Last time I was in Paris, I visited Officine Universelle Buly in the Haut-Marais district, and fell in love. Buying beauty online may be convenient, but it’s not an experience – and a visit to Buly is everything that shopping online is not.

Perfumer Jean-Vincent Bully first set up store on rue Saint-Honore in 1803, and co-founders of Officine Universelle Buly, Victoire de Taillac and Ramdane Touhami, opened their first modern iteration of the brand in rue Bonaparte in 2014 – and now have stores around the world, including a counter at Selfridges London.

My favourite is the store on rue de Saintonge in the Haut-Marais, since it combines all the beautifully displayed beauty products with an exquisite coffee bar, plus a mini treatment room out at the back. There’s opera playing, exquisite perfume in the air, friendly staff and a general sense of Parisian history and excellence. And the treatments are extraordinary, by the way – if you can get a shiatsu massage appointment with master masseur Mr Ao, book it immediately. Even the soundtrack is carefully considered, and you’ll never have a treatment like this.

This week, I was lucky enough to grab half an hour in the rue Bonaparte store and it reminded me how lovely Buly is. It’s the real deal, with a winning combination of history, quality and quirkiness. There’s a collection of exquisite fragrances, several of which are inspired by paintings in the Louvre, including La Victoire de Samothrace, created by fabulous French perfumer Aliénor Massenet (who has created scents for Memo Paris and Richard E Grant’s Jack label, amongst others). There are mini boxes of perfumes as special editions (€220), and they’re all beautiful. I couldn’t resist the perfumed body lotion in this scent – glass bottles of body oils and lotions come with both silver metal caps and pumps. And the presentation! The wrapping is exquisite, with hand-written labels.

There’s also a gorgeous array of gift ideas, all of which can be personalised, from lip balm (€28) – choose the colour, case and initials – to combs and hairbrushes. Quirky items include paper soaps, and the most striking tubes of toothpaste you’ve ever seen, flavoured with orange and clove. One of their most recent products is Eau Gymnastique, a spray-gun fragrance designed to make your shoes smell good for ever (though at €70 you may prefer just to buy new trainers). See more on their cleverly designed and alluring website.

www.Buly1803.com