Odette Fontaine's Most Personal Fragrance Yet

Odette Fontaine, founder of Odette Parfum, has created a world that is instantly recognizable. It’s a magical, soft world filled with pink ballerina tutus, swans, towering cakes, sugared rose petals, the flakiest French pastries, bunnies, and kitten ears. It comes through in the bottles, the imagery she shares on social media, and of course the fragrances themselves.

It’s a world I was immediately taken with when I first discovered it. So when she reached out and asked if I’d be willing to share the story behind her latest release, Fée Du Lilas, a deeply personal fragrance created in memory of her sister, I was honored and immediately said yes.

A pastry chef for 15 years and counting, a former ballet dancer, and a self taught perfumer since 2020, Odette is exactly the kind of person I love talking to. I left our conversation feeling an incredible sense of calm. There’s something so authentic about her, and it was satisfying to meet someone who feels so true to the world they’ve created and the work they’re putting out into the world.

Odette will release Fée Du Lilas on June 30. For two years she grappled with bringing this fragrance, inspired by and dedicated to her sister, to life. What does the memory of a person smell like? If you’re creating a fragrance inspired by someone you loved and lost, do you lean into what they actually wore? The smells that evoke their presence? Or do you try to capture something less tangible, how they made you feel, what they loved, their humor, their lightness?

These were all questions Odette wrestled with while creating Fée du Lilas. Her sister’s life was tragically stolen by gun violence, and in her honor, all proceeds will be donated to Brady United, an organization dedicated to ending gun violence.

Fée du Lilas (Lilac Fairy) is a delightful fragrance. Built around lilac, her sister’s favorite flower, it’s meant to evoke childhood days spent playing in their grandmère’s lilac-filled garden in France.

This is one of the more floral-forward scents Odette has released, but her signature delicacy and sweetness still come through. It’s fresh and playful, powdery and softly dewy. There’s something undeniably magical about it. It feels like a purple veil drifting through a sunlit garden, surrounded by endless green and friendly creatures popping out of the forest lining the landscape. It whispers rather than shouts. It carries you gently through the day. And if it’s any reflection of what Odette’s sister was like, I wish I had known her too.

A note: I intentionally do not share her sister’s name in this piece in order to respect her family’s privacy.

“I’ve described her loss as being like losing a lighthouse in a storm. Or, if I was a balloon, she was the one holding the string. I’ve kind of been floating around without her. It’s been an immeasurable loss, truly.”

Christina: Tell me about your sister.

Odette: I’m the youngest of three. We were all into ballet and perfumes. We were really close, also closer in age, and she was way into perfume before me. With everything, I followed in her footsteps. She had Darcy Bussell posters hanging in her room, who’s a fantastic dancer that I love.

She definitely got me into fragrance, and I would sneak into her room and take her stuff. Like any older sister dynamic, we were really diametrically opposed about what we liked, so that’s why this fragrance was really hard for me. She was very into bright, citrusy, chalky white florals. She wore the early 2000s Chloe, the one in the ribbed bottle. She was a Coco Mademoiselle girl. She liked Gucci Flora. She liked Fragonard. She really liked bright, dewy aquatic florals.

Christina: When did you start working on Fée Du Lilas?

Odette: I started immediately after she passed. So two years ago. I really threw myself into my work when she passed. She’d only been able to smell three of my formulas. So the year she died, I was pumping out so many different releases because work became my focus. But this one was difficult to develop.

It took a long time because I couldn’t get it right, and I believe I was approaching it the wrong way. At first, I wanted to make something that I thought she would have worn. After a while, I realized that wasn’t the right direction to go because white florals aren’t my strong suit and aren’t a huge interest of mine. It didn’t come naturally. It was difficult and involved lots of trial and error, waste, and tossing things away, which was really frustrating.

I don’t know, there’s some psychology in there. I really wanted it to be something she would have loved, and I could never quite get there. So I reframed it as an homage to her because she’s not here to say whether she’d like it or not.

