The respectable Omani House of niche perfumery Amouage, represented in the perfume network Aromateque, is gaining almost viral fame. Behind this is Amouage's creative director Renaud Salmon. He invented the technology of double infusion, when the ingredients for perfumes are aged in oak barrels for six months. And also – skillfully and brilliantly prepares the historical heritage of Amouage and changes the usual perception of fragrances. He gave a long interview to Ukrainian Vogue
“How do you usually describe perfumes? – Top notes, heart notes, base notes. It's like saying: 'This jacket is 50% wool and 50% cotton.' Does that tell you anything? No. You don't know its cut, its shape, its stiffness. I try to talk about fragrances through textures, vibrations, colors, patina. I try to connect what we smell with geometry. It's much more intuitive. We need to change the way we talk about perfumes,” says Amouage creative director Renaud Salmon.
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Strikingly tall at 2.04, reserved and gifted with a sharp mind, he certainly makes an impression. We meet in Copenhagen, the world capital of design, where the level of aesthetics around is simply off the charts. In a world where all perfume launches take place in Paris, Renaud Salmon has invited media and influencers to Denmark. All for the sake of a complex immersive experience – not only olfactory, but also tactile, visual, auditory and auditory.
The day before, we explore the city on foot and by car, then visit the Designmuseum Denmark, where design is revealed as a way of thinking through materials, proportions, and interaction with space.
About the 360° experience at Alchemist
In the evening, everyone can enjoy a stunning experience at the two-Michelin-starred Alchemist restaurant, which is booked three months in advance. Its chef, Rasmus Munch, was named one of the best chefs in the world by The Best Chef Awards in 2025.
The dinner lasts 5 hours and includes at least 25 takeaway dishes, each of which is accompanied by striking storytelling. For example, chicken feet with a “manicure” are a call to look at the problem of birds being raised in cages, rather than free-range; flowers made of agar “plastic” are a call to think about ocean pollution. A “windshield” with flowers and “smashed insect mucus” is a hint that the world's insect population is disappearing.
We rotate through three locations within the restaurant, and in one evening I try Belgian caviar; butterflies; a dessert with deer blood; grilled pigeon; lamb brains; Tasmanian honey candy with ants in the middle.
There is no pathos in the dishes, but there is a lot of irony, sarcasm, and attempts to “shake” the bourgeois calm of the visitors. What is the value of the dishes for serving one of the dishes in the shape of an eye socket with blood vessels and capillaries “showing through” on the rounded glass surface.
This is an allusion to Orwell's “1984” and his “Big Brother is Watching You.” At one point, thanks to the video mapping on the Alchemist's infinity dome, these giant eye sockets start rolling down from the sky, filling everything around. When I try to recognize the music that accompanies it in the Shazam app, I can't do it – everything that happens in Alchemist stays in Alchemist.
The menu and performance were curated by Reno himself. “Usually at events they try to please the press as much as possible to make the experience pleasant. – I wanted you to feel something and for it to be unexpected.” He says that chef Rasmus, known for his daring experiments, even suggested simplifying the menu so that guests would not feel uncomfortable.
But Renault was adamant. “I want to provoke emotions, because that's what we live for. That's what perfume is for.” Apparently, he's absolutely right: in 2025, Amouage recorded a record 66% increase in sales.
About family and education
Reno was born in Belgium, “in a simple family, living among cows and fields.” His entire family always lived in the same village; his brother still lives there. When Reno announced to his parents at the age of 12 that he wanted to become a fashion designer, they were shocked: “What, are you doing drugs? Where did we go wrong?”
“It didn’t fit their values,” says Renaud. “But I was convinced that I wanted to inspire people, to do something amazing.” However, first, to please his doctor parents, he had to get an education – brilliant. He entered one of the best business schools in the world, HEC Liège, at the University of Liège, and received a master’s degree in economics.
He began to express himself through photography and working with materials. “One of my first jobs was at Delvaux (a luxury handbag brand – Ed. note), where I was responsible for purchasing exotic leather from all over the world. I fell in love with these precious materials. And then I got the chance to work with fragrances as well.”
Renault has been in the luxury industry for 20 years. He worked at LVMH, then promoted fragrances for Dolce&Gabbana, Alexander McQueen and Marc Jacobs, and finally landed at Amouage in 2019. Since then, Amouage, previously associated with heavy, almost baroque compositions, has gained fame as a house of luxurious, intellectual perfumery. Very fashionable, very desirable, very expensive.
About the velvet revolution at Amouage
The quantum leap did not happen overnight. First, Salmon released the Renaissance collection (2020). Four fragrances (Enclave, Crimson Rocks, Ashore, Meander), dedicated to the nature of Oman, seem to have contained a maximum of light and space. Instead of a dense “wall” of resins, oud and incense, mineral notes, fresh spices and marine shades appeared.
