Founded by Alice and Pierre-Jr in 2023, Notes de Bas de Paje is a Parisian brand that creates fragrances like fragments of stories, revealing the hidden details of the narratives we live and write. Like the footnotes that enrich a text, their scents take us beyond the surface, inviting us to explore the subtleties and deeper layers that shape our stories.
This past March in Paris, we sat down with Alice and Pierre-Jr at Librairie Ephemera for a conversation on the language of smell. The following conversation is an excerpt from that exchange, moderated by jeanne-léopoldine claustre.
How did you come to create your brand, Notes de Bas de Paje?
Notes de Bas de Paje is the result of a major moment of reckoning. It’s the manifestation of a shared desire to start over from scratch and do what made us happy.
We met in the spring of 2020, just after the first lockdown ended. We had nothing in common—except that we were both preparing to take the bar exam that same year. Long story short, we holed up together from June to November 2020 to study. Coming out of that time, and once we were in law school, we realized two things: we make a great working duo, and we didn’t want to make a life in law. After countless sleepless nights, a burnout, and a massive wake-up call, we decided to create something together.
At first, it was more about escaping the box we had placed ourselves in—a box that didn’t suit us at all. The idea of perfume slowly took shape as we reflected on who we were, what we loved… It turned out that seven years of legal studies had made us forget that we were, at heart, creative people. And at the same time, those years taught us discipline and a strong work ethic. So, we decided to combine our passion, creativity, and background to create NOTES DE BAS DE PAJE (spelled paje instead of page, because P.A.J.E are our initials, rearranged).
We realized that perfume is a very particular art with both a creative dimension (for obvious reasons) and an intellectual one (because it's rooted in chemistry, with a pyramidal structure not unlike that of legal reasoning). It resonated with us completely.
At the same time, footnotes followed us throughout our legal training. They were about digging deeper, researching, explaining, referencing… The book as an object was central.
In a way, perfume is like a footnote. It’s a detail you might overlook at first, unless you choose to pay attention. When we meet someone, we first notice their presence—their style, their look, maybe even their voice—before we notice their scent. But that scent is the extra detail that reveals a bit more.
Unlike many French perfume houses, you come from outside the traditional world of perfumery. Given that this industry can be quite secretive and elitist, what was it like to enter this universe?
The perfume world is opaque and mysterious. We didn’t know anyone, had no expertise in the field, and so we felt a major sense of impostor syndrome at the beginning. It took time, and a lot of persistence, to understand how this very particular world works, and to figure out who to approach first.
Meeting our perfumers was a turning point. We clicked instantly, and they helped us feel legitimate in our process. But overall, we relied heavily on instinct and boldness, because the truth is: absolutely none of this was our world. Not perfume, not marketing, not business… We were outsiders in every sense. So we had to make do, use our heads, and accept that we didn’t know everything. We worked three times harder to catch up. Our motto was—and still is—to DO.
Of course, we made tons of mistakes since we were doing everything for the first time. But if you wait around for validation or legitimacy, you end up doing nothing and letting others create in your place. In any case, we had already left everything behind—so there was no Plan B.
Olfaction is the most instinctive of our senses, allowing us to link a smell to a memory. Removed from logic, the relationship between scent and language is complex. Your work explores the idea of perfume as a language, how do you think scent allows us to communicate?
Perfume is a universal language, a way to communicate without even speaking the same tongue. It carries emotion, evokes memories, sparks reactions. It’s a real mode of expression—beyond words. It’s a way of telling a story without speaking.
And there’s a true structure to perfume. A formula. The first step in creating a fragrance is writing, and it’s that writing that gives rhythm to the story.
It’s also fun to note that perfume is built in three acts: top notes are the introduction, heart notes are the body, and base notes are the conclusion.
Perfume is both intimate and social. How do you think the scents we wear communicate who we are to others?
Just like a footnote gives precise references and helps the reader better understand a text, the perfume we wear gives others an additional clue about our personality, our state of mind.
You often hear that a perfume “has character,” or that someone picks a scent “based on their mood.” Perfume indirectly reflects our inner complexity. Some people love consistency—they wear a single scent every day for years, even a lifetime. Others navigate between several perfumes. They may have their iconic or historic favorites, but they explore a range of scents.
There’s no judgment here, of course—it’s just striking how perfume can extend the versatility of our personalities.
