Ormaie

Ormaie is a French niche perfume house founded in late 2018 and based in Paris [7]. It was created by the mother-and-son team of Marie-Lise Jonak, a perfumery creative director, and her son Baptiste Bouygues [8]. The house builds its fragrances from natural raw materials rather than synthetics, and frames each scent around a personal memory or emotion. Its name is the French word for an elm grove.

The company positions itself at the luxury end of the market, selling through selective perfumery retailers and department stores rather than mass channels, and describes itself as "a house of creation and know-how." Its bottles, topped with hand-carved wooden caps, have drawn design press attention, including a Wallpaper* Design Award nomination in 2022 [9].

The idea for Ormaie began with Baptiste Bouygues, who wanted an entirely natural perfume made without synthetic ingredients. He turned to his mother, Marie-Lise Jonak, who had spent her career composing fragrances at established perfume houses. After roughly two years of development, the pair launched the house in late 2018 [9]. Editorial sources consistently describe the founders as a mother-son duo and give the mother's name as Marie-Lise Jonak rather than the "Bouygues" surname sometimes attached to her [8].

Their working method is collaborative and memory-driven. As Bouygues has described it, he tells his mother about scents tied to a particular place or person, and she is usually able to recall the same impression and translate it, with perfumers, into a finished fragrance. Jonak has said she knows the raw materials, especially the naturals, by heart.

The house also draws on family history in a broader sense. According to its philosophy page, Ormaie describes itself as a family-owned "house of creation" that assembled artists and artisans to develop its story, and the founder cites a sculptor grandfather, a flower-loving grandmother and a mother drawn to fragrance as sources of inspiration.

Ormaie's central claim is that its perfumes are made entirely from natural ingredients, without synthetics. Lampoon Magazine described it as "the first maison to create one hundred percent natural fragrances," a framing the house itself echoes [7]. The company presents this as a matter of principle rather than a passing trend: Jonak has said that "if we wanted to make something beautiful, it had to be good," and that every step of the work therefore had to be ethical, both environmentally and socially.

The brand's stated aim is to create what it calls poetic fragrances "charged with emotions and memories." Many of its scents are tied to specific people or moments — Yvonne is named after Bouygues' grandmother, and Le Passant was inspired by the scent of his father. Its tagline, "a house of creation and know-how," reflects an emphasis on craft that runs through its marketing, from the composition of the perfumes to the making of the bottles.

Ormaie's range centres on eaux de parfum and more concentrated extraits, alongside discovery sets, candles and body products. To reduce packaging waste, the company offers small 20 ml bottles that can be refilled using glass ampoules. Signature fragrances include Yvonne, built around roses from Grasse and patchouli; L'Ivrée Bleue, described as a black vanilla from Madagascar with rum; Le Passant; Papier Carbone, said to be inspired by the carbon paper of elementary school; and Tableau Parisien, a tuberose composition.

The house treats its bottles as objects in their own right. The glass is faceted twelve times, which the company likens to a sundial and a testimony to its long creative process, and each is finished with a hand-polished wooden cap sculpted from beech and elm burl sourced from responsibly managed forests. Wallpaper* described the bottles as Brâncuși-inspired, referring to the sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, when it named the brand for a design award [9]. Development is deliberately slow: the company says a fragrance can take three or more years and hundreds of trials, followed by a maturation period after production.

Sustainability claims are woven through the brand's materials and sourcing. Ormaie describes its fragrances as cruelty-free, and editorial coverage reports that its formulations are vegan [8]. The company says it uses only renewable energy to produce its glass, and packages its perfumes in a round box made from Italian paper composed largely of recycled and sustainably sourced fibres.

The house also makes specific claims about its raw-material supply. It says it guarantees to buy vanilla crops from Madagascar three years in advance, and that for every sandalwood tree its partners cut, twenty are replanted [7]. Production is described as taking place in Grasse and Marseille, with the creative work carried out in Paris.

Ormaie has been covered by design and fashion press since its early years. In 2022 it was featured by both Lampoon Magazine, which focused on its natural perfumery and architectural bottle design, and Wallpaper*, which included it in a piece on mother-and-son beauty brands and noted its Design Award nomination [9]. MOJEH interviewed the two founders about their natural, cruelty-free approach and their shared creative process [8].

Ormaie is an active, independently run house. It operates an e-commerce site with a current product range, maintains an Instagram presence as @ormaieparis, and reports selective distribution across more than 40 countries, including retailers in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland [4]. Its stockists span Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, with placement concentrated in specialist perfumeries, department stores and niche beauty boutiques.