Perfume of Empire

Parfum d'Empire is an independent French perfume house founded in 2002 by Marc-Antoine Corticchiato, perfumer and doctor of chemistry. Born in Morocco, of Corsican origin, he grew up between his parents' orange groves in Azemmour and the island's maquis, in the family home in the village of Cuttoli Corticchiato. A passionate horseman since the age of eight, he is not a perfumer who learned to use raw materials: he is a scientist who analyzed them for years before making them speak. The name of the house refers to the empire of the senses, the conviction that perfume does not only appeal to the sense of smell, but to all the senses at once. Perfume must be a conquest, be it amorous, spiritual, or a conquest of oneself. His vision takes him back to the very origin of perfume: eroticism and the sacred, the two dimensions that all civilizations have recognized in it. His compositions are powerful, built without superfluous elements, with a precision serving raw emotion. He draws from a repertoire of rare and complex raw materials, often little used elsewhere, chosen for their olfactory truth rather than their accessibility. Ambre Russe evokes the last tsars. Cuir Ottoman crosses the Orient. Azemour les Orangers revives his childhood Mediterranean. Corsica Furiosa and Tabac Tabou earned him two Fifi Awards in 2015 and 2016, the equivalent of the Oscars of perfumery. A house entirely free, entirely singular, entirely itself.