What We Do Is Secret

What We Do Is Secret, often shortened to WWDIS, is an independent perfume house of American origin that makes small-batch extraits and a layering line it calls Monoscent. It is the third name for a fragrance business that began in Brooklyn, New York, in 2000 as S-perfume, traded from 2011 as A Lab on Fire, and adopted its current name in 2021 [10]. The company describes itself as "Luxury fragrance. Born in America," while stating that its perfumes are made in France [1].

The house is active. It sells through its own web shops in Europe and the United States and through specialist perfume retailers such as Luckyscent in Los Angeles. Over the years it has worked with a long roster of established perfumers, among them Olivier Polge and Dominique Ropion, and as of 2026 it said it was preparing to move its base from America to Paris.

The brand's own heritage page opens with a single sentence about its first label: in 2000, a surfboard shaper turned sculptor created S-perfume in Brooklyn. The fragrance community database Parfumo fills in more of the early picture. It describes a few fragrance enthusiasts in New York working out of a tiny studio that became known as the "world's smallest fragrance house" and selling their scents as S-perfume. According to Parfumo, experts paid the label respect, but customers remained few, and the team kept experimenting for many years [11].

The name What We Do Is Secret is older than the perfume line that now carries it. The company says it first used the name in 2005 as a trade name for its art studio, and then for a perfume blog of the same name [2]. It links the choice to a remark by the perfumer Jacques Cavallier, made some twenty years earlier, that the profession is based on the notion of secrecy. Returning to that name, the company says, was a way to embrace its whole history.

Because the house has worked under three names, its starting date depends on which label is counted. The heritage page and Parfumo both date it to 2000 and S-perfume [11]. The perfume blog Kafkaesque, writing in 2013, called A Lab on Fire a new niche brand created in 2011 and a sister house to S-perfume [13]. The current name, for its part, was launched in 2021. The company treats all three as one continuous story, describing "over twenty-four years" guided by experimentation and freedom. This article follows 2000 as the founding year.

A Lab on Fire debuted in April 2011 at Colette, the Paris concept store that operated from 1997 to 2017. The brand says that every fragrance sold there was made and designed exclusively for the shop, with each bottle produced one by one. After three years of creating scents only for Colette, the label expanded into other stores in Europe and beyond.

The same year brought the release Parfumo calls the label's long-awaited "big hit": L'Anonyme ou OP-1475-A, created with Olivier Polge. Parfumo credits it to S-perfume and says its success led to the decision to market the fragrances professionally; the brand's own timeline places the 2011 launch under A Lab on Fire. What We Do In Paris Is Secret, a perfume by Dominique Ropion, followed in 2012.

S-perfume continued alongside the new label for some time. In 2014 its collection received what the brand describes as a full makeover, with six new perfumes by well-known perfumers. The heritage page dates the A Lab on Fire period to 2011–2018. S-perfume itself was discontinued in 2022, and the company says its legacy now continues under WWDIS.

The move to the present name came with a change of direction. By the brand's account, it had come to feel "stretched thin" and missed the earlier days of open-ended experimentation, when it made scents that might appeal to everyone or to no one at all. It "headed west to begin again", selling fragrances old and new directly to customers, and launched WHAT WE DO IS SECRET in the United States in 2021 [10]. The company says the new name gave it full freedom to release exclusive packaging and new creations, and that the business grew quickly during the pandemic.

Parfumo's version of events frames the change as a complete rebranding, with new fragrances, new production methods and new spaces, through which the label gained independence and autonomy. Parfumo gives the name in this phase as What We Do In Paris Is Secret. The house has also exhibited at the Pitti Fragranze trade fair under the name What We Do In Paris, in the fair's 23rd edition [14].

No parent company is documented, and the house has been described as independent since its rebranding. Its European web shop is operated by THE 7C GROUP, a French simplified joint-stock company (SAS) that trades under the name WHAT WE DO IS SECRET. The company is registered in Nanterre and has its registered office in Levallois-Perret [7]. On its website the operator presents itself as WWDIS Europe, and a separate shop serves customers in the United States.

