Q&a / How Jaeger-LeCoultre is blending watchmaking and perfumery: the Swiss watchmaker has launched a new scent collection by self-taught perfumer Nicolas Bonneville

Oct 20 , 2024

Nicolas Bonneville is the perfumer behind Jaeger-LeCoultre’s new perfumes. Photos: Handout

Consisting of 3 bold perfumes, the new collection is part of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Made of Makers portfolio, which sees the Swiss watch maison partnering with innovative creatives

What makes a luxury brand in 2024? For distinguished Swiss watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre, the answer lies in collaboration across different disciplines beyond one’s own sphere of expertise, pushing the boundaries of traditional branding and reimagining luxury as an art of its own. You’d expect nothing less of a brand that has earned itself the moniker “the watchmaker of watchmakers”. Jaeger-LeCoultre is in the business of making things that excel and reaching for the peak of craftsmanship in whatever it does.

The brand is, in other words, Made of Makers, a title it’s given to its signature programme that sees the Swiss maison partnering with leading innovators in a variety of creative fields, from renowned French mixologist Matthias Giroud to celebrated Korean conceptual artist Yiyun Kang, to create an entirely new multisensory universe all of its own. This year, the brand adds self-taught, self-made perfumer Nicolas Bonneville to its storied Made of Makers portfolio, producing three new scents created exclusively for clients of the maison.

Here, Bonneville and Jaeger-LeCoultre’s chief marketing officer, Matthieu Le Voyer, discuss the making of this new olfactory cosmos in which any and every collaboration imaginable is made possible.

What makes perfume the perfect new addition to the Made of Makers portfolio?

The Precision Pioneer, one of the perfumes created by Jaeger-LeCoultre by Nicolas Bonneville

Matthieu Le Voyer: For us, [smell] was potentially one of the most powerful senses you could leverage because it’s a little bit like the Proust Madeleine. The minute you smell a fragrance, it’s going to trigger something in your mind – an avalanche of emotions and memories. It was very important to leverage the world of fragrance and this olfactory universe with this objective to build a maison that transcends its products, and that builds this art de vivre in a sophisticated, timeless and elegant way.

For a brand of your size and scale, what’s the value of pursuing purely creative, non-commercial projects?

A flacon of The Celestial Odyssey, a scent Nicolas Bonneville created for Jaeger-LeCoultre.

MLV: The fact that this is not commercial is a great help to push the boundaries of imagination and creativity. We didn’t give any budget to Nicolas to create the fragrances, so he had a complete [carte blanche]. He could use any ingredients in the world. He didn’t have to create something that is [universally considered] as beautiful. He didn’t have to use fruity or flowery notes to be seductive to 100 per cent of the population. He could take an approach that is really disruptive, which really matches the mindset of our manufacture. This is in the spirit of invention and exploration, to create new things and new territories that are quite unconventional. We don’t want to make money out of it. It’s really an invitation to travel with us.

Purely creative work with no budget and no boundaries defines your career quite well, Nicolas. How has this disruptive approach shaped your mentality over the years?

Nicolas Bonneville creates his scent for Jaeger-LeCoultre