Perfumer

Thierry Wasser

Guerlain's in-house perfumer since 2008, creator of La Petite Robe Noire and Mon Guerlain

Nationality: Swiss
Born: 1961 · Montreux, Switzerland
Training: Federal Diploma of Botany; Givaudan perfumery school
House: Guerlain

In our database
24
fragrances
Active since
1985
Houses
7
worked with
Recognition
1
award

Thierry Wasser was born in 1961 in Montreux, Switzerland, where an early fascination with plants led him to earn a Federal Diploma in Botany before he turned twenty. That grounding in natural science carried directly into perfumery: he trained at the Givaudan perfumery school, working through an apprenticeship under the house's senior noses, and was promoted to full perfumer status by his mid-twenties.

In 1993 Wasser joined Firmenich, where he spent over a decade as a house perfumer, forming a particularly productive partnership with perfumer Annick Ménardo on a run of commercial releases before later working out of New York.

In 2008, at age 47, Wasser was named in-house perfumer of Guerlain, succeeding Jean-Paul Guerlain and becoming only the fifth person — and the first from outside the Guerlain family — to hold that role since the house's founding in 1828. His first fragrance for Guerlain, Idylle, appeared in 2009, and he went on to build a large body of work for the house that includes La Petite Robe Noire, Mon Guerlain, and entries in the ongoing Aqua Allegoria and Les Absolus d'Orient lines, alongside responsibility for reformulating heritage classics such as Shalimar and L'Heure Bleue. Outside Guerlain, he has also composed fragrances for houses including Christian Dior, Lancôme, Diesel, and Jil Sander.

Wasser is known for folding Guerlain's traditional Guerlinade accord — bergamot, rose, iris, tonka bean, and vanilla — into contemporary compositions, and for spending months of each year traveling to raw-material sourcing regions such as Madagascar, Bulgaria, and India to work directly with growers and distillers. In late 2014 he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in recognition of his contribution to French perfumery.