Christina: What did she think when you first started making perfume?

Odette: She was very supportive. I’ve made no decisions in my life without consulting her first, we were that close. Down to what shoes are you wearing to this, or what are you eating. We were really knit together.

I’ve described her loss as being like losing a lighthouse in a storm. Or, if I was a balloon, she was the one holding the string. I’ve kind of been floating around without her. It’s been an immeasurable loss, truly.

So anything I can do to honor her matters to me. She was vehemently against guns and gun violence, and it’s such a tragedy in so many ways that that’s how her life ended. I think she’d be happy with this as a way to contribute because she was a big charity giver. She was generous, volunteered, gave blood, and really spent her life showing up for other people.

The name Lilac Fairy makes sense because she really was one. In Sleeping Beauty, the Lilac Fairy is the one who comes in after Carabosse puts the spell on Aurora and helps set things right. It just makes sense. All roads kind of lead back to that.

As a lifelong ballerina, it feels especially fitting. She was much closer to being a professional dancer than I ever was. I never made a career of it, but she came very close before ultimately becoming a chemical engineer.

Christina: What smells remind you of your sister?

Odette: Well she wore Coco Mademoiselle, of course, but she eventually stopped because it started to smell like bug spray to both of us. I’m trying to think of other things I associate with her. Pointe shoes, rosin, jet glue, ribbons, sewing pointe shoes, rubbing dental floss against a candle to get enough wax on it so it would slide through. A lot of the smells from my parents’ house. She loved birds and had a bird of her own, so I associate feathers and that soft downy smell with her as well.

But mostly, lots of white florals. She loved that category of fragrance. I’m the total opposite. I like fuzzy, musky, warm, slippery, buttery, textured kinds of fragrances, which you can probably tell.

Christina: You’ve spoken so beautifully about your sister and how close you were. I’m curious what living with that loss has actually looked like. How do you carry her with you day to day? And how has your relationship with grief changed over time?

Odette: Goodness. Every day is different. There’s so much writing and spoken word about grief, and I think the only description that has ever really stuck with me or resonated is that it’s like the tides.

Sometimes the waves come in and knock you over, and sometimes you can walk alongside the water and know it’s there. That’s the only thing that has ever really described what it feels like for me. Every day is different. You never know what the water will be like, or what the waves of grief will be like.

Aubrey Plaza was on Amy Poehler’s podcast and she described grief as a valley. You can go up to the edge of it and look down, or you can stay away from it. That resonated with me too. It feels pretty accurate.

It’s just an immeasurable loss. She was such an incredible person in so many different ways.

“I ended up realizing that this fragrance is kind of my dream of what a Lilac Fairy would smell like.”

Christina: Tell me what the process was like creating Fée Du Lilas.

Odette: So this one was hard for me. I ended up realizing that this fragrance is kind of my dream of what a Lilac Fairy would smell like. That’s the best way I can describe it. I don’t think it’s a photorealistic lilac. I wasn’t trying to recreate lilac bushes or verdant rolling hills. I wanted it to be lilac by way of my own aesthetic, something sheer, sensual, and a little dreamlike.

That’s how it eventually came together, but I was banging my head against the wall for a long time because I wanted it to be something she would have worn. Eventually I realized I needed to approach it differently. It became less about recreating her taste and more about creating an homage to her, an ode to what she meant to me. That’s the direction it ultimately went in.

Christina: Tell me a little bit about how you constructed it. How did you pick the notes? What did they represent about her?

Odette: Lilac was her favorite flower, so a huge part of the formula was reconstructing that flower, but not in a photorealistic, green, sprightly way. I left out a lot of those bright, appley, grassy materials and focused more on the core of lilac itself.

It was her favorite flower, but it also carries a lot of memories for me. We had one grandmother in France and another in the United States, and both had lilacs, but the lilacs I think about most were in my grandmere’s backyard. She had these huge bushes of them. We always talked about how those were the best summers ever. It was lush and beautiful, and I’ll always associate lilac with my sister because of that. Being little kids with grass stains on your skirt, running around, playing hide-and-seek. That sense of childlike wonder has really stayed with me.

