Thomas de Monaco Luisant Haze

Thomas de Monaco Luisant Haze, photo by Nicoleta

I must admit, I was far more familiar with Thomas De Monaco’s visual universe than with his olfactory one, having used his photographs as moodboard inspo for various projects throughout the years – so, please, allow me to start there. For more than two decades, moving between Paris and Zurich, De Monaco has been an influential presence in the world of luxury, working for houses like Hermès, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Armani, Rolex, and Cartier, to mention but a few. Yet no matter the subject, there is always a particular imponderability to the light inhabiting his photographic language, and once you have seen it, you begin to recognize it everywhere in his work.

Thomas de Monaco photography

Pinning Thomas De Monaco’s work down to a single visual register is almost impossible, as his practice moves fluidly between multiple aesthetic languages while, somehow, remaining unmistakably his. In some projects, there’s a clean, hyper-controlled studio precision where a single object floats against a seamless ground in sculptural 3D light, a highly disciplined minimalism that brings to mind Irving Penn’s almost surgical approach to image-making. Sometimes, the atmosphere shifts into something far more painterly: a chiaroscuro register that nods to Dutch and Flemish still life, all deep shadow, low-key light, and solitary hero objects emerging from darkness, quite often something organic or imperfectly perfect in its hyper-real vegetal presence, with a faintly Baudelaire-esque fascination with wilted flowers, bruised textures, and the melancholic symmetry of decay. And then there is the more experimental strand of his work: iridescent surfaces, hyper-saturated close-ups, abstracted textures and colour fields where light truly becomes a more abstract poetic medium in itself. The connective tissue running through all of it remains the same: artistically precise, deliberate lighting; a deeply tactile sensitivity to surface and material; restrained compositions and an elegant refusal of maximalism.

Thomas de Monaco photography

De Monaco’s work makes the subjects of his photographs intimate, softening the edges and focusing on the way light is reflected and refracted – and once you have seen that glow, that luisant, you understand exactly what kind of perfume house this artist would build. Because his fragrances, much like his images, are poetic halos: deeply intentional studies in ephemeral beauty, atmosphere, and the immaterial traces a presence leaves suspended in the air around it.

Creative Director Thomas de Monaco and perfumer Karine Chevallier – photo via Instagram

For Luisant Haze, Thomas collaborated with Karine Chevallier, a perfumer whose work has long gravitated toward elegant atmospheric constructions. I have always associated her style with a certain form of classical minimalism revamped for modern times: her creations are emotionally precise, textural, and layered with cinematic depth. Her work for Gallivant carries a very particular form of soft-focus intimacy, perfumes that capture the emotional temperature of a place rather than delivering a photorealistic (pun intended) rendering of it. And speaking of artistic continuity, she was also the nose behind Marcelle Dormoy Nacarat, one of the very first fragrances I reviewed for ÇaFleureBon and that I often think of fondly, as it was one of my gateways into gourmand space. Chevallier often approaches perfumery in a way that mirrors Thomas’s visual sculpting, taking into account diffusion, texture, translucency, and negative space.

Thomas de Monaco Luisant Haze

Arriving this month, Luisant Haze expands the Gold Collection with a fragrance that approaches sweetness in a new and modern way. “Beauty and positive emotion are not trends. They are values I live. For me, perfume is freedom – the freedom to shape atmosphere, to evolve, to become” – says Thomas De Monaco . “I was not interested in creating something loud. I wanted a scent that feels like it is already there – like part of your skin,” – De Monaco explains. The name reflects this balance. Luisant suggests a glow from within, while Haze evokes an atmosphere where contours dissolve. Together, they describe a space between clarity and diffusion – something present, but never fixed.

Conceptually, the perfume is a smellscape of familiar childhood pleasures: ripe forest fruits, cotton candy air, sugar-spun brightness. But don’t expect teary-eyed nostalgia or escapist getaways into comforting sweetness and idealized memories. This feels more like a breath of fresh air, both literally and emotionally – a luminous filter cast onto reality itself, heightening colour, light, and emotional saturation, like a small Technicolor meditation on joyfully inhabiting the present. Stepping away from the classical gourmand structure built around direct sensory gratification, sweetness is treated here more as atmosphere than trigger, a lightness of being suspended in scent form, and there is something deeply contemporary in this kind of controlled restraint. Luisant Haze wears its neo-gourmand badge proudly, moving toward the diaphanous and the watercoloured, toward a sweetness deliberately stripped of literal weight. On the skin, it hovers translucent and subdued, with tuberose acting as light and airy musks as negative space painted in iridescent hues.

Thomas de Monaco Luisant Haze, photo by Nicoleta

The opening of Luisant Haze is bright, with pink pepper and cardamom giving it the sparkling lift of uncorking something fizzy and delicious, all tiny bubbles, like the endorphin rush of quenching your thirst. The way the tuberose is woven into this setting carries Karine Chevallier’s unmistakable signature.

Now, as someone firmly in the “tuberose devotees” camp, I also fully understand the flower’s detractors: those intimidated by its indolic bridal grandeur, its diva tendencies, and its unapologetic carnivorous larger-than-life white floral theatrics. But tuberose agnostics, fear not! This is tuberose rendered in watercolour, with the flower stripped of much of its narcotic heaviness and painted instead in translucent washes of luminous pigment. All its solar joy remains intact, but the drama has been dialed down and replaced with something brighter, almost trickster-like in energy.

The fraise des bois and cotton candy accords make the whole composition pop with playful buoyancy, think a bubblegum balloon bursting into pink air and laughter (a beautiful wink toward the naturally bubblegumy facet that existes within tuberose). Safraleine, that warm, leathery-spicy molecule is used here like the shadow cast behind translucent paper: essential in holding the entire luminous structure in place, like a contour glowing beneath tracing paper. Amber Xtreme, a notoriously powerful molecule (equally loved and feared), is dosed with engineering–level precision to create the lift and diffusion, and together they melt into the musks to produce the haze of the name itself: radiant, airy, persistent and present, yet never too much.

Thomas de Monaco Luisant Haze via the brand

Pop-art bright at first glance, yet artfully hazy and diffuse, once you step back to take it all in, the composition shifts constantly with distance and movement: iridescent, alive, luminous, the way a soap bubble briefly holds an entire rainbow on its surface for one suspended half-second before bursting into a splash of colour.

Editor’s note: Thomas de Monaco Luisant Haze was produced entirely within the house’s own manufacture in Switzerland – from maceration to filling.

Notes: fraise des bois accord, pink pepper essential oil, cardamom essential oil, sweet tuberose accord, cotton candy accord, safraleine molecule, white musk accord, amber xtreme molecule, tonka bean absolute.

Nicoleta Tomsa, Senior Editor

Disclosure: Perfume kindly gifted by the brand, as always, opinions are my own.

Thomas de Monaco Luisant Haze photo by Nicoleta

Thanks to the generosity of Thomas de Monaco we have a 50 ml bottle of Luisant Haze for one registered reader from the EU or US. You must register or your entry will not count. To be eligible, please leave a comment saying what sparks your interest based on Nicoleta’s review and where you live. Draw closes  5/21/2026

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Also read the reviews for Fleur Danger, Jade Amour Eau Couer (Michelyn’s  Top 10 Best of Scent 2022), Grand Beau, and Raw Gold

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