Top of the glass: Pauline Deltour’s first design for Cire Trudon has serious bottle

It seems French industrial designer Pauline Deltour can turn her hand to anything. Since leaving Konstantin Grcic’s studio in 2009, bags, jewellery, public spaces and packaging have appeared among the designs in her portfolio. Spanning mediums, each project shares her commitment to expressive materials and under-designed functionality.
Since 2015, Deltour has been collaborating with iconic French candlemaker Cire Trudon, producing a home fragrance diffuser and a contemporary candle-snuffing tool. Both products play a part in the 450-year-old maison’s ongoing modernisation of its visual identity. Now, as the brand makes a foray into perfume for the first time, it has tapped into Deltour’s contemporary vision for the fragrance line’s glass bottles.
By now, Deltour is well-versed in Cire Trudon’s heritage-meets-contemporary aesthetic. ‘It was such a luxury to have already created two products with Cire Trudon,’ she explains. ‘It made it much easier for me to understand what they want. When we first collaborated, I was acutely aware of the company’s long history and candlemaking expertise.’
‘L'Éteignoir’ candle-snuffing tool, by Pauline Deltour, for Cire Trudon, 2016
But this time, both parties were coming to the project with fresh eyes. The five genderless fragrances created by Lyn Harris, Antoine Lie and Yann Vasnier toy with themes of ‘royalty, religion and revolution’, explains creative director Julien Pruvost. Evoking characters (including kings, parliamentarians and the proletariat), each fragrance is ‘rooted in the maison’s heritage’, yet aims to be 'modern and subversive’.
He wanted a bottle to match. Something that ‘could have been here 400 years, but was actually made yesterday’, Deltour explains. To tackle the brief, she researched extensively, making a ‘giant mood board of historical and contemporary coloured glass references’, and presented prototypes to study groups. ‘We talked a lot about tiny details – something that doesn't really happen in the glass bottle industry. We thought of everything down to the kind of reflection the sticker would produce on the bottle’s reverse, and the texture of the screw-top.’
Rendered in the maison’s signature pine-green hue, the cap is finished in textural rippled-glass, echoing Deltour’s home fragrance diffuser, released earlier this year. The bottle underneath is daringly simple, resembling the silhouette of Cire Trudon’s classic scented candles. ‘Though it might not seem like it, this was a more complex design process than my two previous Cire Trudon projects,’ Deltour offers. ‘For me, creating a bottle is like designing a watch. Each moving part is essential to the overall feel. Everything from the weight [and] volume, to the transparency of a glass bottle should affect how you experience the fragrance inside.’
This is not a scent to hide in your handbag. ‘It’s something you can have by your side, and admire, every day,’ says Deltour. It’s a privileged object – fit for both royal salon and contemporary vanity stands.
INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Cire Trudon website, and Pauline Deltour’s website
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Elly Parsons is the Digital Editor of Wallpaper*, where she oversees Wallpaper.com and its social platforms. She has been with the brand since 2015 in various roles, spending time as digital writer – specialising in art, technology and contemporary culture – and as deputy digital editor. She was shortlisted for a PPA Award in 2017, has written extensively for many publications, and has contributed to three books. She is a guest lecturer in digital journalism at Goldsmiths University, London, where she also holds a masters degree in creative writing. Now, her main areas of expertise include content strategy, audience engagement, and social media.
-
A new Athens gallery is a celebration of old and new, a stone's throw from the Acropolis
New Athens gallery Melas Martinos by Local Local is a contemporary art space, a stone's throw from the Acropolis, in the Greek capital's Monastiraki neighbourhood
-
Haute Couture Week A/W 2025: live updates from the Wallpaper* team
From 7-9 July, Haute Couture Week A/W 2025 arrives in Paris. Follow along for a first look at the shows, presentations and other fashion happenings, as seen by the Wallpaper* editors
-
Boundaries between art and life dissolve in Katherine Hubbard's intimate documentation of her mother's illness
In 'The Great Room', Katherine Hubbard merges caregiving for her mother with an unflinching documentary of the process
-
Art meets perfume in cross-disciplinary fragrance series Nez 1+1
Talents from film and fragrance come together to create Ansongo, the latest scent resulting from a creative matchmaking project by perfume revue Nez
-
Horace’s new men’s scent is the linen shirt of the fragrance closet
Vetiver Primavera, the new fragrance from men’s grooming brand Horace, is casual but elegant, says Wallpaper’s Mary Cleary – a citrussy scent for summer
-
This perfume bottle archive was nearly lost. Now, it offers a rare whiff of fragrance history
Fifty blueprints from a forgotten French crystal manufacturer will be for sale as part of the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair
-
Bastille Parfums: the French fragrance house blending technology with olfactory craft
Bastille Parfums is on a mission to shift the perception of high-end fragrance
-
Ramdane Touhami on design in the reinvention of Buly 1803
In an exclusive interview, Ramdane Touhami shares the story behind his redesign of the historic brand, Officine Universelle Buly 1803
-
Amen’s new collection takes on abstract, sculptural forms handcrafted by Katharina Kaminski
Amen candles officially launches its new series of figurative light sculptures, ‘Luminous Beings’
-
Take a tour of Louis Vuitton's fragrance house
Master perfumer Jacques Cavallier Belletrud offers a peek inside Les Fontaines Parfumées
-
New French fragrance maison Ormaie references modernist design greats