Liz Moores
Liz Moores built Papillon Artisan Perfumes the way few perfumers do: without formal training, without industry connections, and without apology. Based in Britain, she launched her house in 2011 with a self-taught mastery that would catch the attention of enthusiasts worldwide. Her entry into perfumery began like many of her most devoted fans — as a collector who frequented shops like Les Senteurs, spending years absorbing the nuances of niche fragrance before ever attempting to create her own. That background as an enthusiast rather than a traditional apprentice shaped her approach entirely. She learned through doing, through experimenting, through trusting her own nose over convention. The three to four fragrances she has released under Papillon have each arrived with minimal fanfare and maximum impact, earning the brand a reputation that far outpaces its modest output. Her perfumery has been described as spontaneous, natural — qualities that sound almost contradictory for a craft that demands technical rigor. But for Moores, intuition and discipline coexist. She took what she learned from years of buying and studying perfume and channeled it into work that has earned awards and genuine devotion from a community that rarely offers either without prompting. Papillon remains small, deliberate, and uncompromising.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Liz composes
Moores works in the classic mold of the artisan perfumer: small batches, hand-selected materials, compositions that lean toward complexity and depth. Her affinity for animalic notes — civet, castoreum, and their synthetic counterparts — sets her work apart in a market that often sanitizes these materials into corporate neutrality. She demonstrates a particular skill for balance: her fragrances can be rich and assertive without becoming heavy, structured without becoming stiff. The Papillon house style favors warmth, resinous depth, and an almost tactile quality — smells you notice on your skin hours later as a physical sensation, not just an ambient presence. Self-taught yet sophisticated, she navigates raw materials with the confidence of someone who has spent years learning their specific vocabulary, not someone following someone else's recipe.
Philosophy
What drives Liz
Liz Moores approaches perfumery with the conviction that a great fragrance need not explain itself. She is drawn to materials that challenge — animalic notes in particular have captured her interest, not because they shock, but because they anchor a composition with a kind of honesty that lighter ingredients cannot replicate. Her philosophy rejects the notion that perfumery must be accessible to everyone at first encounter. Instead, she creates scents that reveal themselves over time, rewarding attention. What drives her is curiosity rather than commercial instinct; each creation seems born from a question she wants answered, not a market gap to fill. She has spoken about perfume as something that surprises even its creator during the making of it — a reminder that for Moores, the process remains alive, unpredictable, a conversation between intuition and material rather than a formula to be repeated.
The houses
Maisons Liz composes for
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