Meet the mother-daughter duo behind luxury Cork-based fragrance studio La Bougie
Lucy and Tabitha, the mother-daughter duo behind La Bougie, holding Tabitha's baby
Before entering the world of perfumery, Lucy Hagerty had already forged an illustrious career as a royal chef.
But after marrying an Irishman, raising her children and ultimately putting down roots in Ireland, her focus shifted — and it’s here that the idea for creating the perfect candle began to take shape.
“I think taste and smell are quite similar,” she says, agreeing that her culinary training certainly shaped the way she approaches fragrance. “I’ve always been fascinated with smell. When you’re cooking, you’re smelling. I’ve always tested by smell. Even if it wasn’t something particularly pleasant, I still always wanted to know, to understand, to smell it.
“Training in perfumery is very tricky. It requires perseverance and knocking on doors.”
La Bougie launched in the summer of 2012, following seven years of Lucy immersing herself in the world of perfumery, and a further two spent mastering the craft of candle-making. Hand-poured in the family’s perfumery in Kinsale, Co Cork, the brand has since built a devout following both at home and abroad.
Candles may be a booming market now, but 14 years ago, there was less choice available — many of the options out there were “generic” or “blah”, according to Lucy: “You don’t necessarily want your home smelling of hot cross buns or mulled wine or roses… I wanted to create some really special fragrances, and I think that’s what I did.”
Describing her working life as “non-stop”, it’s clear ambition runs in the family — a trait Lucy passed on to her daughter and now colleague, Tabitha.
“I had my emails turned off for 48 hours, and then my mum came in and said, ‘I declare this over’,” laughs Tabitha of her maternity leave.
“I’ve really mastered the art of reading emails and typing with one hand,” she continues, joking that she’s “far too nosy” to be out of the loop.
“I do have a fear of missing out,” she concedes.
The reality of running a family business — long hours, little time off, and the need for seemingly endless reserves of motivation — can be jarring to those unfamiliar with the sacrifices.
But for Tabitha, that work ethic was ingrained in her from a very early age — long before La Bougie even entered the picture.
“Unless I was vomiting or I had literally lost a finger or a limb, I was in school,” she recalls. “I think that taught me perseverance; that you can’t just have a head cold and call off.”
Tabitha has been with the business since leaving school, though the brand was born when she was very young.
Mixing family and business won’t suit everyone, but it does for them.
“We just get things done because we work so well together,” she says, noting that her father is also involved in operations. “We all talk about work at home anyway. I suppose it kind of brought us all closer.”
Lucy says: “I think the really interesting thing when you have a family business is that meetings are really short because you don’t have to sit there going, ‘Yes, I hear what you’re saying, and I like that idea’. We just go, ‘oh, shut up. No, we’re not doing it that way,’ or ‘yes, brilliant idea’.
“Meetings are much quicker; there’s a lot of shorthand.”
The flexibility is another obvious benefit — if not always where maternity leave is concerned.
So, what makes the perfect candle? As the authority on the matter, I’m keen to hear their take. Beyond scent alone, is it about burn? Atmosphere? Memory? Something harder to define?
“It’s fragrance throw,” says Lucy confidently. “That’s the most important thing about a candle. There’s no point in having a candle and not being able to smell it. That is always what I set out to achieve.”
For many people, scent is intrinsically tied to memory. Their own range has been influenced by shared family experiences: Tuscan Bergamot is reminiscent of Tabitha’s grandparents’ house in Italy; Sage & Bitter Orange evokes the barbershop her granddad gets his hair cut in; Mission Fig is an ode to their envious garden; Honeysuckle & Sea Salt speaks to Lucy’s love of West Cork.
When tasked with making bespoke candles for clients, the brief often centres on recreating a happy feeling.
Having recently moved to the UK to lead operations there as the brand grows, Tabitha is unfazed by the work involved in carrying the family legacy into a new market — even with a new baby demanding attention.
“It’s quite exciting,” she says. Lucy is, of course, pleased, though less so that her grandson is so far away.
“It’s nice to have some granny time,” she smiles.
The name, an inspired choice by Lucy’s husband, has a double entendre: it’s the French word for candle and a slang term derived from “bourgeois”, usually used to describe something or someone as fancy, luxurious or high-class. “Posh candle,” nods Lucy. “When I first started, somebody said, ‘Irish brand, French name, run by a Brit’. That was quite amusing, but I’ve been here for so long. I’m married to an Irishman, my children are Irish.”
It’s not surprising, then, that Ireland is central to the identity of the brand — and that’s not something they’re willing to compromise on as they expand.
“We’re very much an Irish brand, and I’m really proud of that,” says Lucy, admitting that they keep running out of space and “swallowing up other buildings in the town”.
She’s keen to emphasise that they’re “not a heavily Celtic brand”.
“Our candles must stand up on the international stage,” she said.
When asked what her advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs would be, Lucy has plenty of wisdom to share, but ultimately she whittles it down to this: Learning to say no.
“It’s the most important thing when setting up a brand,” she tells me. “You have to steer a very defined course. Often when you’re setting up a business, you’re perhaps a bit tight for money, and an opportunity comes up, and you think, ‘yes, I’ll do that’. We never did that. We never compromised.
“We knew what we wanted with La Bougie, and we would rather eat baked beans on toast than take on projects that didn’t feel right.”
Looking ahead, the future is bright, with the brand now stocked in Ireland, Britain, and the US. Fifteen years down the line, they hope you’ll be able to buy a La Bougie candle all over the world.
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