Élisire

About Élisire

Élisire is a fragrance house created by French-born painter and creative director Franck Salzwedel, who launched the line at Bergdorf Goodman in New York in 2015. Its perfumes set out to translate color into scent.

History

Salzwedel was born in France to German parents and spent part of his childhood in Indonesia. He later studied at the Institut Français de la Mode in Paris and went on to work on fragrance projects for Giorgio Armani and Viktor & Rolf. During those years he painted in Provence, where he was drawn to color field painting. A New York gallery invited him to show his work in 2007, and he moved to the city as a painter and fragrance consultant. There he came to see a parallel between chroma and scent, which led to Élisire, and in spring 2020 he moved back to the south of France.

Philosophy & Signature Style

Élisire presents itself as a gallery between contemporary art and haute parfumerie, built on the idea that color comes before scent. Starting from Salzwedel's paintings and color studies, perfumers including Alberto Morillas, Pierre Negrin and Philippine Courtière compose extraits de parfum made in France that blend natural ingredients with modern molecules. Under the house motto "Elixirs of Desire," the compositions aim for emotional impact and tension rather than classical perfection.

Iconic Fragrances (or Did You Know?)

Pierre Negrin's Extrait Noir is a woody-leather composition built around light emerging from black, and Clément Gavarry's Hautbois pairs natural oud with honey and vetiver. Ilias Ermenidis's Élixir Absolu renders a deep pink as a contemporary chypre.