We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tulipe Fièvre a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tulipe, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

We were looking for a sophisticated natural alternative to commercial fragrances and we couldn’t find what we wanted. What we were looking for was an intoxicating perfume that felt like it came from the earth rather than a commercial lab. We both wanted a full sensory experience, created with organic, sustainable materials. We were really attracted to the origin story of our ingredients and we had different reasons for wanting a natural perfume.

(Barbara)

One of the things that made us search for the natural perfume was that I’ve always loved delicious fragrance. However, many commercial options tend to be difficult to wear, they last forever and don’t evolve in a natural way. They are the same for 24 hours. I also never want to overpower the room with my scent, I prefer the person next to me notices my perfume only when they enter my personal space. It’s a much more intimate experience.

(Laura)

My reasons were a bit different, a while ago I had a health scare and I realized most readily available perfumes contained endocrine disruptors. That was exactly what I needed to avoid. I love perfume and I didn’t want to live without it, but I also didn’t want to further compromise my health. Many other women in our demographic had similar concerns, while still wanting to feel glamorous. We truly love this idea of ageless beauty and society is just now beginning to embrace it. Women of a certain age have traditionally been told it’s over for our sensuality. And well frankly, it’s not!

So we realized there was this need in the market of an elevated natural perfume that smells intoxicating while causing no harm.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Tulipe Fièvre is an artisan-driven perfume brand, with a focus on craftsmanship. Using only the highest quality ingredients available, we create hand-blended perfumes in small batches.

We practice slow beauty. Slow beauty, like slow fashion, is about investing in products that have been lovingly crafted using sustainable methods and intelligently sourced ingredients.

Our fragrances are created in NYC and are formulated for all genders. Tulipe Fièvre was established in 2019 by artists Laura Stein and Barbara Abbatemaggio

We aim to be carbon neutral and we consciously choose materials for the lowest possible footprint. Additionally, we compensate for our production by purchasing carbon offsets for reforestation.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

We had a production dream. We initially wanted to know our farmers and distillers, so we could trace the provenance of our raw material. Source each one individually and craft the perfume by hand in our studio. After three years of working this way we realized it was extremely costly and unrealistic. We pivoted and began working with a boutique fragrance lab to help with production. This makes the blending process more reliable and gives us greater options to scale.

To find the right partners we spoke to everyone we knew in the field and did extensive research about best practices. Eventually, we found a consultant that deeply understands our sensibility and our goals for the brand.

The most important thing we’ve learned is that you can never be too clear and specific in your communications when working with someone outside the studio. We establish efficient communication through perfume sketches, written briefs and mood boards. We find this multi-faceted approach paints a really thorough picture of where we want to be. Starting from the clearest possible place is imperative to a successful outcome.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

We’re experts at resilience! We came to fragrance as a lifestyle brand and not from a classically trained perfumer’s background. So, we had a huge learning curve on how to construct a fragrance. Even olfactory specialists consider scent composition a lifelong pursuit, it’s one of those things that you keep building on your knowledge base. You know, you never get to the end, it just keeps going…it’s like composing a melody you’re missing an additional note to create a beautiful piece and you keep searching and trying…until you finally find it and it’s the most rewarding experience. It’s a very long intricate process, but when it works it’s magic.

Starting up as a very small brand we have had to wear a lot of different hats…Laura, remember that time we mixed up the math on a batch of ‘Bird in Space’ and ended up with 400 bottles instead of 40? That taught us how incredibly important decimal points are! (LOL)

(Laura)

Haha, yes wasn’t that right after we were hand embossing hundreds of copper labels to fill an order for The Alchemist’s Kitchen.

Contact Info:

• Website: tulipefievre.com
• Instagram: @tulipefievre
• Facebook: Tulipe Fièvre
• Linkedin: Tulipe Fièvre
• Twitter: @tulipefievre

Image Credits
the portrait has no credit… the other images are all Sesse Lind