Madison Perfumery, The First One Of Its Kind In Romania {Scented Paths & Fragrant Addresses}
After publishing a commentary to an article on reportedly the first niche perfumery founded in Romania, I received an update from the owner of another niche fragrance store located in Bucharest Madison Perfumery explaining that their business had been established before the more recent La Maison des Parfums, that is in 2007. The owner of the latter business turns out to be a former patron of Madison Perfumery. As one can see, the perfumery scene is evolving fast in the capital city of Romania.
The pictures of the Madison Perfumery boutique look wonderful. I think that Bucharest is teaching us some lessons in perfumery decoration and premium customer experience. From the owner Madeleine Florescu a former marketing executive for Kanebo USA,
"Our portfolio includes names such as Annick Goutal, Creed, Clive Christian, Parfumerie Generale and Nasomatto, and starting September I will add Bond No 9 and Puredistance"...
Octavian-Sever Coifan, a Romanian fragrance historian and perfume blogger based in Paris author of an encyclopedia of perfume in Romanian entitled Parfumul added that he actually organized an exhibition at Madison last year. When asked about the history of luxury perfumeries in Romania prior to 2007, he had this to say,
"There were perfumeries before, they opened right after 1990 but they sold the regular perfumes as everywhere in Europe, the big brands like Dior, Chanel, Guerlain and so on, and since several years all the Coty and P&G and Arden. Estée Lauder opened her boutique in Bucarest in early 90's. We have almost everything that is in Europe (even Sephora shop and to a certain extent I have to admit that there are perfumes that are not available in Paris!!!) but what is special about MDP and Madison is that they brought niche and more expensive perfumes or less known as the very famous brands."So, niche is new in Bucharest, although one can only assume that in the past when the city was dubbed the "Paris of the East" or "Little Paris" (Micul Paris), there must have been luxury perfumeries to satisfy the tastes of trendy urbanites.
Well, I'm very curious about this perfumery myself (I'll go there for sure as soon as I get to Bucharest), but I wonder to what extent it really is for the local urbanites. Their web page has no Romanian version, and it's VERY pricey. I wonder why one would buy anything in their shop rather than directly from the producers themselves, from luckyscent or anywhere else.
madison is the first and professionally run haute perfumery in bucharest.at your question why would anyone buy rather from them, the answer is, because of the excellent client service, the knowledge of the highly professional staff. we buy also the service, not only a product. and perfume is all about the smell and touch, and never an online experience, unless you bought it before.
to the comment of mr. coifan, romania has a small but great perfume tradition, bordering bulgaria and russia, both great suppliers of good quality scent, mentioned in this region earlier than 18-1900s.(also houbigant made a perfume exclusively for maria of romania in the late 1800s, amongst other....) in essence, madison introduced haute perfumery to romanians, and educates them towards the art of perfume and perfuming. we are proud to have them in our capital.