The Diary of a Nose (10 page)

Cabris, Wednesday 7 July 2010

Féminin H,
continued

While I am tidying up the things on my desk this morning, I smell a forgotten test blotter for
Féminin H
. I notice an effect I previously missed, one I find bewitching and sensual, and which entices me to embark on a new path. I put to one side the work based on pears and keep the words ‘appetizing’ and ‘crisp’ as guiding principles, expressing them this time with an accord I am fond of with slightly acid blackberry–grape–redcurrant notes. I associate this with the commonplace elegance of patchouli and other molecules that work together well. The first trial has a rather muddled form with the high percentage of patchouli playing out alone and producing the effect of a camphorated refrigerant as it begins to evaporate, but then melting away pleasantly after a few minutes. The overall impression is seductive. The proportions will stay as they are. I simply correct the juxtaposition of smells by adding some woody notes. This trial is an open invitation to continue along the same route.

Cabris, Thursday 8 July 2010

Sixth sense

To conclude his article, a Dutch journalist asks me whether I have a sixth sense. ‘Perhaps a sense of time,’ I reply. I should have said, ‘a feeling for time.’

In the 1990s, I held the position of head perfumer and had a team working for me. I remember a very heated exchange with one perfumer after I had smelled one of his creations. I criticized his style, which emulated the style of the 1970s. He replied that the 70s were the golden age of perfumery and this was how he liked to work. It was his point of view. I might have understood and even accepted it if he’d been a free agent. But I stated emphatically that I could not accept his reply because our clients, who had entrusted us with this commission, were looking for perfumes with a contemporary spirit.

Ever since that exchange, I find myself smelling my work with a lurking fear that my compositions have a fragrance only for the present. I am wary of nostalgia; it confers on perfumes a complacent seductiveness. I cannot predict the future, and those who try often get it wrong. In fact, I am not aiming to be sidelined, but outside fashions, trends and time, and yet of the present.

Cabris, Wednesday 21 July 2010

Style

Having worked hard to define a style for my compositions, a way of writing perfume, I know that there is a danger of being overly faithful to myself. Repetition leads to caricature, stagnation and even exhaustion. By restricting myself to one premise, I run the risk of no longer being heard or watched with anticipation. Conversely, if I listen too much and am too influenced by trends, I rapidly condemn myself to being part of the ‘contemporary scene’ and losing my individuality. More than once I have allowed myself to overcomplicate things and to be very slapdash with my formulae, only to throw my work away, forget about it and start all over again in order to find my way. With the balance of a tightrope walker, I have to hear without necessarily listening. I may be acutely aware of what I am doing, but I also value doubt, and I nurture it: I know no better aid to the creative process.

Cabris, Thursday 22 July 2010

Tinkering

The industry now has analytical tools that I find wonderful: chromatographs, spectrographs, computers. I have played with them for hours, trying to find ‘the’ molecule that gave a smell its meaning. An innocent approach when we know that the scent of a rose comprises hundreds of different molecules and that not one of them smells like a rose. So I have not found ‘the’ rose molecule, but I have discovered that the smells of flowers have a biologically dictated cycle, and that their composition can vary significantly without them losing their identity – and this has altered the way I envisaged the process of composing perfumes. Thanks to these analytical instruments, I have also learned how perfumes could be constructed. Since I stopped using them, I have abandoned analysis, favoring a more sensitive approach, tinkering with ingredients and quantities.

Perfume is not a product of science, even if it is backed up by it. There is an element of tinkering in the way a perfume is constructed; illusions and olfactory decoys play their part. I make slow progress, tentatively feeling my way with successive trials. My collection may be limited, but in my cupboards I have boxes and boxes of raw materials that I like but never use, although they do have a role: they are in the back of my mind as the ‘it might be useful.’ I keep them because the judgment I have passed on them is not final. They could one day end up
in a formula and become part of the collection, although that rarely happens.

In general, industrialization has reduced the tinkering. Right up until the 1970s, perfumers were still using powdered dried blood, tobacco cuttings and sheep droppings macerated in a soup of chemicals to reproduce the smell of musk, and mothballs were incorporated into perfumes to recreate the smell of fur; all of which proves that perfumers certainly have a talent for tinkering. I do not regret the passing of these ingredients; I simply embrace this mentality, which is a form of creativity.

