different fields and one point in our career, we decided to create the brand of our dreams celebrating French Avant Garde, collaborations and various innovations including a unique service of Personalisation in our Parisian flagship. EX NIHILO is first a luxury entrepreneur story.
Popspoken: What were some milestones and hurdles that you had to overcome?
Benoît Verdier: The main hurdle is to convert ideas into actions and to create a brand absolutely from scratch, it’s a day to day challenge. But at the same times we had so many milestones since our inception in 2013: the first meeting with Givaudan when everyone applauded and implicitly allowing us to work with some of the best perfumers in the world, the very first time we opened the doors of our Parisian flagship Rue Saint-Honoré, or I remember my first meeting with Bergdorf Goodman at the top of their building with Central Park as a landscape.
Popspoken: Tell us more about the differences between the perfumeries located in France as compared to other parts of the world?
Benoît Verdier: I travel a lot and I see that Perfumery is really a French and Italian affair. Of course there are many talented perfumers elsewhere but I see something very French in the way we do it, the sensibility, the taste, a certain elegance.
From the people to the culture we have this long story and know how you can only find here and I feel that despite what you can read, Paris will be always Paris, it is still a point of attraction for everything related to creation and Grasse is still the capital of fragrances.
Popspoken: Can you bring us “behind the scents” and share more about the process of developing a signature scent?
Benoît Verdier: It’s really created from EX NIHILO – started from nothing, started from scratch. We are always scanning pictures on Instagram and Pinterest. It involves a lot of mood boards and we use a lot of inspiration pictures, materials, movies and creative materials. I’ll write a little story – a storyboard or concept. Then we go to see the best perfumers at Givaudan, and come with all of the material to discuss – that’s the briefing part.
After that, we spend maybe three weeks to one month working on the fragrance, and at the end, we meet again. Sometimes there are five different ideas and we make the choice together. It’s always the same process and can last from four months to almost one year to make a fragrance. It involves a lot of conversation and interaction with the perfumers because sometimes they bring you a new idea or new material. We are always open to improve, to change or to try something better or more creative. There
is no limit in terms of the materials we use and there is no limit for creativity either. So, that’s how we do it. Just to be precise, we do not do any marketing or focus groups and we do not conduct any studies. It’s really a conversation between us as founders and the perfumers. We are not perfumers of course, but I think that it’s good to keep the process inside, with a universe of ideas.
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