{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Compelling with Katy Wellesley Wesley","title":"Marc Chaya: Baccarat Rouge 540 and the Making of a Modern Cultural Icon","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":4510,"description":"What happens when a luxury industry built on marketing starts putting the creator back at the centre? \nIn this episode of Compelling, host Katy Wellesley-Wesley speaks with Marc Chaya, co-founder and CEO of Maison Francis Kurkdjian, about building a modern fragrance house where strategy exists to protect creative freedom, not constrain it. Marc traces his journey from growing up in Beirut during the civil war to becoming Ernst & Young’s youngest ever partner, and explains why beauty, reading, and the arts became both refuge and fuel for an entrepreneurial life.\n\nThe conversation goes deep on authorship: why perfumers stay invisible, why copying a scent is treated differently from copying a song, and what it would take to secure meaningful intellectual property protection for fragrance formulas. Marc also unpacks the origin story of Baccarat Rouge 540 and why it became a cultural phenomenon without traditional advertising. Along the way, we touch on sustainability, the future of gifting, and the challenge of scaling without compromising craft, as the global fragrance market continues to expand.\nMarc Chaya: Marc Chaya is the co-founder and CEO (President) of Maison Francis Kurkdjian, the Paris fragrance house he launched with perfumer Francis Kurkdjian in 2009. Before co-founding the Maison, Marc built a fast-tracked career at Ernst & Young in Paris, where he made partner in under ten years and later served as Global Telecoms Markets Leader, before leaving to pursue entrepreneurship and a creativity-led approach to luxury perfumery. He is known for advocating for perfumers’ authorship and for expanding fragrance into wider artistic forms, including the Palais de Tokyo retrospective celebrating 30 years of Francis Kurkdjian’s work beyond the bottle.\nVisit Maison Francis Kurkdjian\nKaty Wellesley Wesley: With over 18 years of leadership across galleries, foundations, and startups, Katy has built a career shaped by curiosity and a drive to explore new ideas. She spent...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/2JTE_96t8Hbe5R3xzuClzLrfaoeuMMr-F1NVjEB9yC8/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8wMjI5/ZGE0Y2Y0MDc4MDRm/MzRlNDVkMzVlZGJh/ZTRlYi5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}