This leaves the brand with a divided nationality. The company calls itself born in America and traces its roots to Brooklyn, and Parfumo lists it as American [11]. Its European operating company, however, is French, its perfumes are made in France, and its stated plan to relocate to Paris would move its base there as well.

The house builds its identity around secrecy and restraint. On its website it describes itself as "a contemporary perfume house composing small-batch extraits and Monoscent with restraint", and says its craft is built on "what remains unsaid". The same text speaks of "fewer notes, truer moments" and of scents "composed to be lived, not explained". A short manifesto page, which the company calls The Code, consists of a single line: "Art doesn't have to make us feel good, but perfume does."

That approach shows in how the perfumes are named and presented. Many carry long, sentence-like titles, such as Messy Sexy Just Rolled Out of Bed, And The World Is Yours and A Blvd. Called Sunset. The product descriptions read like brief scenes rather than lists of notes; A Blvd. Called Sunset, for instance, is introduced with the Santa Ana winds blowing down the boulevard.

On ethics, the company states that all of its products are vegan, with no animal-derived ingredients, and that neither it nor its suppliers carry out animal testing [5]. No third-party certifications are documented.

The range is built mainly on extraits de parfum and eaux de parfum. The current line-up includes Studio Particulier, A Blvd. Called Sunset, Je M'en Fous, Paris LA, Made in Heaven, Covert Musk, Freckled and Beautiful and L'Anonyme, alongside the older What We Do In Paris Is Secret and Messy Sexy Just Rolled Out of Bed. Studio Particulier, an extrait, is introduced on the company's homepage with the line "In Paris, there are addresses you don't find twice."

Monoscent G sits slightly apart from the rest. The brand presents it as a scent that works on its own or underneath another fragrance, saying that worn alone "it captivates" and worn beneath another "it deepens and defines".

According to the brand's perfumers page, Dominique Ropion is behind And The World Is Yours, Messy Sexy Just Rolled Out of Bed and What We Do In Paris Is Secret. Parfumo lists a wider circle of contributors across the catalogue, including David Apel, Emilie Bevierre-Coppermann, Jean-Marc Chaillan, Laurent Le Guernec, Mackenzie Reilly, Sophia Grojsman, Alberto Morillas, Annick Ménardo, Bruno Jovanovic, Carlos Benaïm, Maurice Roucel, Pascal Gaurin and Thierry Wasser, as well as the fragrance supplier IFF.

What We Do In Paris Is Secret is one of the better-documented perfumes. Kafkaesque described it as an eau de parfum, classified elsewhere as a fruity floral, and listed its notes as bergamot, honey, lychee, Turkish rose, tonka bean, vanilla, heliotrope, tolu, sandalwood, ambergris and musks. The reviewer found it too simple for personal taste, but noted that many fans of sweet, gourmand scents liked it and had compared it with Luctor et Emergo by The Peoples of the Labyrinths and with Kenzo's Amour.

Parfumo counts 26 perfumes from the brand with a known release year, the first in 2011. The busiest years were 2011, 2012 and 2014, with three releases each, and over the past decade the pace has averaged about one new perfume a year. Musk is by far the most common note in the catalogue, appearing in around 62% of its perfumes, followed by bergamot and vanilla [11].

The heritage page quotes Luca Turin in 2005: "I started thinking this might be a surf-king version of Frédéric Malle." The brand also reports that in 2008, in Perfumes: The Guide, Turin and Tania Sanchez rated two of the three S-perfume fragrances as five-star masterpieces [10].

Later coverage has come mostly from the specialist perfume world. Kafkaesque summed up What We Do In Paris Is Secret in 2013 as "Fluffy, clean, powdery, gourmand, and very young" [13]. On Parfumo, the brand's perfumes hold an average community rating of 7.1 out of 10 from 1,402 ratings.

What We Do Is Secret is active. Its European web shop carries the current line-up with a 2026 copyright notice in the name of WWDIS Europe, a US shop operates alongside it, and the perfumes remain stocked by Luckyscent. The brand maintains Instagram and TikTok accounts under the name wwdisparfum. As of 2026, the company said it was preparing to relocate from America to Paris.