Our team
Our team
« The only real trip, the only fountain of youth, wouldn’t be to visit new places, but to have new eyes. »
Marie
After having studied art and medieval history, Marie Giffo began her career at the Logis de la Chabotterie, a historic stone manor in Vendée as their cultural mediator and administrator. When she became a mom, she stopped working before deciding to respond to the duty of remembrance that had been calling out to her and revived the brand her ancestors had founded. A romantic and impassioned woman, Marie put her know-how and ambition into making her house a true home.
Marie has a dual legacy. Firstly from her father, a descendant of the historical founder, Alexis Biette, who passed on his taste for elegance and beautiful things. And then from her mother, who conveyed her creativity, love of nature, work ethic and love of Bourgogne and its wines. This entire universe of beauty, authenticity, and tangible objects helped her forge her character and finetune her penchants.
When she was a little girl, with her grandmother who had the soul of an artist and for whom everything was the source of inspiration and delight, she listened to La Mort au Loup, recited by Gerard Philippe, took part in poetry contests, played at being an actress and sung Gilbert Bécaud’s songs. At Christmas, she would make fairy-like decorations with her cousins, and on the painted sky, her grandmother would place stars here and there, in unforeseeable places, just like reality. Marie began to love art through during her happy childhood.
Marielle
As a child, Marielle would spend her vacations at her grandmother’s house in Sète, in the south of France. In this warm and familiar environment, she would pursue her favorite hobby: making lavender flavored water that she would sell to passersby. Without realizing it, her vocation took root there, between the green oaks and rosemary, surrounded by the intoxicating odors of the South. Because of her scientific courses in school, Marielle was able to substantially improve the quality of her productions and now pursues a job she loves: she’s now a perfume evaluator. After long but very interesting courses in chemistry, Marielle attended ISIPCA, a French school for post-graduate studies in perfume, cosmetics products and food flavor formulation, where she studied perfumes and cosmetics.
An eye-opener. For the very first time she found she loved to learn and her well-being was multiplied by the curiosity she had for her environment. When she’d finished her courses on how to assess raw materials and name-brand perfumes, she would stroll through Paris to discover every nook and cranny of the capital. As time went by, Marielle tried several different experiences, all linked to craftsmanship. She tried her hand making functional perfumes, developing fragrances, and as she loved everything beautiful, she even opened her own jewelry store.
In 2020, an article on Marie’s project brought her back to her first love. Now, Marielle manipulates fragrances and ingredients for AB 1882, creating unique recipes, just like an alchemist who never reveals any secrets. Blending the thoroughness of a technician with the inventiveness of a creator, Marielle is at ease in our specific brand’s universe. Fascinated by its history and by the archives which weathered time thus becoming testimonials of a bygone era, she totally owns the challenges in her job: adapting the brand to current trends without losing one drop of its original essence.
To achieve this and nourish her creativity, she turned to the arts, and in particular to Pierre Soulage’s paintings, who reminded her that what seems to be simple at the first glance often hides a magnificent complexity and elegance. Both sweet and lively, creative and opinionated, generous and dedicated, Marielle takes the best from all these worlds to create perfumes that resemble today’s women. Convinced that each and every day (exceptional or ordinary!) deserves perfume, she draws on just as much raw material as famous perfumers do to create harmony out of all situations. Marielle believes that the olfactive sense is the key sense, the one that increases memory, rekindles souvenirs and sparks the greatest emotions: you must consequently pamper it.
Sarah
With an unconventional career path, Sarah
broadened her horizons by enriching creative experiences. After having taken courses in chemistry and cosmetology, she continued her education by learning how to create perfumes with famous perfumers at ISIPCA. Then she studied interior decorating at Ecole Boulle to be able to create perfumes that would match the material, colors, and sensory emotions of the place she would be perfuming. Her last job in a company specialized in natural perfumes allowed her to gain experience in this difficult and challenging domain and be able to propose perfumes to consumers that are both hedonic and reassuring.
Her key words are “olfactory curiosity”, and her goal is to share this fascinating universe with you. What she especially loves about our brand is its high quality universe, its esthetics, its history rooted in Nantes and our projects to bring it back to life. Designing solid perfumes for AB 1882 represents a true challenge, one that is both human, technical and moral, not only because of the difficulty of its creations, but also because of our commitment that our perfumes must be natural, French, ethical and sustainable. All these values match her convictions and experience.
Stéphane
Stéphane Piquart sources raw materials. Not things you eat, things you smell.
What’s his job? Finding original and unusual fragrances all over the world that he then sells to the perfume industry.
What’s so special about him? He tracks sweet scents in a sustainable and ethical way, one that respects the people he meets.
So, how does he do all this? Stéphane Piquart likes to consult NGOs before trying to discover new raw materials. These organizations come to him and present him with a problem linked to a geographical territory and to its population. And where there are people, there are stories. “My role, outside of finding raw material, is to find stories,” he confirms.
His job? “It’s bringing together two completely different cultures, so they understand each other.” On the one hand, there are tribes that he meets around the globe, where he discovers typical fragrances. On the other, the world of perfumeries where he sells his fragrances. Two worlds, two realities, where he bridges the gaps between them.
In 2007, Stéphane Piquart founded BEHAVE, his company, whose name combines the verbs “To Be” “To Have” and of course “To Behave”. A name that implies irreproachable behavior in the perfume industry, an industry that is not always irreproachable, and that is based on the values and methods of working he’s acquired and applied up to now. “I wanted to keep the same philosophy,” he explained, “because selling material that respects the environment of those producing it is much more pleasant than selling material that doesn’t respect our forests or those who live there.”
Stéphane has been working in Grandlieu, in the south of Nantes since 2021, in a partnership with AB 1882 in order to utilize local fragrances in our perfumes.
His preliminary trials on native flowers have been positive… more to come come and more to smell in this adventure!
Catherine
She loves work well done. This is what describes Catherine the best, also a leather goods maker and founder of the Mauve et Fauve brand in 2018. Leather accents, purses, up-market leather goods as well as leather finishing touches and lettering on our cases come from Catherine’s workshop, located just next to ours. Catherine goes to Cholet to upcycle leather from idle inventory and her fingers silently and patiently work on it to reveal the perfumes that will be on our cases. Her affirmed taste for beautiful things is linked with a deep humility stemming from her first professional experience in the wine estate world.
Long before 2018, Catherine had a wine vineyard near Nantes, where she produced AOC Muscadet Côte de Grandlieu. That was where she learned that time gives value to things, that know-how rhymes with perseverance and that Mother Nature is always the strongest.