Guidance was released in 2003, and Salmon entrusted one of the most famous perfumers of our time, Quentin Bich, to create it. The scent went viral. It combined the classic elegance of Amouage with modern gourmand trends (notes of hazelnut, pear and osmanthus plus the trendy akigalawood).
Later, Salmon introduced the Exceptional Extraits line, where he reinterpreted the House's well-known fragrances, bringing their concentration of aromatic substances to an unimaginable 56% (for comparison, classic Eau de Parfum contains 15–20%).
About copy protection
“In a world where copies and mass launches are everywhere, I asked myself: what is impossible to copy? What is true luxury?” Thus, in 2024, The Essences collection appeared in new, sand-swept, beige textured bottles. It was an attempt to rethink the very idea of fragrance as a category through time, as the ingredients are aged using a double infusion method for six months.
About the deficit
Demand for new perfumes can exceed supply. “Normally, shortages in perfumery are artificial: they happen when a brand decides to make a limited edition of a fragrance,” explains Reno. “But when it takes seven months to create a single batch of perfume (six months of aging plus related processes), demand is hard to predict.”
Such luxury is not available to all brands, explains Reno. For such experiments, resources are needed: at least, the presence of their own production (after all, most brands outsource production), the ability to take their time, money. Interestingly, following Amouage, other perfume houses borrowed the technology of aging perfume ingredients. Thus, Reno set a global trend.
About double infusion technology, failures and successes
Like many beautiful things in this world (Champagne, for example), the double infusion process came about almost by accident – through a mistake. “My original idea was to put the perfume in an oak barrel, add small sandalwood chips and let them infuse to create a complex woody infusion.”
But when they did, they noticed: the barrels were leaking. It's because the aromatic oils are too fluid and seep through the wood. “It was a complete disaster,” admits Renault. He remembers seeing the barrels leaking. “We were looking at the surveillance cameras and clutching our heads. I felt the pressure of defeat.” And it was this pressure that forced him to hack the system.
He came up with the idea of separating the oil concentrate and the ethyl alcohol. That's what they did: the alcohol in an oak barrel, the concentrate with sandalwood chips in a metal vat nearby. And everything worked perfectly.
“You have to keep an eye on the process and check the progress every week,” Salmon explains. “The result is a very rounded and smooth scent. It also adds a woody ‘veil’ that you feel physically rather than discerning as a separate note.”
About synesthesia and Einstein's theory
Reno thinks in complex categories. For the past two years, he has studied Einstein's theories, looked at time from a mathematical perspective. He delved into Arabic architecture, the importance of geometric patterns and how they relate to time through shadows and quadrants.
“Some say it's synesthesia, but for me it's just logic,” he says. In Salmon's universe, even letters have smells and vibrations. “The letter 'A' is sharp,” he explains. The letter 'S' is fluid, which is why 'Sequence' starts with an S: I couldn't call this scent a word with the letter A.”
But “Line 618” is a straight line.
“But people don't usually associate perfume with mathematical rigor,” I say without hesitation. “And here you have a line, a circle, a dot… Why do perfumes have this structure?” “I like to explore themes that are usually not touched upon in perfumery – instead, they operate in the categories of temptation or success,” Reno notes. “Geometry is something completely different. Building a narrative around something minimalistic, like a dot, a circle or a line, seems uncharacteristic of Amouage. But I want to show: it is an entrance into something infinite.”
About luxury
We're talking about luxury as the legacy of Amouage. “Generosity and luxury are not necessarily gold and ornaments,” says Reno. “It's a philosophy. Even something rough, experimental can be generous and luxurious in its energy.”
“People usually associate craft with old school. I want to do craft, but with a modern aesthetic. Even my bottles don't look like wooden barrels – they have a modern, even slightly brutal, dystopian look. I love the idea of being a house with heritage, but with a beginner's mindset,” says Reno.
About passion
“I have a belief that I can bring something new to perfumery, even if it has existed for thousands of years. I remain that child who fell in love with perfume while watching the commercial for Jean-Paul Goude's “Egoiste”. I looked at my mother then and thought: “Mom, you could be in this commercial, you are so beautiful”. My parents are gone (they almost simultaneously got cancer and passed away – Ed. Note), my brother lives a different life, and I still follow that childhood passion.”
About the drive
Reno admits that losing his parents made him realize how short life is. “I want to feel something I've never felt before: a little chaos, a little excitement, maybe even being on the edge. That's what fuels me. I don't believe in balance. The things I'm most proud of in life didn't come from balance, but when I was going all the way, losing my mind. I need to feel like I'm on the edge and I could fall. That's what drives me.”