Phaedon Paris is a French perfumery house founded in the mid-2000s by two Parisian aesthetes, keen travelers and enthusiasts of ancient cultures. Its name was carefully chosen: Phaedo of Elis, a Greek slave born in 400 BC, taken prisoner during the war between Elis and Sparta. Ransomed by a friend of Socrates, he was serving at table one evening when, in response to a guest's question, he was overheard by Socrates himself. Phaedo would later give his name to one of Plato's most famous dialogues. It is this emblem, that of freedom conquered by intelligence and beauty, that the house chose for its name. Phaedon's visual identity asserts the same depth: two Assyrian griffins taken from a bas-relief in Darius' palace, exhibited in the Louvre, crown the logo. The entire aesthetic claims what the house calls "baroque naturalism," a colorful alliance of Etruscan motifs, fig leaves, irises and reeds, and a dreamlike bestiary between the Mediterranean and Asia, laid out like a travel diary crossed with an Art Deco botanical plate. Since the early 2010s, the perfumes have been produced under the artistic direction of perfumer Pierre Guillaume, in his workshops in France. A house that composes its fragrances as one brings back rare objects from a journey: with memory, precision, and a keen sense of what is unlike anything else.
