Tanguy Guesnet

Delicate Touch was created by Tanguy Guesnet, a French perfumer at IFF who trained at ISIPCA in Versailles and then at IFF’s own perfumery school. It is an oud composition: it opens on pink pepper and lychee, turns through myrrh and cinnamon, and closes on patchouli and labdanum over an oud material the brand has confirmed but not yet named. Dry, resinous and spiced. 55 mL, €160.

Key facts

• French perfumer at IFF; trained at ISIPCA, the Versailles school that is the standard formal route into perfumery, and then at IFF’s internal school.
• Belongs to the generation of perfumers now shaping contemporary fine fragrance, with a style built on contrast and overdosed, legible materials.
• Verified credits include Obvious Plum Cream and Kakigori White Crush, D’Orsay Holy Berry, work for Zadig & Voltaire, and Lacoste Original, co-signed with Anne Flipo.
• Eau de Dubai has confirmed an oud material in the formula; it is not yet named in the published note list.
• Of the three creator fragrances, his is the driest and the closest to classical Gulf oriental structure.

Guesnet trained at ISIPCA — the school in Versailles founded by Jean-Jacques Guerlain, and the qualification most working perfumers in France hold — and then at IFF’s internal perfumery school, which is the house’s own multi-year apprenticeship. IFF subsequently promoted him to perfumer. He is early-career by the standards of the profession, which in perfumery means roughly a decade in rather than forty years in.

His portfolio is a niche and contemporary one. For Obvious he composed Plum Cream and Kakigori White Crush, the latter a bergamot, lemon and mint composition for that house’s Japanese-dessert capsule. For D’Orsay he composed Holy Berry. He has worked for Zadig & Voltaire, and he co-signed Lacoste Original with Anne Flipo, one of IFF’s senior perfumers.

What links that list is a willingness to let a single material dominate. Plum Cream is named after the thing it overdoses. A perfumer who builds that way is composing for recognition — you should be able to say what you are smelling — which is a different instinct from the smooth, unplaceable blend that dominated fine fragrance for two decades.

Classical Gulf oriental structure is warm, resinous and continuous: resins, spices and woods layered so densely that the composition reads as a single rich mass. It is beautiful and it is also, to a European nose trained on structure, sometimes illegible.

Delicate Touch takes that structure and puts a bright, modern top on it. Pink pepper and lychee are not traditional Gulf opening materials — lychee in particular is a sweet, slightly rosy fruit that belongs to contemporary Western perfumery. Setting them above myrrh and cinnamon means the fragrance announces itself in a modern register and then resolves into a traditional one.

That is the brief this perfumer is right for. Overdosing the lychee enough to survive the myrrh, without letting it turn the composition fruity, is a contrast problem, and contrast is what his portfolio is built on.

Last reviewed 27 October 2026.