PROFILES

“At that instant I realised I could no longer backtrack.”

Some destinies are so perfect as to seem more the work of a storyteller’s imagination than real life. This November, Sonia Godet, a smart, light-haired young woman with a dazzling smile, celebrated her 30th birthday. So far so normal. But Sonia’s ‘thing’ is perfume. In fact she is a Nose, and by more than vocation too, for her practice of perfumery is not solely the expression of a passion. An atavism, we might call it, since Sonia’s great-grandfather was a Nose, as was her grandfather. In fact, the story of Godet fragrances is an integral part of French fine-perfumery history. Flashback to the Côte d’Azur in 1901, an era of crinolines and sunshades. Julien-Joseph Godet opened his eponymous perfume house, using high-quality rare local ingredients to compose exceptional fragrances inspired by his artist friends, for example Fleur de Reine for Pierre Bonnard’s wife, Marthe, and Folie Bleue for Matisse’s muse Henriette. Fast forward to 2017. Sonia revived this fine enterprise, dormant for half a century, by opening a showcase boutique in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, where the story had begun. A preordained move for this well-established professional who had notably developed a range of exclusive perfumes for the North American market at Cartier. “In 2015 I found a collection of old perfume bottles still containing Godet fragrances in one of my grandfather’s cupboards.” It was like opening Pandora’s Box. “At that instant I realised I could no longer backtrack.” Things moved fast. Sonia left Hawaii where she had been living for two years, returned to Saint-Paul and set about resuscitating the House of Godet through a dual strategy of reissuing the perfumery’s great classics in their original formulas, and commercialising her own creations. Always with the aim of continuing the work begun a century previously, in other words to make each perfume an artwork honed in every detail (hand-blown bottles, hand-engraved medallions, etc.) and so paying homage to French artisan knowhow.

Par Alexandre Benoist / Photo Sordello