7 Things You Should Know About Roger & Gallet
Whether you’ve been a fan of the iconic fragrance house for years, or this is your first encounter, we know you’ll leave this edit having learnt something new and with a few Roger & Gallet scents added to your wishlist!
Sébastien Lecombre
Roger & Gallet International Education Director
“I have been in the cosmetics industry for over 15 years, working first on marketing and moving to education 10 years ago. I’ve always had a passion for perfume so I am delighted to work for one of the brands that created the French fragrance industry.”
1. What makes Roger & Gallet special?
What’s so special about Roger & Gallet, for me is the brand history. The brand was created in 1862 and is one of the oldest fragrance brands still available on the market. Roger & Gallet was also the official supplier of Napoleon the 1st, and we still carry the Jean Marie Farina Eau de Cologne Spray, which was his favourite fragrance.
2. What fragrance would you recommend to someone that’s new to Roger & Gallet?
That is a difficult question. A fragrance is a matter of personal taste; it is linked to your memories and emotions. If I have to offer a perfume consultation to someone entirely new for Roger & Gallet, I would start with Rose (a fresh, modern rose perfume), most simply because it is the one I love the most right now.
3. What’s your favourite way to wear fragrance?
My favourite way to wear fragrance is to layer it; I start with a shower gel, then a body lotion, then I finish with the spray of the fragrance. What is special about Roger and Gallet is that we have the ancillaries, the shower gel, body lotion connected with your fragrance so you can really intensify and make your fragrance longer lasting.
4. What was the difference between an Extrait de Cologne and Eau de Toilette/Wellbeing Water?
Firstly, it’s more concentrated in perfume. And secondly, it’s much higher in naturality than the rest of the range and the rest of the perfume market, with 20% natural compounds. Thirdly, and the most important, in my opinion, it’s signed by a perfumer, so it was not created from a marketing brief, but we have asked a set of very famous perfumers to create their vision of one active ingredient.
5. How do you recommend people choose their perfect Roger & Gallet fragrance when shopping online?
With Roger & Gallet you can be guided by the name of the fragrance; it tells you a lot about the ingredients that the Roger & Gallet master perfumers’ have tried to magnify (Neroli, Cedrat, Rose)
6. If you could only wear one Roger & Gallet fragrance for the rest of your life, which would you choose?
Jean-Marie Farina (Extra Vieille). It is an iconic fragrance: it has come to define the Eau de Cologne category. I have been wearing this fragrance since I was a teenager, long before I started working for Roger & Gallet. I remember I was attracted to the fact that this fragrance has such a long history and was not the latest marketing launch from a designer brand.
7. Can you tell us something about Roger & Gallet that few people will know?
Assuming most people know about Roger & Gallet and Napoleon (1st and 3rd); I would say that Roger & Gallet worked with one of the most famous glass and crystal creators of all time “René Lallique” to create beautiful bottles.