La Brûmée founder Anne-Claire Walch’s infatuation with scent dates back to summer holidays she spent as a child in the perfume capital Grasse.
“I remember wandering in the lavender fields and the botanical gardens and taking DIY perfumery classes with my friends,” says Walch, a native of France who now lives in London. “[That] really was the starting point of my love story with perfume.”
Walch took a detour from perfumery after high school – she obtained a pharmacy doctorate and conducted medical clinical trials – but returned to it to work for Diptyque and Byredo during a gap year in her pharmacy studies. It was at Byredo that she first discovered hair perfume.
“It was very new, and I really liked the concept: a quick spray on the days you don’t wash your hair or during a lazy Sunday morning in bed, a quick spray after the gym, providing a subtle yet intimate scent,” she says. “I looked for natural options and couldn’t find any, so I figured I would to create new options.”
Walch developed La Brûmée, named for the French word for mist, with three hair fragrances. “Because the industry is oversaturated, the idea was to enter the market with a niche product,” she says. “Although it’s challenging to introduce customers to a new product, we always get very good feedback.”
La Brûmée’s organic, vegan and cruelty-free hair perfumes Brume Douce, Brume Fruitée and Brume Fraîche are priced at $35 for 50-ml. sizes and $55 for 100-ml. sizes. Brume Douce combines soft, powdery notes of almond, green leaves and white peony flower with a heart of heliotrope leaf, gooseberry flower and tea, and a soft dry-down of violet and vanilla notes.
Brume Fruitée is a fruity concoction of apricot, black currant and white peach in the top, heart notes of pomegranate and pear juice, and a base of plum and aromatic brown sugar. Finally, Brume Fraîche is an aquatic fragrance that opens with fresh notes of aloe vera and heart of sweet jasmine and water lily before drying down to accords of cotton flower.
Getting formulation right wasn’t easy. The alcohol content of hair fragrances differs from traditional fragrances. Customary fragrances contain up to 80% alcohol, an amount that could damage hair follicles and leave tresses dull and dry. However, scent can dissipate quickly with lower percentages of alcohol.
Walch managed to come up with a solution. “I really wanted to find a way to moisturize the hair that wasn’t too oily. Our products are primarily water based, and there is just a minimum amount of alcohol – 40% – which is just enough to allow the fragrance to stick to the hair,” she says. “We also added aloe vera extract, a natural nourishing active, for extra hydration.”
La Brûmée is based in London, but its fragrance blends are manufactured in Grasse. It relies on perfume ingredients primarily sourced from the South of France. Walch says, “It was important to me to draw on the French savoir faire since we have such a strong perfumery heritage in Provence and especially in Grasse.”
Walch looked to none other than herself to spearhead La Brûmée’s packaging. The label sketches of women’s bodies are her designs. “I’ve always been very creative, taking life-drawing classes from a very young age. It was nice to be able to use my creativity when we were launching the brand,” she says. “A lot of brands are either very black/white minimalistic or vegan/green and boring. I really wanted to create a beautiful, more inspiring and feminine brand to resonate with the women of today.”
Online retail is at the cornerstone of La Brûmée’s early distribution strategy. “We are still a very young brand, and we realize that selling through retailers will be tough due to competition,” she says. “We have a niche product that must be explained and introduced to the customer and for that beauty salons and speciality beauty retailers are ideal. At the moment, we’re talking to quite a few distributors and exploring different options.”
Walch believes La Brûmée’s fragrances could be strong sales performers internationally. “We’ve been talking to a few distributors over in Europe, and we’re on the right track. We would also love for La Brûmée to enter the U.S. market,” she says. “In fact, we’re currently in touch with Dulma [Altan] at Potion, but Asia is definitely a goal as well. We are talking with distributors in Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan.”
While Walch is intent on growing La Brûmée slowly to keep control of her brand, she already has the next steps for product expansion mapped out. “There aren’t many all-natural scented hair care brands out there, so we’ll definitely be exploring this niche segment of natural scented hair care further,” she details. “We’ve been working on new spray versions, protective scented sprays, anti-pollution scented sprays, and natural scented serums. We’ve got some exciting stuff coming up.”
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