Our portraits
Galimard, a family company
In the 1920s, Siméon Roux, a Great War veteran and Knight of Agricultural Merit, was cultivating the precious orange and jasmine blossoms for the great perfumeries of Grasse. His son, Joseph Roux, having spent his childhood in his father’s flower fields and then been educated as a chemical engineer, decided to set up a distillery in Gourdon, a medieval village in the Grasse Country, and to give life back to the Jean de Galimard story by opening up a perfumery in the heart of Grasse.
Having become general manager by the age of 25, Jean-Pierre Roux skillfully carried on the position of Designer Perfumer. With the help of his three sisters, Martine, Elizabeth, and Geneviève and his wife Chantal, they made Galimard shine out, demonstrating their ancestral Grassian know-how in the Haute Perfumerie industry, and sharing that know-how with the ever more numerous visitors.
Their family values of tradition, sharing, and quality are carried on by the new generation that has taken over the business.
Constantly innovating, and with a ready ear for its customers and partners, the passion that the family has for Galimard has never wavered.
Photo: Cédrick Guilbaud, Delphine Roux, Jean-Pierre Roux, Stéphane Roux
Our Perfumer
Musk, amber, jasmine, rose, or wood: in the land of scents, the perfumer (also known as “the nose”) is king. They know thousands of scents and are able to analyze the fragrance of a product and attest to its quality. After a few years of practicing, once they have identified and memorized the basic raw materials that go into perfume composition, they are eligible to become a designer, combining scents the way a composer combines notes of music. It is up to them to select the products (both natural and synthetic) and dominant note and then to combine the essences until the juice is achieved. Perfume formulas contain dozens of different components, the doses of which are determined based on how powerful they are, as well as according to the desired results. Studies sometimes take a very long time, and certain perfumes require, for great ones for instance, several years to perfect! Some perfumers work independently for different brands; our Perfumer works exclusively for our House.
Since childhood, Yusuke Masuda had had a dream: to live in France and become a perfumer. In May 2019, he left Japan and his sales job for a beverage manufacturing company. He discovered the Alpes Maritimes and fell in love with the region’s fragrances: orange blossom, fig, rose, jasmine, thyme, rosemary and many others. He decided to settle on the Côte d’Azur and pursue his dream of creating perfumes. After self-training, he joined Galimard in 2021 as a Junior Perfumer, while continuing his training. Graduating in 2023, Yusuke Masuda puts his experience and knowledge into practice, creating fragrances for Galimard and its customers.
Just as Japanese art, particularly prints, influenced Impressionists such as Monet and Cézanne in the late 19th century, Yusuke wants to enrich our creations with new influences born of the fusion of French and Japanese cultures.