In August, I met up with a friend at Sous le Parasol, a tiny perfume boutique in a decidedly non-chi-chi Parisian neighborhood. The boutique looks like it hasn’t had a branding update since 1966, and its logo and throwback storefront needs only Jeanne Moreau in a trench coat to shine in a nouvelle vague movie.
Naturally, my pulse leapt at Sous le Parasol’s glorious retro-chic décor. But what really got my heart racing were its shelves of cheap thrills. David Hasson, a Spanish perfumer, founded Sous le Parasol in 1936. He stocked his shop with his own colognes and blended them at his laboratory in Burgundy from materials from Grasse. The founder’s son still makes the boutique’s fragrances, and the granddaughter runs it…