About us..
Parfums Vintage entered the fragrance industry in 2016 as a result of the founder and perfumer Damien Stammers being disillusioned with the often unnecessary reformulations of classic fragrances. Household named Eau De Toilette's and Parfums that are reformulated due to ingredients rising in prices, desirable notes and their concentrations reduced to prioritise profits for shareholders. Batch variations casually shrugged off as "seasonal variations of the naturals" when other fragrances that are high in naturals don't share the wild batch variations.
Ingredient restrictions that are all too often political decisions proliferate IFRA in the EU.
It is no coincidence that Parfums Vintage is positioned outside of the EU with formulations that have no expense spared, naturally are cruelty free, free of phthalates and parabens.
Damien explains how he is in a unique position. "We had the will from day one to offer a high quality alternative. In the perfume industry this is far from assumed.
Most of the world's perfumers simply don't have free will. They are bound by budget limitations on ingredients with typically 40% of the fragrance budget assigned to marketing of the fragrance. Add the retail margins and it can make the finest ingredients off limits on the perfumers palette. Optimal ingredients are replaced with the inferior, multiplied over dozens of lines of formula, the results can be stark. Invariably the perfumer has to formulate and produce a parfum with the brief, budget and the time required to produce the initial trials of the perfume being set by accountants who have one eye on the quarterlies. Indeed, the perfumer may even have formulated the perfect composition that never actually sees the light of day due to external factors and its not long before the perfumer is then ushered onto the next fragrance brief.
In 2022 alone, we made almost five thousand trials on new product formulations as a result of heavily investing in new proprietary captive molecules. We expanded our palette of natural ingredients and procurement extends to the industry specialists Payan Bertrand, IFF's LMR, Robertet, Bontoux, Albert Veille and independent artisan producers. At heart we are fragrance lovers. We exist to offer the very best quality."
The result is a fine fragrance which has dozens of the highest grade ingredients at optimal ratios with layer upon layer of desirable rich notes. "Many of our customers came to know us only after a passerby wearing one of our fragrances made such an impression to strike up a conversation, an interaction of the curious to ask which fragrance is being worn. As a result, we have had organic growth with modest marketing campaigns and the investment goes back into what is important, the ingredients.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
“It is not a heavy birch tar, smokey, or campfire accord that dominates or overwhelms the fragrance. There is simply a light hint of these deeper accords that blends very well with the rest of the fragrance”