Meet Emmanuelle Moeglin, founder of Experimental Perfume Club

Meet Emmanuelle Moeglin, a French perfumer and entrepreneur who is taking the world of perfume up a level with her London based perfume house specialising in bespoke perfumery. So without further ado, let me introduce you to her brand, Experimental Perfume Club.

Experimental Perfume Club is basically on a mission to help people experience the joy of creating their own perfume. Whether it’s through their Zoom workshops (a lockdown favourite), or their more advanced training academy, their aim is to empower people to get interested in experiencing and experimenting with fragrance.

You can buy the Essential Collection of pre-blended luxury fragrances from £32 via the EPC website, our opt for a Discovery Set at the same price. If you want a more creative approach, try the Creation Set with which you can blend your own bespoke fragrance or go big or go home with the Signature Blend Collection at £125.

For those of you with more inquisitive minds when it comes to perfumery, you can delve into the science behind the fragrances and the blending process with one of the EPC virtual courses or a laboratory-based workshop and train that nose.

After reading about all of the intricacies behind perfume creation as whole, it’s no wonder I was intrigued to talk to Emmanuelle myself about how she came to create such a unique and compelling idea and brand - and it’s safe to say that after completing a blending workshop with Emmanuelle myself, I learned A LOT.

Find out how I got on making my own perfume here!

Why did you originally decide to start the Experimental Perfume Club?

I am a perfumer by trade. I started in fragrance industry in Paris and I’ve always been passionate and surrounded by absolute experts in their field with 10-40 years worth of experience - essentially just being nerds. I had this idea, (not a new idea of course), to create perfume workshops aimed at the general public. When you work in the perfume industry, ‘how to make a perfume’ is a very well kept secret, and people are not keen to share it! I thought this was a shame though, as it was carving a gap between creator and consumer. The consumer would buy the product but know nothing about it. My friends were fascinated by perfumery because they knew so little, so I thought that I’d love to share my knowledge - originally with my friends, and then it just took off. After doing workshops for 2 years, I branched out into products, which is what we created together. I didn’t want to create an ‘Emmanuelle Moeglin’ perfume brand, I wanted to keep going into the field of sharing, education, fun and creativity - so I came up with my own concept.

It’s worth mentioning that the perfume industry uses fantasy and marketing language, which means it has been living above truth for so long - until you’re educated, you don’t realise that your favourite perfume doesn’t actually have jasmine in it, just molecules built to smell like jasmine.

What prompted the idea to create bespoke perfumes and showcasing the ‘behind the scenes’ via your fragrance laboratory? 

Its not a specific thing that triggered it, but my experience in the industry. When you develop a perfume ‘behind the scenes’, there are many people involved. A commercial fragrance will rarely take less than 2 years to create and involves so many skilled people. The thing that I thought was completely crazy, is that you can talk to a consumer and they say ‘oh yes, it’s in the red bottle’. To work around people who were so passionate and then have their bottle identified as oh ‘the one in the red bottle’ is mad. If people understood the magic of blending ingredients together, and the science and creativity, perhaps they may be more curious about the product and give it a little bit more attention than whatever is on offer at Boots.

Where we are in the perfume industry right now is as a result of heavy marketing, where a perfume is marketed by a celebrity that wears it. There is of course the dreamy aspect of marketing which is important, but it reduces the product to a concept, as opposed to the actual scent.

Why did you specifically go for unisex scents?

In everything that we do, we never put genders. Obviously some fragrances are more skewed to feminine and masculine ideas - for example, when you did it you mentioned it smelled masculine. The division of masculine and feminine scents is defined by the marketing - what we associate as a feminine smell in Europe as feminine, and what we are used to as a feminine smell in the Middle East are not the same.

Part of EPC is the training academy side of things, do you enjoy teaching people about perfumes and did it take a long time to fine tune the online courses and workshops?

The longest process was the academy courses, as these are thoroughly thought out and structured. Workshops have been running for 4 years, and we’ve had thousands of visitors (not 2020) but they have historically been our most successful product. In a workshop, you sit down for 3 hours with a perfumer and learn the ingredients and structure of a formula. Then from that, you come up with your formula - you’re given a lot of shortcuts but also key techniques and skills - it goes into a lot of detail. 

Do pheromones play a big part in the development of bespoke perfumes in terms of what smells good to each individual?

I think there is a misunderstanding about pheromones, as there is no scientific study that perfumes containing them have a full impact. The skin does have an influence on how a perfume smells from one person to another - there is a biological reason based on acidity of the skin (tied to colour of skin and colour of hair). Often, there is a bit of an urban legend (overused by marketers) when it comes to pheromones, because people think fragrance will be magically different from one person to another. The perfume is the same, the only thing that may change is how the ingredients react with your skin. 

What’s your favourite fragrance? Or a combination of fragrances?

Firstly, I don’t wear perfume (common amongst perfumers). However I do admire a lot of fragrances, I love the Hermes ones as I think it is a great brand. In all of the formulas, I love Iris as an ingredient and a molecule called amberoxan mimicking the smell of Amber - it’s an elusive smell, kind of like hot stone with a hot/mineral effect. Invisible on its own, but when blended comes to life. 

Which other women do you admire?

I guess, I wouldn’t necessarily give names of specific female perfumers. Over the last few years as my business has developed, I’ve started really to define myself as an entrepreneur, so I’ve started to become passionate about the business. I admire all women who have come up with new beauty concepts (and theres a lot of them lately). Just this morning, I was listening to a podcast on the girls behind Birchbox and Laundress (high end fabric detergent).

What kind of pressures do you personally face as a female entrepreneur?

I would say, yes and no. The good thing is that because I’m in the beauty industry, generally speaking it is quite women centred. The companies in perfumes that have typically been bought and sold have often been male companies - my observation is that companies like this almost always have businessmen behind them. At the moment, I am not far enough into my investment path to have come across resistance of me being a woman, but I can observe that this may become a problem at some point, because there is a track record of success by men

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

To have your own business. I think one of the things that is recurring is ‘just do it’. Because you can spend so much time thinking about an idea and not doing it. The strength of being the master of what you’re creating is the ability to do it, and do it quickly. 

How do you keep your sanity and de-stress after a long day’s workshops?

I don’t really unwind unfortunately! I did during lockdown which was amazing, but I work a lot and my mind is still very much busy. Every once in a while I have a brief period of taking a bit of backseat, otherwise I work all the time. Even when I dream!

The EPC bottles use a limited amount of plastic where possible as well as refillable bottles, is sustainability important to you?

Absolutely. It’s one of the things that is really important. We are a small company and we are able to have a tight decision process around our supply chain and materials we use. I will always favour non-plastic, and our refillable aspect in Selfridges and online re-fills are great (where you send in your bottle for a re-fill).

What are the future plans for EPC? Any more virtual courses we can do during a potential second lockdown?

I mean, we’ve done a lot of changes already in the last 12 months. Obviously, we want to keep growing the online presence and continue to add on modules to our online courses. For 2021, I’m also working on moving our lab and creating more of a boutique.