About
Richard Rochon
A perfumer in San Francisco, working toward scents that people carry with them for years.
Scent gets past language. It reaches memory before the mind has a chance to sort it, which is why one breath of something can return you to a room you have not stood in for decades. I have been drawn to that power for as long as I can remember, long before I understood that a person could make it on purpose.
I found the work in the south of France. I had gone to Saint-Paul-de-Vence looking for the grave of James Baldwin, and I spent the day walking the village and the hills around it. I never found the grave. What I found was the air. Warm stone, cut grass, pine resin, jasmine somewhere behind a wall, all of it shifting as the day went on. I stood there paying closer attention to smell than I ever had in my life, and by the time I left I knew what I wanted to do.
I came home to San Francisco and built a perfume organ. Then I learned how to use it, one material at a time, smelling each one against the last until the vocabulary stuck and I could hear a formula in my head before I built it.
I learned the classical structure and I break it when it gets in the way. Most of the rules exist to make perfume efficient to produce and easy to sell, and neither of those is what I am after. If a formula asks for something that should not work, I try it.
The work is slow and it does not keep to a schedule. Some of these took years to arrive, and most of that time was spent taking things out. A scent that matters is not the one that impresses on the first spray. It is the one still worth wearing in the fourth hour, and the fourth year.
That is the whole ambition. Not a fragrance you own, but one that ends up in your life. The one somebody wore through a particular winter, or to meet someone, or on the last good day with a person they loved. Long after I am out of the picture, a bottle of mine sitting on a shelf is somebody's memory waiting to be opened.
Complex fragrance for complicated people.
Where to start
Richard Rochon Parfum
The parfum line
High concentration and long drydowns, made in small runs. Start with the discovery set if you want the whole picture before committing to a bottle.
Explore the parfum lineRochambeau
The daily line
The same hand, written for a weekday. Wearable perfume, easy to live in, easy to buy without a research phase.
Explore RochambeauWorkshops and consulting
Work with me
Group and private workshops at the bench, plus scent development and consulting for brands and spaces.
See workshops and consulting