Masaki Matsushima

Masaki Matsushima, marketed as Masaki Paris Parfums, is a French fragrance brand built around the work of the Japanese fashion designer of the same name. The line pairs his design sensibility with the French perfumery house Panouge Group, which owns and produces it [3]. The brand remains active: its most recent fragrance, NIJI mat;, was released in 2025 [17].

The house presents itself as the meeting point of "Japanese elegance, French expertise, and the talent of global perfumers," and its catalogue runs to roughly 47 fragrances released between 2001 and 2025 [14]. Its corporate home is Paris, though its creative identity is tied to a designer based originally in Tokyo.

Masaki Matsushima the designer was born in 1963 in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, studied at Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, and was mentored by figures including Issey Miyake [11]. He established Masaki Matsushima International Inc. in Tokyo in 1992 and opened a Paris arm, Masaki Matsushima Europe S.A.R.L., in 1994, moving his fashion work into the French capital before the fragrance line took shape.

The perfume project began as a collaboration with the Panouge Group and the fragrance manufacturer Takasago. According to Panouge's own account, the line was first created for a fashion-show presentation, and its reception led to a lasting partnership. The company dates this founding to 1998 [3]. Other sources place the start differently: Japanese Wikipedia records a "mat:MASAKI MATSUSHIMA" fragrance launched through Panouge as early as 1995, while the fragrance database Fragrantica treats 2001 as the year of the first full perfume collection [11][14]. The 1998 date reflects the brand's own founding statement; the 1995 reference appears to describe an earlier show or prototype scent, and 2001 the first commercial collection.

The brand is owned by the Panouge Group, a privately held, family-run fragrance company based in Paris [4]. Panouge traces its origins to 1947, when it was founded as Parfums Lavarenne and concentrated on essential-oil production; it was renamed Panouge — short for "Parfums Nouvelle Génération" — in 1984. Alongside Masaki Paris, the group owns three other fragrance brands: Jacques Fath, Isabey Paris and Panouge Paris [4]. The Masaki line is distributed through Panouge's network, which the company describes as spanning more than 85 countries [5].

The brand frames itself around a blend of Japanese minimalism and French perfumery. Matsushima's stated design philosophy holds that "fashion is often linked to art and my expression of fashion is very close to conceptual art" [2], and the fragrance collection is positioned as an extension of that outlook. Individual scents lean toward a transparent, restrained character; the flagship mat;, for instance, is described by the brand as "transparent and pure," an expression of "post-modern style, transcending time."

Fragrances have been developed with a number of perfumers, among them Jean Jacques, Jérôme di Marino and Leonardo Lucheze. The brand sits in the prestige fragrance segment, with retail prices reported in the range of roughly €17 to €74 depending on size and scent.

The collection is organised into feminine and masculine fragrances plus discovery sets. Several of its names carry the recurring "mat;" suffix, including the flagship mat;, J-mat; and T-mat;. mat; itself, composed by Jean Jacques, opens on bamboo, mango and tea leaves before moving to a base of white rose, jasmine and what the brand calls a "zen Crystal Musk."

A frequently cited release is Masaki/Masaki, a women's fragrance introduced in 2007, also by Jean Jacques, and built around a fictional New York wearer — "an elegant young woman who lives on Park Avenue, shops on Fifth, strolls in Central Park and attends retrospectives" [13]. The scent was carried at Sephora in 40 ml and 80 ml editions and remains in the brand's current catalogue under the spelling Masakï/Masakï. Later additions include Shiro (2010), Matsu (2014), HaNa (2023) and the 2025 unisex release NIJI mat;, the last two created by Leonardo Lucheze [17].

Through Panouge, the brand states a set of environmental commitments. The group says it works to reduce single-use materials and adopt recyclable packaging, and that all products are "assembled in France" [4]. It also points to ingredient sourcing from Laboratoire Monique Remy (LMR), a Grasse-based supplier of natural extracts, and to a logistics partnership with Colissimo, which it credits with cutting parcel carbon emissions by 42% between 2013 and 2022.

Mainstream beauty-press coverage of the brand is limited. The specialist fragrance blog Now Smell This reviewed the 2007 Masaki/Masaki launch, calling it "a classy and rich fragrance" and noting it as a departure from the designer's usual aesthetic [13]. Fragrantica has continued to document the brand's releases, including the 2025 NIJI mat;. No formal awards are recorded in the available sources.

The brand is active. Its parent, Panouge, continues to operate, and the Masaki line has seen steady new releases, including HaNa in 2023 and NIJI mat; in 2025. It maintains an online store and active social-media accounts, and its fragrances are distributed internationally through the Panouge network.