Naomi Goodsir

Naomi Goodsir is an independent French perfume and accessories house founded by the Australian couture milliner of the same name. Its fragrances are made and hand-packed on the French Riviera near Grasse, where Goodsir lives and works. The perfume line launched in 2012 and remains active, with a complete range of eaux de parfum sold directly and through international stockists.

The house grew out of Goodsir's millinery work rather than a conventional beauty launch. She trained as a fashion designer in Sydney and spent more than a decade as a couture hat-maker before extending her accessory house into perfumery. The company frames its scents as "tangible invisible accessories" — an idea that ties the fragrances back to the founder's design world rather than treating them as a separate product category.

Naomi Goodsir is an Australian milliner and designer who, in the brand's words, "decided to trace her own route in France." She studied fashion design in Sydney and worked as a couture milliner for more than a decade before launching the perfume line. The studio describes her as having "an atypical elegance and refined charm," and characterises the accessory work as "rebellious, sometimes rock, often punk, but always chic." The hats and accessories draw on textiles from French "Living Heritage Companies" (Entreprises du Patrimoine Vivant) and on leather and exotic skins, including Australian crocodile as a nod to her origins. The accessory house was established well before fragrance entered the picture, and Vogue Italia named Goodsir one of its most promising "new talents" in January 2015 [2].

The perfume line began in 2012. According to creative director Renaud Coutaudier, "in 2012, we came to our first tradeshow ever, with only two perfumes, Cuir Velours & Bois d'Ascèse," both composed by Julien Rasquinet, then a little-known independent perfumer [13]. Coutaudier is credited as the creative director and co-founder of the perfume line, working alongside Goodsir.

Sources differ on how the house's perfumery is attributed. The brand's homepage names perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour, while the studio page credits Renaud Coutaudier [2]; the per-fragrance pages instead assign each scent to a specific nose. In practice the line uses several perfumers rather than one — Julien Rasquinet, Bertrand Duchaufour and Isabelle Doyen — a roster corroborated by retailers Luckyscent and Ministry of Scent [11][12]. Coutaudier's role is creative director, not perfumer.

The company places itself in what it calls "the lineage of traditional, independent perfume houses" [3]. Its eaux de parfum are built around what the brand terms "classic emblematic raw materials of fine perfumery," and all are presented as genderless. The house says it attaches "as much importance to savoir-faire as to inspiration," and describes the fragrances as extensions of the designer's universe — "beautiful compositions, noble and elegant" that reflect a deliberately nonconformist aesthetic.

That positioning sits firmly within niche perfumery rather than the mass market. Luckyscent characterises the brand as appealing to "discerning consumers seeking distinctive, artisanal scents with fashion-forward sensibility," and the editorial framing across third-party retailers consistently treats the line as bold and atypical rather than commercial.

The fragrances are eaux de parfum sold in 50 ml natural-spray format, and several share recurring materials — tobacco, incense, leather, immortelle, iris and cistus labdanum recur across the range. The two launch scents, Cuir Velours and Bois d'Ascèse, were both created by Julien Rasquinet in 2012. Bois d'Ascèse, a smoky tobacco-and-whisky composition with Somalian incense and cade wood, was conceived as a tribute to a wooden chapel in New South Wales and to the founder's father; the brand frames it through artistic references such as the Australian painter Sidney Nolan and the Japanese practice of Kōdō, the "listening" to incense. Cuir Velours pairs a tobacco atmosphere with rum, incense and immortelle, and is described as encasing the skin "like soft velvet suede."

Later additions extended the line. Or du Sérail, a gourmand tobacco by Bertrand Duchaufour, arrived in 2014, inspired in part by a painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix. Iris Cendré, an iris-and-incense scent by Rasquinet, followed in 2015, and Nuit de Bakélite, a green tuberose-and-galbanum composition by Isabelle Doyen, in 2017. Most are presented as genderless and given deliberately unconventional character descriptors — Bois d'Ascèse as "radical, mystical, statement," Iris Cendré as "iridescent, earthy, nonconformist." The house also works in scented candles, including a 2019 collaboration with the Hôtel de Crillon composed by perfumer Karine Chevallier [4].

Nuit de Bakélite is the house's most decorated release. In 2018 it won the Best Niche & Independent Brand Fragrance prize at the FIFI Awards France (Experts Award), an Art and Olfaction Award, and the "Prix de l'émotion" at Olfactorama Paris [10]. It was later selected by Nez la Revue as one of "111 perfumes to smell before dying" and named by Au Parfum among its top ten niche perfumes of the decade. Iris Cendré was nominated for the FIFI Awards France Experts Award in 2016.

The founder's accessory work has drawn its own attention. In 2012 Goodsir hand-made 42 felt hats and two leather hats for Kanye West's Paris catwalk show [4]. A designer bag was selected by trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort for the "Fetishism in Fashion" exhibition at the Arnhem Fashion Biennale in 2013. The brand has been featured in titles including Vogue US, Vogue Australia, Forbes and Monocle Homme, the last as a cover feature.

Alongside its fashion partnerships, the house has run an ongoing programme of artistic collaborations, which it describes as "a way to share creative universes" [4]. Filmmaker Ian Mackenzie made the short films "Musca" in 2015; visual artist Jean-Philippe Roubaud created the works "Musca Depicta" (2014) and a piece tied to Iris Cendré (2015); and textile designer Tzuri Gueta produced "The Bones collar" (2016) and an "Insomnia" installation (2017). The house has also collaborated on accessories, including "The Képi" hat with the Paris venue Les Bains in 2018.

The house is active. Its full fragrance line remains purchasable through its own e-boutique, which ships within the EU, and through international stockists. Editorial coverage has continued into recent years, including a ÇaFleureBon review of Bois d'Ascèse published in 2024 [13].