Then there are elements that are more me. I created a tiaré flower milk accord that’s a little lactonic, a little tropical, almost coconutty, almost magnolia petal-like. I worked on that, and then found that olibanum and cedar paired beautifully with the lilac and helped round it out.

From there, I leaned on a lot of my usual suspects: musks and sheer, satiny materials that give everything a soft-focus effect. I like that in all of my fragrances. I know some people think if you’re going to do lilac, you should really go for it, make it loud and unmistakable. But I like things to feel softer.

Part of that is because I like to reapply perfume. I like carrying it with me and spraying it throughout the day. I don’t formulate with the goal of filling a room or suffocating a space. I’m always chasing a kind of old-fashioned vanity fantasy, swan down powder puffs, ballet slippers, beautiful objects on a dressing table. That’s the world I’m usually trying to create.

Christina: When is the release date?

Odette: The fragrance launches on June 30, which is actually her birthday. It felt like the right way to celebrate her and honor her memory.

Every year I also do a birthday sale for my own birthday, which is July 18. This year I’m turning 35, so everything will be 35% off. If people want to wait and purchase it during the sale, they absolutely should. The most important thing to me is getting the fragrance into people’s hands and raising as much money as possible.

That’s really the heart of the project. More than anything, I want people to know who she was. Raising as much money as possible is important, of course, but so is sharing her story and keeping her memory alive.

“We keep living through these “unprecedented times” over and over again, and perfume offers a small respite from that. So I hope this fragrance provides a little whimsy. A little escape.”

Christina: What do you hope this fragrance brings to people?

Odette: I really believe in escapism. Especially right now, when the political landscape, the geopolitical landscape, and so much of the world can feel frightening and overwhelming. I think perfume is incredibly important because it gives us something to escape into. A fantasy, a story, a fairy tale. I think that matters.

I know I need it. I wear perfume every day, and it’s something I instinctively reach for when the world feels heavy. We keep living through these “unprecedented times” over and over again, and perfume offers a small respite from that. So I hope this fragrance provides a little whimsy. A little escape.

Christina: With Fée Du Lilas, the origin story is so clear. But for something like Rose Adage or any of your other fragrances, where does it start? Do you see a scene in your head? Talk to me a little bit about how an idea becomes a perfume for you.

Odette: I feel like I have a couple of lines in my brain running parallel, almost like train tracks.

One project of mine is to create a fragrance for each ballet in the classical repertoire. Fantôme de Forêt is based on Giselle, Rose Adage is based on Sleeping Beauty, and now Lilac Fairy. Eventually I’d love to do Manon, Le Corsaire, and Cinderella. I think Cinderella would be especially fun.

So that’s one track in my brain. I want to represent the entire classical ballet repertoire through fragrance. I also have Fée Dragée, which is my Sugar Plum Fairy fragrance for The Nutcracker.

The second track is gourmands. I love gourmands and I love working with them, so that’s where fragrances like Madeleine and Petite Gâteau come from.

The third track is memorial fragrances for family members. Lapinou was really based on my grandmother and spending time with her. I’ve teased this a little bit, but I’m also working on something inspired by my dad. My dad, Alois, is an oil painter, and I have such distinct memories of being in his studio and what it smelled like. He smoked pipe tobacco, and his clothes always smelled like tobacco. I’m also passionate about immigration and being first-generation, so I wanted to create something in honor of him. It would be a fragrance about Alois through the lens of being his daughter.

Christina: You started perfumery in 2020, what inspired you to start?

Odette: I’ve always had this idea in the back of my mind. I have sketches from when I was a kid of wanting to have a beauty line. I loved brands like Lollia and TokyoMilk. I was an Anthropologie kid and would go there every chance I got. I also loved Tocca and the way each fragrance was built around a different female archetype.

