Auvergne, Brittany, Provence...
Léa captures France's landscapes in fragrance
For nearly four years, Léa Chonier (pictured), a 28-year-old from Auvergne, has been creating fragrances for men and women inspired by the French regions. Poécile, her brand, is even winning over customers abroad!
A whiff of forest freshness, notes of narcissus and undergrowth lightly enhanced by pink berries. That's what you get when you smell Eden Volcanique, Poécile's first creation. The fragrance was born a few years ago from the imagination of Léa Chonier. The bewitching result of a quest for meaning and a return to our roots.
Curiosity as a guide
It all begins in 2020, during the confinement period. Léa, then an employee of a major CAC40 group in Paris, retreats, like many others, to her native village of Saint-Rémy-sur-Durolle, in the Puy-de-Dôme region. A graduate of Sciences Po and a business school, she telecommutes and takes walks in the forest during her breaks. Nature reconnected me with my memories when, as a teenager, I wanted to escape the countryside," she recalls. Surprisingly, it was through my nose! The smells of moss, dew and her grandmother's vegetable garden awakened in her a desire for change. "These lands of Auvergne were perfuming my mind. I've always loved perfumes, especially the idea of olfactory journeys. It was this revelation that prompted her to leave Paris for good to live in Saint-Rémy, and to accept this rather crazy idea: to create a perfume house to capture the soul of France's regions in bottles.
Giving regions an olfactory identity
Naturally, Léa made Auvergne her first muse. Meetings, expert research, business model... It wasn't easy at first, but this inquisitive jack-of-all-trades soon succeeded in getting her project off the ground. With the help of talented young noses from the Maelstrom laboratory in Paris, she created Eden Volcanique, a singular fragrance that smells of narcissus, harvested in the Auvergne region of France. Since then, five other fragrances have seen the light of day, each paying tribute to a region close to her heart: Arcadie Florale (Provence), Bleu Asgard (Brittany), Mont Cristal (Alps), Hespérides Idylliques (Côte d'Azur), and Rose Lutèce, in honor of Paris. "To create these eaux de parfum, I drew inspiration from my vacation memories, colors and moods...with the aim of creating fragrances for everyone that are different from what you find in conventional stores.
Local, responsible manufacturing
And we like it! In three and a half years, Poécile has tactfully taken the scents of the French countryside on the road. Léa has sold 15,000 fragrances, winning over foreign markets such as Vietnam. Her creations can be found in 20 countries worldwide! This does not prevent Léa from keeping part of her production in Saint-Rémy. "I have my offices and workshop here. Maceration, filtering and labeling are all done here. I even insisted on having the name of my village on the packaging, whereas I was advised to put ‘Paris’ for prestige and export, like many brands." Léa refuses. An ethical and local choice that she also cultivates by sourcing her labels from Orléans and her bottles from Normandy.
Family and projects
Finally, to hear Léa tell it, Poécile's story wouldn't be so far advanced without the support of those closest to her. "My partner and my parents give me a hand in running the business. If I now have a work-study student and a trainee, I know in my heart that their understanding and their presence carry me forward. And I can tell you that my grandmother is going to be very proud of me with this article, because she's a faithful reader of Nous Deux!" smiles Léa. It's a wonderful, collective adventure, with no end in sight. A new region will be perfumed in October, then two more in 2025. What will their names be? “I'm still keeping a bit of a mystery, but what I can tell you is that I'm also working on a range of home fragrances.” Clearly. Poécile hasn't finished traveling...
More information on poecile.fr