Two rooms in Patershol
ORRISVEIL has been teaching perfumery in Ghent since 2019. It is small on purpose: one weighing bench, one organ, and enough chairs for eight.
We started because there was nowhere in this city to learn it properly.
There were candle evenings and blend-your-own-oils experiences, and there were the professional schools in Grasse and Versailles that ask for a year of your life and a chemistry degree. Nothing in between — nothing for the person who wants to actually understand how a perfume is built but is not planning to leave their job over it.
So the format is deliberately in that gap. Courses run in evenings and short blocks. You work on the real organ with real materials, including the expensive naturals, because learning on a reduced kit teaches you a reduced craft. And nothing is pre-blended: you weigh everything yourself, in parts per thousand, on the same scales the trade uses.
What we do not do is sell perfume. There is no house line, no signature scent, nothing at the till. The only thing that leaves this room is what students make.
Taught by people who compose the rest of the week
Our courses are led by working perfumers — they compose commercially for independent houses, for private clients and for their own lines, and they teach here between briefs.
That matters more than a list of credentials would suggest. Teaching from current practice means you hear what actually happens when a formula fails at the third week, not the tidy retrospective version. It also means the teaching rotates: you will not have the same person for all six sessions of La Structure, and the disagreements between them are part of the point.
We keep groups to eight because the organ has one of everything, and because a formula in trouble needs someone standing next to you rather than across the room.
- Founded
- 2019, in the Patershol quarter of Ghent
- Taught by
- Three working perfumers, each composing commercially alongside teaching
- The organ
- 240 materials — naturals, absolutes, isolates and synthetics, all available to students from the first session
- Group size
- Never more than eight, on any course
- Languages
- Courses run in English and Dutch
- Since 2019
- Around 600 people have made something here
Come and see the room before you book
We keep Thursday afternoons open for visits. No obligation, no sales pitch — you smell a few things, look at the bench, and decide.
Arrange a visit