Wilgermain

Wilgermain is a Spanish fragrance house founded by Francisco Gratacós and based in Caldes de Montbui, in the province of Barcelona. Its perfumes were created with the Mexican-born perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux, and its name joins two neighbourhoods where the founder once lived: Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Saint-Germain in Paris. The independent perfume critic Persolaise dates the launch to 2020 [10], while the company's own founder page describes the brand as "launched early 2022" [5]. By 2023 it had released ten eaux de parfum.

The brand is dormant. Its website last carried brand content in November 2024, and the domain was later taken over by an unrelated site before going offline altogether. No source reports that the company has closed.

Gratacós came to perfumery from outside the industry. According to the brand's account of his career, he studied law and later psychology, started out in his family's real-estate business and moved in the early 2000s to a multinational in luxury construction materials. Through that work he met the Monegal family, fourth-generation Spanish perfumers, who asked him to build their new luxury perfume brand. The company says that under his management the Monegal brand reached more than 40 countries and 150 retailers within three years. He then led other Spanish niche brands, including a 2017 special edition created with the Kennedy family in memory of Bob Kennedy, with part of the revenue going to the RFK Human Rights foundation.

Wilgermain grew out of that experience. The company presents it as an attempt to fuse the two ways of living, and the two schools of perfumery, that Gratacós had encountered as a student in Paris and later as a professional in New York. He chose not to put his own name on the brand, the founder page explains, because he was not a trained perfumer. Instead he asked his friend Rodrigo Flores-Roux to develop the first fragrances with him [3]. Gratacós's wife, Gemma, is described as working alongside him with clients and suppliers.

The founding date is reported differently. Persolaise wrote in April 2022 that "in 2020, Spaniard Francisco Gratacos launched his very own perfume brand" [10]. The brand's founder page, as it stood in 2023, instead says Wilgermain was "launched early 2022" and was by then present in 50 countries and 140 retail doors [5]. The 2022 wording appears to describe the retail roll-out rather than the company's creation: the fragrance databases Parfumo and Fragrantica both date the first six releases to 2020 [11] [12]. This article follows 2020.

Those first six eaux de parfum were Aquafortis, Inconfessable, More is More, Passion Victim, Possession and Radianza. Among the retailers the company named during its roll-out were Saks Fifth Avenue in New York, Breuninger in Germany, La Rinascente in Rome, and Harrods and Harvey Nichols in England; these placements are self-reported.

In 2023 the brand added a second line, the Ingredients collection, with four scents: Bois Barbare, Fleur à l'Extrême, Rose Revenge and So Suede. Neither database lists a later release.

Wilgermain calls itself a luxury fragrance house and names its values as "excellence, craftsmanship and timelessness". It says it aims to balance originality with wearability, drawing on the "avant-garde atmosphere" of Williamsburg and the classic refinement of the Paris Left Bank. The founder's vision, as the company phrases it, was an "accessible luxury brand" for all cultures and ages, appealing to millennials as well as older buyers, with fragrances that are original but not hard to understand. Its tagline was "We make the fragrance, you write the story."

Flores-Roux gave Persolaise a similar account, saying the house was meant to have a classical aesthetic that avoids anything strange or unrefined. Fragrantica classifies Wilgermain as a niche designer and lists all ten perfumes as unisex; the brand's own word was "genderless".

The original six fragrances work within familiar perfume structures. Persolaise named chypre, amber and citrus among them and picked out two highlights: Passion Victim, which he called "a love child of Shalimar and Calvin Klein Obsession", and More Is More, "an opulent, leathery rose" [10]. On its later homepage the brand promoted Rose Revenge, Passion Victim, Aquafortis, So Suede and Possession as its best sellers.

The Ingredients collection takes a different approach. According to the brand, each of its four perfumes is built around a single main raw material that gives the scent its name, framed by supporting accords. Rose Revenge centres on rose, Bois Barbare on what the company calls exotic woods from the Middle East, So Suede on leather, and Fleur à l'Extrême on a mix of flowers.

Flores-Roux is credited as the nose on every release [12]. The brand's biography of him says he was born in Mexico, studied biology, trained at the ISIPCA perfumery school in Versailles with an internship under Jean-Claude Ellena, and has received several FiFi Awards. The same page describes him as Vice President of Fragrance Creation at Givaudan, and Wilgermain states that it develops all of its perfumes exclusively with Givaudan [6].

Packaging received as much attention as the scents, in the company's telling. The bottles are hand-finished Italian glass, topped with a hand-polished cap of Zamak-5, a zinc alloy, shaped to recall the bolts that hold together the Brooklyn Bridge and the Eiffel Tower. The design is credited to the Spanish brand and product designer Luis Blanc.

The company's environmental statements are its own, and no third-party certifications are documented. It says it works only with European suppliers and local artisanal manufacturers and uses recycled and recyclable materials. Its account of where the perfumes are made changed over time. A 2021 legal notice said all products were "manufactured and conditioned by hand in Spain" [7], while a 2024 brand page said they were produced "in both Europe and the USA" by traditional artisans [2].

The only independent review is Persolaise's brand showcase of 22 April 2022, based on samples supplied by the brand. The critic, who had earlier discussed the six scents in an episode of his video series, concluded that "the brand is a success". No awards for Wilgermain itself are documented.

Wilgermain is dormant. The last brand-owned web content dates from November 2024, when the site still carried a 2024 copyright line and presented the Ingredients collection as new. The domain then lapsed: in March 2025 it served an unrelated Vietnamese online-betting page [9], and as of October 2026 it no longer resolves. The brand's Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest accounts were linked from its site, but their current activity is unknown. No closure has been announced.