Illuminating History: Trudon’s Timeless Craftsmanship

For more than 380 years, Trudon candles have illuminated cathedrals, palace halls, royal apartments, hotels, restaurants and some of the world’s best smelling living spaces.

In the crowded and growing field of scented candles, Trudon stands apart for its pedigree: founded in Paris in 1643, it became the royal wax manufacturer during the 18th century, providing candles to the royal court of Louis XIV at Versailles until the end of the monarchy. In recent years, the company expanded its offerings to include vaporizers, hand soaps and fragrances, drawing on its heritage to provide modern shoppers with a touch of history.

To learn more about Trudon’s storied past and its approach to aroma, Mastermind spoke with creative director Julien Pruvost, who has been working for 15 years at the maison.

How’ve you been reflecting on the last 15 years?

JP It’s the kind of company where you never really possess it. It’s this old entity that traverses history, and you’re the carrier of the flame, and you know at one point you’re going to let go and someone else will take over. It’s like maintaining an old castle or manor. 

When you’re working in a company with such a storied history, how do you stay modern while respecting the past?

JP We’re blessed with such a fantastic company history that traverses some of the exciting remarkable moments in French history – one could say world history. The 17th and 18th centuries were traversed by the Enlightenment period. It elevated the crafts, the arts, architecture, landscaping, ballet, opera, music, you name it. In the wake of all that, many ‘lesser’ crafts, if I may say, such as the manufacture of candles, were uplifted. The Trudon craft eventually was cited as the only reference in the French encyclopedia of arts and crafts by Diderot and d’Alembert, which came a couple of years after the British encyclopedia. So even those who were involved in making lightbulbs pushed their craft to a level that was permitted by the period.

As a modern brand caretaker, you look back at that and you can’t shut it off. It’s almost a duty to be interested in history, because we know how things repeat themselves. If you apply that to the world of commerce, of brands, you realise that you have an amazing entity that will allow you to decipher the present, the future, thanks to its past. The Trudon legacy is an amazing tool to excavate what needs to be done as a brand, today and tomorrow.

What comes out of all this overthinking are products that are in line with demand, but are infused with the past of the company. It’s not translated as, “This was the King’s product,” no. It’s inspired in different ways. When you peel through the layers of a Trudon product from a conceptual point of view, you find it’s connected to its past but made relevant to nowadays.

Do Trudon’s archives reveal anything surprising about what Versailles or the royal courts were like at the time?

JP One needs to understand that the royal wax manufacturer was definitely not the only supplier of the French royal courts. Neither were the Trudons the only supplier to Versailles. The place required such large quantities of candles, it wasn’t possible. Also, as a supplier, it probably wasn’t a good idea for your business to be completely dependent on Versailles. The court didn’t have a reputation of being a good payer.

A single candle that would come out of the Trudon manufacturer would cost quite a lot of money: the equivalent of the daily wage of a highly qualified worker, for one candle. The word “bougie” meant a candle that was exclusively in beeswax. Now you say bougie for anything, it’s even an adjective. Anything else was called a chandelle back then, meaning it was made out of tallow with beeswax. A beeswax candle guaranteed it would last longer, the light was stable, wasn’t flickering, no bad smells, no smoke. It was a superior candle and the Trudons only made bougies back then.

If you look at the record of Versailles in terms of candle consumption, between Louis XIV to Louis XVI at the end of his reign, it was an exponential consumption of candles. It was probably a lot of corruption, overbuying and overconsuming, but there was also this notion of prestige. The more you could see, the more powerful you were. And then to maintain them: it’s a very different task to light one candle versus lighting multiple chandeliers. You need staff dedicated to doing that, and for some people at Versailles that was one of their main activities: taking care of chandeliers, candleholders, candlesticks, cleaning them and changing the candles every day. There are records at the French National Archives of the Trudons supplying Versailles. There are a lot of documents, not very interesting: purchase orders, invoices. Because they were expensive, they were limited to certain parts of the castle, for example the Royale candle that is still part of our line today was the exact same format used in the king’s apartment. It’s no longer made out of beeswax. We don’t use beeswax in any of our products today for environmental reasons.

The interest in scented candles – or maybe scent more broadly ­– seems to have exploded since the pandemic. What do you make of that?

JP We clearly noticed, just from a financial standpoint. In part, it’s due to the niche fragrance brand realm also evolving. Many of those brands incorporated [scented candle] products in their lines which contributed to making scented candles very much in vogue. 

Covid played an immense role in shining a light on the use of scented candles. We were all stuck indoors and wanted to improve our daily environment, our home. For the masses, it became a feature for interior decoration, not just home deco aficionados. Now everyone, on every social strata, has a scented candle. You can find one at Costco or at Loewe. But Trudon benefitted from that huge trend and greatly contributed to growing the trend as a specialist field. We elevated the art of candle manufacturing, clearly. We have the best formula in the market. Each vessel is unique and 95 percent handmade. You’re getting a lot for your money.

It’s a company that has lots of imitators.

JP You’re always at risk someone will take over, and you’re sitting there on a pile of history. What keeps them at bay, if I may say, are two aspects: one is creativity, which needs to be cultivated through the ages. And the manufacturing aspect. We’re one of very few brands that have been manufacturing its products since the 17th century, and we’re still investing a lot in our research and development. We even benefit from a tax break for that, which is exceptional when you think about it. Those tax breaks are given to companies who do super sophisticated research, but as long as you can prove you’re conducting R&D in your field, you can benefit from this.

In your role, how do you work with perfumers and “noses” when it comes to developing new fragrances?

JP I’m not a perfumer, I will never be one and I don’t pretend to be one. We depend on the creativity and sensitivity of the perfumers we work with. Their job is to translate a certain vision of Trudon into fragrances. We try to give them a large enough frame so they feel free and at ease to express themselves. This comes in two forms: it can be archival – pictures, texts, folios, audio, film. And then there’s a more conceptual approach which I’ve applied to the fine fragrance line, where we create a rather extraordinary bespoke experience for the perfumer. We would use a specific place and soundtrack to brief the perfumer. It’s an experience that lasts half an hour or so, in a place in line with the brief, the story. The perfumer was in some cases put in a receptive, relaxed state of mind using guided meditation. And then the brief would be read to them.

Have the results surprised you?

JP The very first fragrance was Bruma, and it won the Fragrance Foundation award the year of the launch, in 2017. That was, from my standpoint, a favorite moment. It was in a place I cherished, which is the Museum of Hunting and Nature in Le Marais. We borrowed one of the rooms filled with antiques and contemporary pieces that are very dreamy. The place was a real fairytale, we worked on a soundtrack, consulted a therapist to put the perfumer in a receptive state of mind before the reading. The whole experience was very uplifting.

Have there been any other projects that really marked you these past 15 years?

JP The launch of the fine fragrances, which was my idea. The line grew and found traction. From a strategic standpoint, I knew that would be part of the future of Trudon. Candles alone would not suffice. To have been able to enter that realm with a very creative approach, find traction, and now, as I leave, know that it’s going to be a main strategic development focus, is very satisfying.

Do you have a madeleine de Proust when it comes to scent?

JP I come from a family that has its roots in the south of France, on the eastern side, Vallauris. It’s very different today, but nature is very present from a sense perspective. I was brought up in part by my grandmother who introduced me to a variety of plants and scents when I stayed with her. Maybe the most emblematic one is cyprus. The entire family of scents from the south east of France runs through my blood: rosemary, thyme, lavender, orange blossom, eucalyptus, fig. They’re very classical, typically natural scents that run through me.