Nick Smart, Libertine Parfumerie founder.

THERE IS A CLICHÉ: do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. Bullshit. The reality is, if you love what you do, you work hard. Really hard. To bring your vision to life and then to make it succeed. 

Nick Smart would know. The founder of Libertine Parfumerie and Agence de Parfum has been building both businesses for close to a decade. Longer, if we prod history a bit, because the scaffolding for this dream started as a market stall in ’90s Brisbane. 

“I have always loved fragrance. I had started importing bulk essential oils and selling little 15ml bottles to make money while I was at university,” Smart tells Esquire. I’ve caught Smart in a rare moment of calm while in Melbourne, opening yet another retail destination, this time for heritage-heavy perfumer Creed – one of the key brands that put Smart on the fragrance map.  

Inside the new Armadale boutique designed by Tamsin Johnson.

“I had a friend who was a designer who did the packaging.” The range was called EO Products – Essentially Organic. A magazine editor spotted the stall, asked for samples, ran a mention. Stockists soon followed. 

From there, Smart was soon making products for Wheel & Barrow, Domayne Furniture, and – in a detail that says everything about where passion projects can take you – Corrective Services NSW, supplying shampoos and conditioners across the prison system. (A lawyer moonlighting in institutional haircare! Not the obvious origin story for Australia’s foremost niche fragrance authority.) 

The pivot to perfumery proper came when he bought a building in West End, Brisbane, intending to install his law firm. When the hoarding came down, the space stopped him. Over a century unchanged, preserved in amber in the local Greek community neighbourhood. “I said to my business partner, ‘I don’t think we should put a law firm in here. It’s a beautiful building. Let’s put a perfumery in here.’” The law office went to the back. The perfumery opened at the front. Thus, Libertine Parfumerie was born. 

Today, Libertine Parfumerie operates five standalone boutiques across three states, with concessions in David Jones and Myer stores nationwide. Behind the retail sits Agence de Parfum, the importing and distribution arm that brought houses like Creed, Amouage, Penhaligon’s, Lubin, Robert Piguet and Ormonde Jayne to Australian shores – brands with centuries of history between them, most of which simply weren’t available here when Smart first went looking for them. 

The niche fragrance industry in Australia in the early 2000s was not what it is now. “I was speaking to the distributors, and they weren’t helpful,” says Smart. “They didn’t provide fragrance notes, they didn’t provide spray cards. I just thought, ‘Well, I can do a better job than this’.”  

So Smart approached brands directly, while being honest about his inexperience. Costume National said yes first – their woody oriental Homme has made something of a full-circle journey, Smart notes, the style entirely on-trend today, some 20 years on. Then came Penhaligon’s, Creed, Lubin, Robert Piguet. “I really love that brand,” he says of Lubin, which dates to the 17th century. “Mary Antoinette’s perfume, Black Jade – it was made for her. The stories are remarkable.” 

The early years may have cost more than they made, he admits. Australians weren’t accustomed to spending upwards of $800 on bottle of perfume. “I knew that in order to sell a product that was three or four times more than Chanel No. 5, there had to be a level of education. We had to do a lot of classes, a lot of events, just to educate the customer.” 

The shift came somewhere around 2016-18, when consumers started arriving already curious. “The education from social media has empowered people,” Smart says. “They just know more, and from a younger age.” His team had spent years building that appetite through events and masterclasses – running, by his count, into the hundreds annually across the store network and department store concessions. “That’s always been a part of what we’ve done. Just the training and education.” 

Two brands, particularly, have helped drive curiosity. Amouage and the French/British House of Creed. The former, a forerunner of the increased interest in Middle Eastern styles of perfumery, is famous for its frankincense, myrrh and local rock rose, handmade in a way Smart says doesn’t exist elsewhere in the industry. And the latter, well, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who didn’t either know of Creed Aventus or own at least one or 10 bottles. 

But the store is a treasure of hidden gems beyond these jewels in the crown. There is the decadence of British perfumer Clive Christian and its crown caps. The subtle splendour of Matiere Premiere, whose founder, Aurélien Guichard, celebrates the complexity of soliflores. Or the rich compositions of Grandiflora from local florist Saskia Havekes, who is inspired by all the flowers she works with in her Sydney-based studio. 

Back in March, Smart was celebrating the launch of his first Melbourne flagship. Located in Armadale, it was designed by Tamsin Johnson on High Street. Some 140sq/m of timber, stone, terrazzo and mirrored brass, it is the most recent expression of a design instinct that Smart describes as resolutely anti-trend. “It’s not these new materials that have just come about. No plastic. It’s traditional. You could walk into maybe the 1800s or 1900s and the store would be there.” 

The feeling he was after when customers walked in: “An exhalation. Not, ‘Wow, I can’t touch anything – I’m intimidated’. Just a sense of comfort, but in a beautiful design so that it’s inviting.” 

The Libertine Parfumerie Armadale boutique

Staying true to his original passion has been the discipline that has kept Libertine at the peak of its industry. “We just stayed in our lane. Some of our competitors are going crazy – putting in tea and crystals and this and this – and you dilute what you’re trying to achieve. We’re not trying to be any more than what we’ve always been: a niche perfumery, selling niche brands.” 

Five stores. New Zealand opening mid-year. Hard work smells good, apparently.

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