Marc Chaya: Baccarat Rouge 540 and the Making of a Modern Cultural Icon

What happens when a luxury industry built on marketing starts putting the creator back at the centre? In 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.The 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.(00:00) - Welcome to Compelling (01:51) - Meet Marc Chaya and the Conversation Setup (04:32) - Urgency, Impact, and a Drive to Build Something That Matters (05:21) - From Ernst & Young to Entrepreneurship (08:58) - The Dinner Party That Sparked a 22-Year Partnership (09:20) - Putting the Perfumer at the Centre of the Maison (15:29) - What It Really Takes to Build a Luxury House (23:30) - Perfume Beyond the Bottle: Art, Installations, and Scents as Sculpture (33:18) - ICON(S) and The Alchemy of the Senses Documentary (40:57) - Dupes, Aspiration, and the Case for IP Protection in Fragrance (58:25) - Sustainability, Packaging, and the Future of Refills Marc 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.Visit Maison Francis KurkdjianKaty 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 a decade at leading commercial galleries—first at Gagosian, then at Pace, where she was Director of Exhibitions in London. She went on to lead the Villa Lena Foundation in Italy as Director, before joining the founding team of ROKBOX, a pioneering environmentally focused art logistics startup, as Sales Director. After relocating to Paris six years ago, Katy developed a strong interest in the intersection of art and luxury. To deepen this focus, she recently completed an Executive Master’s in Luxury Management and Design Innovation, a joint program between ESSEC Business School and Parsons School of Design. She now works as a consultant to brands, artists, foundations, and collectors. Among her clients is the legendary art publisher Cahiers d’Art, where she heads Commercial Partnerships.Compelling is proudly in partnership with Cahiers d’Art.Compelling is produced in collaboration with Cahiers d’Art, the iconic Paris-based art publisher founded in 1926, home of the Catalogue Raisonné of Picasso and most recently the Frank Gehry Drawings Catalogue Raisonné. At the heart of it's publishing program is the Cahiers d'Art Revue, one of the most significant and longest-standing annual art publications of the last century. In 2026, Cahiers d’Art will celebrate its 100th anniversary with a series of major publications, projects and exhibitions in collaboration with leading global institutions, including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the MoMA in New York City and the Musée Picasso in Paris.Visit Cahiers d’ArtArt direction by Eddie Harrop StudioWebsite and Production by Story Ninety-Four