Jacques Cavallier Belletrud was born in Grasse in 1962 into a family settled in the town since the fifteenth century. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all perfumers. His father drilled him on natural raw materials as a boy, and from the age of ten he spent his summers in Grasse's perfume factories. He worked at Charabot and Quest before joining Firmenich in 1990.
At Firmenich he composed Issey Miyake L'Eau d'Issey in 1992, built partly on Calone, the melon and sea-spray molecule behind the watery perfumes of the 1990s. Jean Paul Gaultier Classique, Yves Saint Laurent Opium pour Homme and Lancôme Poême followed. He builds on contrast, setting dark materials against bright ones in one formula. Louis Vuitton made him its master perfumer in 2012, and he works at Les Fontaines Parfumées, the house's atelier in Grasse.
Louis Vuitton Ombre Nomade (2018), the house's first unisex oud, sets the wood against raspberry, benzoin and incense. Louis Vuitton Attrape-Rêves pairs raw cocoa powder with peony and lychee. Louis Vuitton Imagination (2021) rests on a heavy dose of Ambrox and Chinese black tea extracted with CO2. Louis Vuitton Symphony, a ginger and grapefruit extrait, belongs to Les Extraits, the 2021 line that gave Frank Gehry his first perfume bottle. Louis Vuitton Pacific Chill (2023) is a blackcurrant, cédrat and carrot seed cologne, sparked by a detox smoothie in Los Angeles.
