You'll Want to Keep These Luxury Perfumes for Life — and You Can

With the ability to not only evoke deep memories but also create new ones, there are few beauty products as personal as fragrance.

And with a plethora of products on the market, from designer collections to indie brands, and every celebrity scent in between, it can be difficult to narrow down your signature scent. You know, the one you want people to always remember you by.

Henry Jacques perfumes has long understood the importance of making fragrance personal. Beginning in 1975, Henry Cremona, the founder of the brand, jet-set across the globe to discover unforgettable notes and create custom fragrances for his private clientele. Then, in 2010, his daughter, Anne-Lise Cremona, became CEO and not only wanted to carry on with the bespoke tradition, but offer consumers an elevated and unique retail experience as well.

"Creating a bespoke is really something very interesting because you enter into the lives of your clients and they follow you for years," the businesswoman shares with InStyle. "You create a faithful relationship, and it pushes you to keep those high standards."

With that in mind, Anne-Lise worked alongside French interior designer and Henry Jacques' Artistic Director, Christophe Tollemer, to open 10 boutiques across the globe, including the unforgettable US-based shop, located at 204 N Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Here, at each of these locations, customers can experience the Classic fragrances and the rich history of the brand.

"All the 50 Classics are from the bespoke — they are a part of the history and I know all of them so well," Anne-Lise told me over tea at Henry Jacques' Paris boutique. "The difficulty for me was to reduce to 50 for the first collection ... [and I had to think] how do I visualize the future of the perfume? But I was convinced there was a need for luxury."

To shop: $633; Henry Jacques boutiques

While visiting the French boutique, I had the opportunity to get a 1:1 fragrance consultation. And although it was a (beautiful) struggle to go through about a million notes to find my ideal scent, I ended up going with Temporaline, a fragrance essence with top notes of ylang-ylang and rose centifolia; middle notes of lily of the valley, carnation, and lilac; and base notes of iris, cedar wood, and white musk.

Together, they create a gorgeous, clean, and airy aroma that continues to evolve throughout the day, making the scent all the more personal. It reminded me not only of the days between spring and summer, when plants are in full bloom, but also of a fresh start; a clean slate. It's what I wanted to smell like to start my day.

Despite the luxury pricing, you can think of owning a bottle of Henry Jacques perfume more like an investment than a splurge. The essences come in pure form, meaning there's no alcohol in the formulas, resulting in a longer-lasting scent with less juice. And with proper care, these fragrances are ones you can hold onto forever.

"The ingredients are [naturally] sourced from all over the world — all types of cultures, stories, passions," Anne-Lise shares. "So long as you keep the bottle out of sun, heat, and light, they can last forever. Some of my perfumes, I've had for over 20 years."

VIDEO: An Expert's Guide to Finding Your Signature Scent

The fragrance expert has kept the family tradition of bespoke fragrances alive, while also offering a retail experience to a whole new set of consumers for over a decade. But Anne-Lise is in no rush to conform to today's expectations of producing a new fragrance in a set cadence. In fact, she rejects that notion entirely as far as her business is concerned.

"I'm not in a hurry," she says frankly. "I don't expect [Henry Jacques] to be in every corner, that's not the goal. From what I observe, when you're everywhere all at once, what do you do next? What happens next? You get forgotten about."

And with nearly half a century of tradition and the legacy that's left behind, why wouldn't she continue to play the long game? Especially when you're in the business of creating fragrances that last a lifetime.

The Splurge is our recurring column dedicated to expensive beauty products that are worth it. This week, why we're rebuying Henry Jacques' Temporaline fragrance despite the $633 price tag.