Rami Mekdachi is a Perfume Creative Director for major brands since 1997, photographer and musician… It is been 20 years now that he is touring the globe with his family, Celine his wife, Lili and Noé their children meeting singers, perfumers, taking pictures, recording music, creating fragrances, playing basketball and filming their road trips and encounters…

Perfumer Benoist Lapouza is a friend for so many years now, with Rami they gather now and then and imagine new fragrances from places and trip memories of the Mekdachi’s… Rami met Najim and Elisabeth Boulaire-Boundaoui in 2002 and was impressed by their family business (since 1904) : La Maison Française des Cires, a Masters Chandlers house, falling heir for four generations to a unique and secular family savoir-faire… Since then they work hand in hand and developed all Lola James Harper wax formulas…

Here is the whole story, told by Rami in the video : 

I’m Rami Mekdachi and I founded Lola James Harper in 2013. This project is really about scents of places we love. In 1997 I met perfumers Benoist Lapouza and Pierre Bourdon. Two generous talented amazing perfumers.  They introduced me to that world of fragrance, of scents and emotions. Just explained to me how it’s linked to memory, how it links to rituals, how composing essential oils is that art of composing emotions. And they really changed the course of my life by opening my understanding to the fragrance world. 

I began to travel around the world and to try to know more and I realized how the more I was traveling and encountering inspiring places the more I wanted to link them to scents. So in 2000 I met Jean Louis Costes and I proposed to create the collection of perfumerie for the Hotel Costes.  So he presented me to his friend Olivia Giacobetti a renowned, talented perfumer who also opened my understanding and generously just gave me some of her wisdom about perfumerie. So we began to work on that full range of perfume products for Hotel Costes will it be candle, room spray, Eau de toilette, soap, etc.  And we launched that in 2001 and it is still there, its still existing and people are still sharing it and taking from the reception of the hotel the memory of their journey of their moment in the Hotel Costes that is in the heart of Paris next to Place Vendôme.  

And then I’ve met Colette. Another mecca, it’s really the fashion mecca even if it closed 2 years ago it’s still the most important concept store that ever existed.  And Colette and Sarah just let me work on their Air de Colette that was the scent of that concept store. 

And then I met Jacques Garcia the designer and decorator of the Hotel Costes and we worked on the scent of his chateau in France. 

Then after Jacques Garcia I had the chance to meet the Reybier family owners and founders of the Hotel La Reserve de Geneve. A huge, magnificent palace and worked on their candle and room spray. 

I just began to meet more and more founders of places and to try to find the scent that can be legitimately linked to the emotion and to the design and to the moment that they are creating with their clientele.  And to be honest it is really an amazing job because I really feel that when people have a week, or two days or 3 days in a great place and they can go with the scent that moment it’s like a gift because they can light the candle and forever they can reopen that emotion.

So while traveling I began to meet inspiring places that I feel are inspiring that are not that known like vinyl stores, recording studios, art galleries or movie theatres or guitar shops.  So I began to work on those places that are for me that are inspiring but not reknowned. And in 2013 I decided to launch Lola James Harper as the collection of those scents of those amazing places more like a poetry because nobody knows really those places.  But the idea is to plunge and push people into that imaginary world. 

Since then when I meet a known place we do it as a collaboration with Lola James Harper. So we began with the Mama Shelter.  I met Jeremie, Benjamin and Serge Trigano.  Three amazing guys that have created the Mama Shelter. It’s a lifestyle hotel and I love spending time with my family in those Mama Shelter around the world so we worked on a Lola James Harper x Mama Shelter collab candle line for each hotel. 

Then we’ve met Lululemon and we worked on the scent of the place where they invented and created Lululemon and so on.  

I’ve met Third Man Records, the vinyl record shop of Jack White. I went to Nashville to see that great place and I worked on the scent of Third Man Record shops.  

Bang Olufsen they have their head office that they call The Farm in the middle of a prairie, a huge building in wood and iron.  So we did the scent of that place too, that inspiring place.  

Recently we’ve met Justin Bain, a talented Creative Director and entrepeneur that’s creating a collection of boutique hotels.  We’ve been working on the scent of The MacArthur Place that is a really beautiful boutique hotel just in the middle of the nature.  

So what I really want is to create is a family of collab scents, of collab candles and room spray of amazing places around the world.  So when they are not known and it’s not a collab they are in our classical candle line and when they are brands its a collab candle.  

We also super proud to so the scents of places where we are and where we partner like Bon Marché or Merci in Paris or Maxfield in Los Angeles or Love Adorned in New York, Los Angeles and Amagansett.

There is also one unique scent it’s the Colette concept store scent.  For 20 years I was with Sarah and Colette working on the Air de Colette and when they closed 2 years ago they generously and friendly just gave me the scent. They called me and said Rami your project is about scents of places don’t you want to keep the scent of Collette.  So the Air de Colette now is in the Lola James Harper collection forever.  I am so proud to keep the scent of that legendary amazing place.  

So just to know that in our collection we have forever the scent, the fig of Colette really makes me proud, happy and it expresses exactly the point of Lola James Harper.  Will it to bring to everyone scents of places we love, scents of inspiring places all around the world. 

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