Maison Mona di Orio

The original idea of mastery: a young, talented person apprenticed to a master. The tricks and the art of the trade are learned in years of apprenticeship, the personal style of the master is adopted and piece by piece more and more supplemented by his own. When the apprentice has learned enough, he becomes a journeyman and takes a few years of travel to meet other masters, learn from them and gain experience. Then he settles down and produces.... Among his works, at some point, there is a masterpiece and he becomes a master himself. This is exactly what happened in this case: the master was Edmond Roudnitska and the apprentice was a woman: Mona di Orio.

When she was 17, the French woman born in 1969 with great olfactory talent met this grand master and creator of famous fragrance art. He took her on as an apprentice. For six years, this included not only training as a perfumer but a kind of all-around cultural package of classical-musical education. After the Roudnitska period, she met Serge Lutens in Grasse and was encouraged and deeply inspired by him. Further encounters led her to the olfactory world of gastronomy and that of viticulture. Then, in 2004, Mona di Orio founded the perfume house "Mona di Orio" together with the Dutch designer and style consultant Jeroen Oude Sogtoen and has been producing perfume under her own name ever since.

When she writes: "A beautiful perfume surprises before it deeply touches the heart. Very slowly it reveals its soul and unfolds in its final notes," she is not just clichédly stating what you already know about top, heart and base notes anyway, but means what she says: Mona di Orio fragrances take a long time, even a very long time compared to mass-produced perfumes, to unfold. They add the elements of the composition immensely carefully and with time... rather, into each other. She sees her perfume works not only comparatively, but directly and truly as works of art. Each fragrance is about perfection and touching the heart deeply.

The closures of her perfumes are (modified) champagne corks (muselets) of the champagne house Jaquesson, to express her attachment to this house - and her conviction that opening a bottle is a unique event to be celebrated.

Mona di Orio passed away unexpectedly in 2011, and the company is continued by her longtime friend and business partner Jeroen Oude Sogtoen.