The Sweet Smell of Success

Lisa Webre has always been a hopeless romantic, but 10 years ago it was harder to flaunt. Her career at the time, as a Louisiana state trooper, left little room for frivolity. But now, as a professional perfume-maker, she’s free to indulge every fragrant whim.

The story of her business seems straight from the pages of a romance novel. After 12 years on the force, Webre retired and fulfilled a dream by buying, with her sister, a 150-year-old perfumery in New Orleans. The two learned from the previous owners how to create distinctive fragrances, but less than a year later Webre met a man, a “dyed-in-the-wool Cajun,” who swept her off her feet. They soon married and moved along the bayou in his hometown of Thibodaux, (pop. 14,431) about 45 minutes away.

“Commuting to New Orleans while living in the country was like living two lives,” Webre says, so she turned the business over to her sister and stayed home with her husband in their 200-year-old cottage surrounded by oak trees.

But word travels fast in a small town, and soon everyone seemed to know of her fragrant past. Before long she was asked to create a scent for a local gift shop. Then a plantation manager asked her to re-create a fragrance described in the diary of a previous owner. The perfume, called Laura’s Violets, was a hit with tourists, and Webre found herself back in business. She named her new company Lagniappe, a Cajun-French term that means “something extra.”

“It’s very romantic to deal with the oils. You blend them together and your whole house smells wonderful,” Webre says. She does all the work in her kitchen, selling the products in stores, museums, and through a website: www.laoaks.com.

Over 12 years she has expanded her product line to include parfum, cream, powder, bubble bath, and bath salt formulas. She focuses on what she calls “Heirloom Victorian” scents, similar to what was popular between 1840 and 1910.

Some of the fragrances, including Les Fleur Magnolia and Vetivert, have local inspiration. In fact, vetivert is a grassy reed once used by Louisiana plantation owners to control erosion. The savvy farmers also discovered that the dried roots made natural air fresheners, and used them as wreaths and sachets.

“It’s a kissing cousin to patchouli,” Webre says. Though she buys most of her other fragrance oils from larger companies, she actually grows the vetivert, which has a scent she likens to baby powder.

Webre’s business has grown mostly by word-of-mouth, particularly among customers who enjoy the special treatment she provides.

“I’m blind and can’t always tell one bottle from another, so Lisa devised a system of labeling that allows me to easily identify the different products,” says Cay Bartlett, of New York.

Webre calls this “spoiling the customer” and relishes every opportunity to do so. She’ll even alter the fragrance to suit a customer’s request. For Bartlett, that means an extra drop of vanilla in her bottle of Lady Evangeline. And for a pregnant customer whose olfactory senses are working overtime, she’ll soften the floral notes.

Some might say that’s a lot of work for one customer.

“But you know what? She’ll be with us forever,” Webre says. “And we’ll get pictures of the baby.”

Kara Carden is a regular contributor to American Profile.

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