The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Vanille Réglisse arrived in 2014 from Adopt Parfums. The brief was simple on paper: combine two of France's most recognizable flavors, vanilla and licorice, into something wearable. In practice, that meant threading a needle between candy-shop sweetness and the actual, slightly medicinal bite of black licorice root. The house's philosophy wasn't about mass appeal. It was about making something worth wearing twice. The challenge lay in achieving that balance, capturing the rich, comforting warmth of vanilla while allowing the distinctive, slightly bitter edge of licorice to emerge without overwhelming the composition. The result needed to feel familiar yet surprising, sweet without becoming cloying, aromatic without straying into medicinal territory.
Licorice root (glycyrrhiza glabra) behaves differently in fragrance than it does in confectionery. On skin, it's aromatic rather than sweet, a cool, slightly camphorated quality that reads almost medicinal until the vanilla warms it. That's the tension the composition needed to solve. By pairing it with neroli and jasmine in the heart, the licorice gets lifted slightly, given somewhere to breathe rather than sitting heavy from the start. The result is a fragrance that smells like a specific thing, black licorice, without ever becoming one-dimensional. It's the kind of structural problem-solving that separates a perfumer's perfume from a marketing department's brief.
The evolution
The opening hits citrus-bright for maybe ten minutes, mandarin and bergamot doing what they always do, announcing arrival without demanding attention. Then the heart takes over and everything shifts. The licorice announces itself clearly, joined by anise and the orange-blossom lift of neroli. For the next two to three hours, this is an aromatic fragrance wearing a vanilla costume. Only when the base begins to assert itself does the vanilla arrive properly, creamy, warm, grounded in sandalwood. The white musk keeps it close, intimate, skin-like. On fabric, the vanilla lingers into the next day, slowly fading from projection into something you catch only when you press your nose to your sleeve.
Cultural impact
Vanilla has held a place of honor in perfumery for centuries, originally harvested from orchids in Mexico before becoming one of the most beloved fragrance ingredients worldwide. Its warm, enveloping character brings comfort and familiarity to compositions, while licorice root adds an unexpected anise-like sweetness that bridges sweet and aromatic categories. Together, these ingredients create a tension that keeps the wearer engaged, vanilla's creaminess offset by licorice's herbal, slightly bitter undertones.