I remember wanting to create something like that when I was young. I’ve always loved the idea of having a signature fragrance. For years and years I was searching for something that felt completely like me, something where I could say, “This is my smell.”

I love those old Hollywood stories where everyone had a signature perfume. Marilyn Monroe had Chanel No. 5. Audrey Hepburn had her fragrance. I’ve always been drawn to that idea of creating something distinctive and personal. That’s really where Pas de Chat came from. I was trying to create the fragrance I had been searching for forever.

Christina: What do you wear?

Odette: So most of the time I’m wearing a modification or something I’m actively working on. I’m usually the guinea pig. I’m wearing it, testing it, living with it, and figuring out what needs to change.

There’s a really small brand called Stardust and Stems. It’s like a fairy tale. I recently bought one of her spring sample sets and ended up with something like 30 different samples to try. They were wonderful. Everything feels fantastical. One of them was called Alpine Kisses, and the notes were things like fairy wings and buttercream. It’s all very whimsical and imaginative. I think her work is fabulous. Just a lot of fun.

Christina: French pastry is such a technical discipline, and there’s so much knowledge and precision involved in doing it well. Do you see any similarities between creating perfume and creating pastry, or do they feel like completely different creative processes to you?

Odette: I do see an overlap between classical French pastry and being classically trained as a ballerina. There’s definitely a connection there.

They’re both very disciplined pursuits, and I’m attracted to that. I like order and structure and corrections. I love all of that. French pastry is very unforgiving, just like ballet. You have to follow the recipe. There’s a technique to it, and I love that.

With perfume making, there’s still a minute detail side to it. You’re making tiny corrections, adjusting dilutions, adding different materials. But I think it’s a little freer than baking or dancing because you can paint with a broader brush. You can add a dash of this or a dash of that.

That’s really how I work. I’ll make something somewhat haphazardly at first, just trying to get the idea out and smell it. Then I’ll go back and start scaling it properly. When I’m sketching, I want to get the concept down first. After that, I’ll go back and do the scientific calculations and the math.

Christina: How did you start with the french pastry?

Odette: A friend of mine got me into it. She had gone to culinary school and taught me everything she knew. I already knew how to cook French food from my family, but classical French pastry is a different thing entirely. There’s a huge technical side to it, and she really taught me that discipline and technique.

Christina: What are your hopes for Odette? And what’s next?

Odette: I would love to collaborate with another dancer. Working with Gillian Murphy was truly the highlight of my career. She’s at the very top, and it was such an incredible experience. I have other heroes I’d love to work with too. Darcy Bussell, who I’ve mentioned before, and Sarah Lamb at the Royal Ballet in London. If I could replicate that experience with other dancers, I would love to do that. Getting their perspective as artists and superstars is so inspiring.

Working with Gillian was a dream. I’d love to do more collaborations like that. I’d also love to collaborate with another brand. I’d love to work with Matt Morris too. I love his work and I love his writing.

I’m open to a lot of things, but I’d love to collaborate more, whether that’s with dancers, writers, or brands. I loved what we did with Pearfat, and that collaboration is actually coming back this fall.

I love picking a subject and building a fragrance around it. I love the idea of doing a ballet and having it become a collaboration, and I would love to do more of that. The possibilities feel truly endless to me. I have a list of ideas a mile long. My mind is constantly spinning with different series I could create, different pastries I could explore, people I want to honor through fragrance, films that inspire me.

My middle name is Edith, after Edith Piaf, and I would love to create a tribute to her one day. They called her the Little Sparrow, that was her nickname, and I love the idea of creating something for her. Maybe a gin-soaked iris and geranium fragrance or something along those lines.

I’m constantly inspired by ballet and films. And honestly, places too. Have you ever been to Paris? You have to go.

There’s a carousel right next to the Eiffel Tower, and I’ve become obsessed with the idea of creating a fragrance inspired by it. I’d also love to create a fragrance inspired by a music box with a ballerina inside. I think that would be such a fun project.

There are just so many things I want to make. I never want to stop. I want to keep going.