Resperfuma's Virginie Gervason: "AI Should Be Your Tool, Not Your Master"

Fragrance is growing so fast that new brands are crowding in, and the founder of a perfumery-only agency expects many of them to fail on what they say, not what they bottle. For any beauty brand weighing a day-long photo shoot against an AI packshot, her answer is blunt, and it comes from someone who has worked the raw-material side of the trade.

Virginie Gervason did not have a stand at Beautyworld Middle East in October 2025, and she did not need one. She had spent the two days before the doors opened building one for somebody else, and the idea behind one corner of the hall was hers: a space for the people at the very start of the perfume chain, the producers of natural raw materials from India, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

That corner, Natural Notes, came back in October 2026, when the show ran under its new name, Beautyworld Dubai, from 6 to 8 October. The organiser lists 10 natural ingredient producers in the 2026 space, in its second year with Gervason's agency. Her argument from that first edition is still a challenge to anyone selling scent: the brands that win in fragrance will be the ones with something real to show.

Her agency, Resperfuma, is in her words "a marketing agency dedicated to all the material of perfumery." It works for ingredient producers at source, for the large composition houses and for finished fragrance brands. "We cover all value chain of perfumery, and we deliver everything around marketing, strategy, communication, storytelling, photo, video, design, retail design, pack design, and booth design," she told The Beauty Insider at the 2025 show.

What another beauty operator can take from her is a view on spend. Gervason thinks many new brands entering fragrance will burn their budget on communication that says nothing, and she has a firm opinion on where AI imagery sits in that.

From encapsulation patents to an agency

Her route in was not through marketing. "Actually, my real background is food engineer. I am a food engineer," she said. She started in research, where she held patents for encapsulation, then moved to supply chain as a director for logistics and purchasing, then to selling natural ingredients to perfumers, and finally into marketing. By her account she was global director for the ingredients division at what is now dsm-firmenich, in a career there of more than 15 years, before opening her own agency. Resperfuma gives 2021 as its founding year.

The agency grew quickly, and she is frank about why. "But it has started very fast because you know I am old. And when you are old, you have a big network."

That background is the whole pitch. "Of course, there are a lot of marketing agencies delivering luxury, working for perfumery, but they do not know what is behind the scenes," she said. "We are unique because nobody in any marketing agency knows the perfumery material as I know it."

A boom with a casualty list

Gervason sees the growth plainly. "You see everybody is developing with figures that are amazing. You have a double digit figure every year. It's just unbelievable."

Her worry is what that growth attracts. Because the category is rising so fast, she expects a wave of newcomers, and she does not expect many of them to last: "many, many brands will enter and many, many will collapse."

The survivors, in her view, will be the brands that understood real demand and found a real difference, and then said so clearly. "If you do not have the budget for communication, for example, you're dead," she said. Money alone does not fix it. "In order to be seen, you can spend a large, large amount of money in communication, but if you do not understand on what you will communicate, you will lose your money."

The case for the slow photograph

This is where her view will land hardest with brands now producing most of their visuals with AI. "Fake communication is overloaded. You have AI photography, for example. So they are nice, but they do not tell nothing," she said. "And for us, for example, when we do a pack shot, lifestyle pack shot, we do real photos with a real photographer in a real space."

She described a shoot for Touch of Oud, a Dubai fragrance brand: "We have done a real photo with real wood, with a real light in the bottles."

That is also where the cost sits, and she does not hide it. "It can take one day to take two photos instead of 30 seconds for an AI, but the difference is huge, you know?" A day for two images is a price many young brands will struggle to justify. Her argument is that the cheaper image is the one nobody stops for, and an image nobody stops for has cost something too.

"AI should be your tool, not your master."

She does not reject AI outright. "There is a space maybe to gain time, to get some ideas, but at the end of the day, the final touch must be human." Then, more simply: "AI should be your tool, not your master."

Putting the source on stage

The other thing she brought to Dubai in 2025 was Natural Notes, which she described as "a space dedicated to natural ingredients producers at source." It was activated with the show's organiser, Messe Frankfurt Middle East, and by her account it was the first time such a space had run in the Middle East. She said the idea came from a conversation with the organisers the year before, when they asked her what could be new at the show.

On the first day she moderated a session with four of the producers on sustainability, responsibility and partnership. Her framing for them is a useful one for any brand that builds a claim around natural origin: "You are at the beginning of the value chain. And this is the first year that you are under the light."

For cosmetics brands telling a provenance story on pack and online, that is the point. In her telling, the producers are the story.

At the time she hoped the space would keep growing. "I hope that these natural notes will grow, maybe like Quintessence, in a few years." A second edition with 10 producers is a step in that direction.

Why it matters

For brand owners, her numbers are the trade-off in plain terms: a day for two real photographs against 30 seconds for an AI image. Her case is that in a crowded fragrance market, the image nobody stops for is the expensive one.

For category managers and distributors, her prediction is a warning about the fragrance boom: double-digit growth brings in brands that will not last, and the ones that survive will be those that understood real demand and found a real difference.

For anyone building a natural-origin claim, Natural Notes is a reminder that provenance is a story buyers can now meet face to face, and that the producers at source are part of the message, not just the supply chain.

Her advice to the brands she works with comes back to the same word. "Be real, be professional, and you will help your customer to survive and you will stand out."

About Virginie Gervason

Virginie Gervason is the founder and CEO of Resperfuma, an agency working only in perfumery, with offices in Paris and Grasse. A food engineer by training, she spent more than 15 years at what is now dsm-firmenich before founding the agency in 2021. She proposed the Natural Notes space for natural ingredient producers at Beautyworld Dubai.

Interview recorded in Dubai, October 2025.