People
The perfumers everyone copies
Whose work has the most twins? Eight noses, and the bottles that made them the most imitated people in perfume.
Behind every famous bottle is a person — a perfumer, or "nose" — and behind every dupe is an attempt to copy what that person made. So we turned the question around: whose work gets copied the most? Of the 478 perfumers we can name, 162 have work that has been copied. A few have been copied on an industrial scale.
162
perfumers whose work has been copied
7,170
twins of their work
35%
of them copy just these eight
- 1 Jacques Cavallier Belletrud 67 fragrances in our catalogue, 87% of them copied — 500 twins in all. The most copied is Imagination for Louis Vuitton, with 57. 500twins
- 2 Francis Kurkdjian born 1969 · France · LVMH 53 fragrances in our catalogue, 87% of them copied — 366 twins in all. The most copied is Baccarat Rouge 540 for Maison Francis Kurkdjian, with 58. 366twins
- 3 Quentin Bisch France · Givaudan S.A. 42 fragrances in our catalogue, 83% of them copied — 343 twins in all. The most copied is Delina for Parfums de Marly, with 41. 343twins
- 4 Olivier Creed born 1943 · France 29 fragrances in our catalogue, 90% of them copied — 337 twins in all. The most copied is Silver Mountain Water for Creed, with 43. 337twins
- 5 Alberto Morillas born 1950 · Spain 96 fragrances in our catalogue, 74% of them copied — 323 twins in all. The most copied is Acqua di Gio for Giorgio Armani, with 27. 323twins
- 6 Dominique Ropion born 1955 · France 36 fragrances in our catalogue, 94% of them copied — 258 twins in all. The most copied is Portrait of a Lady for Frédéric Malle, with 23. 258twins
- 7 Erwin Creed born 1980 · France 10 fragrances in our catalogue, 90% of them copied — 195 twins in all. The most copied is Aventus for Creed, with 119. 195twins
- 8 François Demachy born 1949 · France 18 fragrances in our catalogue, 100% of them copied — 191 twins in all. The most copied is Sauvage for Dior, with 59. 191twins
Why Jacques is first
Jacques Cavallier Belletrud has 67 fragrances in our catalogue, and 58 of them have twins. That combination — a long list of hits, almost all of them famous enough to be worth copying — is what puts a perfumer at the top. It is less about one bottle than about a career of bottles people want.
The invisible authors
Most people who own a twin have never heard of the perfumer whose work it copies. Perfumers rarely sign their fragrances; the house's name goes on the bottle. Every one of these noses has a page on FragDNA with their whole career on a timeline, the notes they return to, and the dupe houses that follow them most closely. See every perfumer →
