About

About Us

The last thing you put on.
The first thing they remember.

A fragrance should not stand in front of you. It should stand behind you — quietly, all day, until the room has an impression of you that no one can quite name.

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About

fragrance

manufacture

perfumers

awards

A lifelong passion,
turned into a Maison.

Fragrance has fascinated Elmar Métry since childhood. Long before niche perfumery existed as we know it, he could tell one perfume from another across a room — and the fascination never faded.

For more than twenty years he worked in Swiss private banking, a career built on discretion and long horizons. In 2017 he left it. Not as a side project or a second act, but as a decision: everything he had, committed to a single idea — that a fragrance could be made without a single compromise, and that people would recognise the difference.

Parfums d'Elmar was founded that year near Zurich. The house has grown since, but the standard has not moved.

„Made for everyone. Regardless of gender, of who you love, of the colour of your skin."

Elmar Métry

FOUNDER, PARFUMS D'ELMAR

The Crest

The crest of a family.

The mark on every flacon was not designed for a fragrance house. It is the coat of arms of the Métry family, carried onto the glass unchanged.

A lion for bravery, leadership and noble heritage. A branch for peace as its counterweight. A helmet for the protection of the family, three stars for virtue, loyalty and respect, and the M for the name itself. It carries the same weight a name does: someone stands behind this.

Quintessence

de Parfum

35%

Perfume oil concentration

We work only with the finest and rarest ingredients perfumery has to offer, held at 35% perfume oil. An Extrait de Parfum sits at fifteen to twenty. We carry nearly twice that — and that is what remains, on the skin, in the room, in the memory.

Our STANDARD

The concentration sets the rules.

Most of what makes a fragrance expensive is invisible. It sits in the materials — and in how much of them actually ends up in the bottle. We chose both at the highest end, and everything else follows from that.

At 35% perfume oil there is nowhere for a weak material to hide. A thin note does not turn subtle, it turns obvious. The concentration is not a figure for the label, it is a constraint: it only works if every ingredient can carry that much weight.

So we buy the rare ones, we work with perfumers who know what to do with them, and we accept what that costs. It is the slower and more expensive way to make a fragrance. It is also the only one that gets you here.

The Flacon

A jewel,
of its own.

At Parfums d'Elmar the vessel is part of the work. Heavy crystal glass in semi transparent colour, faceted by hand to hold the light, closed by a solid gold plated Zamac cap.

The glass is finished by hand in Italy. What the flacon shows is what the fragrance evokes: exotic opulence meeting Western sophistication.

On the front sits the crest of the Métry family. Beneath it, the name of the fragrance — most of them derived from Hawaiian, chosen for their sound and their meaning. Each colour follows the name it holds.

Vessel

Hand polished glass

Cap

Gold plated Zamac

Glass

Made in Italy

Names

Hawaiian origin

THE MANUFACTURE

Where the formula
becomes a fragrance.

Parfums d'Elmar is made in Grasse, at Arthes, where craftsmanship and precision decide what a formula becomes.

A formula is only an intention. It names the materials and their proportions, and on paper it tells you almost nothing about what will happen on skin. What turns it into a fragrance is the work that follows.

It is done by hand. From the first drop to the finished flacon, every detail reflects the heritage and savoir-faire of French Haute Parfumerie. Nothing leaves until it is right.

Grasse

France

43° 39′ N | 6° 55′ E

There is a reason a small Provençal town decides what the world smells like. For centuries Grasse has done nothing but this — grow the flowers, learn the extractions, train the noses, and pass all of it on.

A fragrance house does not come here for the address. It comes because the flowers grow here, the extractions happen here, and the standard is set by everyone else in town. Parfums d'Elmar is made in Grasse because there is nowhere better to make it.

The Botanicals

Not simply flowers. The very essence.

Rose Centifolia, Jasmine Grandiflorum and Tuberose are the three great flowers of Grasse — joined over time by Orange Blossom, Violet, Mimosa and Lavender. What makes them precious is not rarity alone. It is what it takes to hold them.

Rose Centifolia

200,000 blossoms per kilogram of absolute

Rose de Mai opens once a year, for a few weeks around May, and every flower is picked by hand before the heat takes the scent.

Jasmine Grandiflorum

6,000,000 blossoms per kilogram — thirty times the rose

Jasmine opens at night and is gathered before dawn, in the hours when its scent is fullest and every flower is picked by hand.

The Perfumers

Three noses,
one Maison.

Three perfumers, chosen for how differently they work. Each composition carries the signature of the nose behind it.

Mark Buxton

More than three decades of work for Comme des Garçons, Givenchy, Cartier and Le Labo. Daring and unconventional, he helped shape contemporary niche perfumery.