Memo Paris

Memo Paris was founded in Paris in 2007 by Clara Molloy and her husband John — she a Parisian poet of Catalan origin, he an Irish globe-trotter and sportsman. Their two very different routes through the world became the house’s organising idea: perfume as a record of places worth remembering.

Memo calls its fragrances travel notes, and the pun is deliberate. Each one is built on a destination with a particular pull — a city, a coastline, a stretch of desert — and rendered in intense, expensive raw materials rather than in postcard imagery. Every release joins what the house calls its Carte de Tendre, an emotional map of the world that grows one fragrance at a time. The first was Lalibela, a rose and myrrh composition for the rock-hewn churches of Ethiopia, written by Aliénor Massenet; that collaboration still runs today, and some fifty fragrances have followed.

The catalogue is organised into named lines rather than a single flat range. Cuirs Nomades is the leather series — African Leather, Irish Leather, French Leather and their siblings — and it is the house’s signature. Fleurs Bohèmes holds the florals, Graines Vagabondes the more restless, spice-and-resin compositions, alongside smaller edits such as Escales Extraordinaires and Collection Villa Soleil. Memo sorts its own work into four olfactive families: Floral, Leather, Woody and Fruity.

Unusually, every fragrance is credited to both a perfumer and a visual artist, whose work becomes the gold label on the flacon. The house is made in France and keeps its flagship boutique at 24 rue Cambon in the first arrondissement.

Shop Memo Paris at Redolia Perfumery: full bottles only, authentic and sourced through authorised channels.