Your brand treats perfume like a footnote, an element that deepens understanding and reveals hidden layers. In your view, how can fragrance deepen personal identity?
As we said earlier, perfume is one of the elements that make up our personality, our style. It’s a discreet detail, yet a powerful one. Just like the way we dress or wear our hair, scent speaks volumes about who we are—but also about who we want to be in the eyes of others, how we want to be perceived.
A footnote is subtle, often printed in smaller text than the body. It’s not invisible, but almost. Sometimes we skip over it because it’s complex, but we know that by doing so, we’re missing something. We get the gist, but not the full picture—we’re missing the references.
Perfume is to appearance what a footnote is to text: the defining detail that says everything, quietly. It’s what we express between the lines. It’s what we whisper.
Your brand is built on the idea of two voices, two perspectives coming together to create something meaningful. How does your collaboration influence your approach to olfactory creation?
Our creative approach is rooted in our duo—our first fragrance, Prolégomènes, is inspired by our meeting and the chapter we closed in order to write a new one together. The brand wouldn’t exist without the two of us. And it never would have been the initiative of just one.
At the same time, each of us has a distinct voice. We create and tell stories together, but it’s also a dialogue between us. We met rather late in life, and each of us lived many things apart from the other.
Prolégomènes is the beginning of “us,” the start of our story together.
Olatua is Alice telling Pierre-Jr about her childhood by the ocean, in a place far from where he grew up.
Towédé is Pierre introducing Alice to his mother, whom she’ll never get the chance to meet.
Olfaction is the most instinctive of our senses, allowing us to link a smell to a memory. Removed from logic, the relationship between scent and language is complex. Your work explores the idea of perfume as a language, how do you think scent allows us to communicate?
Perfume is a universal language, a way to communicate without even speaking the same tongue. It carries emotion, evokes memories, sparks reactions. It’s a real mode of expression—beyond words. It’s a way of telling a story without speaking.
And there’s a true structure to perfume. A formula. The first step in creating a fragrance is writing, and it’s that writing that gives rhythm to the story.
It’s also fun to note that perfume is built in three acts: top notes are the introduction, heart notes are the body, and base notes are the conclusion.
Perfume is both intimate and social. How do you think the scents we wear communicate who we are to others?
Just like a footnote gives precise references and helps the reader better understand a text, the perfume we wear gives others an additional clue about our personality, our state of mind.
You often hear that a perfume “has character,” or that someone picks a scent “based on their mood.” Perfume indirectly reflects our inner complexity. Some people love consistency—they wear a single scent every day for years, even a lifetime. Others navigate between several perfumes. They may have their iconic or historic favorites, but they explore a range of scents.
There’s no judgment here, of course—it’s just striking how perfume can extend the versatility of our personalities.
Your brand treats perfume like a footnote, an element that deepens understanding and reveals hidden layers. In your view, how can fragrance deepen personal identity?
As we said earlier, perfume is one of the elements that make up our personality, our style. It’s a discreet detail, yet a powerful one. Just like the way we dress or wear our hair, scent speaks volumes about who we are—but also about who we want to be in the eyes of others, how we want to be perceived.
A footnote is subtle, often printed in smaller text than the body. It’s not invisible, but almost. Sometimes we skip over it because it’s complex, but we know that by doing so, we’re missing something. We get the gist, but not the full picture—we’re missing the references.
Perfume is to appearance what a footnote is to text: the defining detail that says everything, quietly. It’s what we express between the lines. It’s what we whisper.
Your brand is built on the idea of two voices, two perspectives coming together to create something meaningful. How does your collaboration influence your approach to olfactory creation?
Our creative approach is rooted in our duo—our first fragrance, Prolégomènes, is inspired by our meeting and the chapter we closed in order to write a new one together. The brand wouldn’t exist without the two of us. And it never would have been the initiative of just one.
At the same time, each of us has a distinct voice. We create and tell stories together, but it’s also a dialogue between us. We met rather late in life, and each of us lived many things apart from the other.
Prolégomènes is the beginning of “us,” the start of our story together.
Olatua is Alice telling Pierre-Jr about her childhood by the ocean, in a place far from where he grew up.
Towédé is Pierre introducing Alice to his mother, whom she’ll never get the chance to meet.