Spéracèdes, Friday 23 July 2010

Holidays

I am closing up my workshop for three weeks. As I shut the door behind me, I remember the judicious choice I made six years ago to work far away from the decision-making center. This choice may have been partly due to my own origins, but it also highlighted the fact that I wanted to create without being inconvenienced by daily interruptions, and I wanted to avoid the frenzy or anxiety generated by weekly indicators: sales figures, market share and standing within the industry. Not that I have no interest in them – I am kept regularly informed, and I worry about them, delight in them, and actively participate in discussions about company strategy. All the same, I believe that the best way to develop creativity is to work alone and without evaluation, which does not mean without any dialogue. The majority of ideas are the fruit of assiduous, day-to-day work, sometimes the result of meeting people, country walks, idle strolls, things I have read, moments when my mind is free to roam. My moleskin notebook, in which I jot down ideas, words and the beginnings of formulae, is always close at hand.

But being alone also means knowing how to manage solitude and the risk of losing momentum that can come with it. I always have several projects, several formulae, on the go. Having a work routine, keeping to a timetable and setting goals for myself are
all devices I use to counter that tendency to withdraw. I experience solitude as a freedom I have chosen. It is balanced out by my regular trips to Paris.

Spéracèdes, Wednesday 28 July 2010

The dream perfume

I am continuing this diary during the holidays in the light-hearted spirit of a summer magazine. I have never answered the question ‘What would be your dream perfume?’ for lack of time to develop a clear answer. I will have a try today.

The dream perfume is one that can be smelled and experienced in the moment, for the time of one inhalation, but not one to be worn. It is not an ornament, or an item of clothing, nor is it a protection. It is pure emotion. This concept might be confusing because imagining a perfume in this way takes us outside its usual codes. I dream up perfume as a poetic offering, a ‘sudden ravishing delight of unpredictability’ in the words of haiku-writers, who reveal the unknown at the very heart of the familiar. I came close to this dream in Japan, when I took part in a Kodo ceremony. These complex ceremonies involving perfume and incense can take different forms. During this one, the master of ceremonies burned ten different fragrances one after another. For each fragrance, the participants were invited to compose a poem – in English for the
gaijins
(foreigners) – and to hand their writings to the master of ceremonies. All the poems were read by him, and those attending were asked to choose the poem that best evoked the perfume. The winner was whoever was selected the most often. The ceremony followed a slow, precise and coded ritual. Despite the discomfort of sitting cross-legged on a tatami for more than two hours, I found that
this meshing of poetry and smells generated in me feelings of completeness and harmony – an experience shared by most of the participants.

The dream can take another form. I sometimes think I should go back to some of my perfumes and rewrite them. I do not mean starting with the same theme and creating a new perfume, which is something I have already done on the theme of tea, for example. But rather to have a similar approach to making a new translation of a book, staying as close as possible to the original perfume, but writing it with other words – smells – that might translate the idea I now have of the perfume.

The way in which we read and perceive a book is not exactly the same today as it was yesterday, and the same can be said of perfume. Chanel’s rewriting of
No. 5
with
Eau Première
was an interesting way of interpreting this idea. If I pursue a similar dream, though, I am not sure I will find any takers.

Spéracèdes, Monday 2 August 2010

Accords
(Combinations of several sounds heard together and creating a harmony.)

In the beginning was the image of a piano with its eighty-eight keys. If I press all the keys at the same time, it makes an unpleasant noise. Mixing eighty-eight unselected components is highly likely to produce exactly the same sort of olfactory ‘noise.’ Now, if I play just three keys at random on the piano, how many different possibilities are there on an eighty-eight-key keyboard? One hundred and nine thousand seven hundred and thirty-six, according to mathematical calculation. If I transfer that calculation to the number of possible accords from dipping three test blotters at random in a collection of primary scents, even a modest one, the possibilities are considerable.

I realize this is a simplistic image and that, if I chose the components, many accords could be avoided because I would anticipate those that would not be worth making. Even so, I think the metaphor is an amusing way of illustrating the need to formulate things with simplicity.

I do not know how many components there need to be before a formula is called ‘complex.’ I only know that this sort of formula is very likely to reuse known accords, which appeals to commercial perfumers.

I am, therefore, against complicated formulae, in which repetitions and accumulations give a muddled and unintelligible – though
seductive – reading. I prefer simplicity; it alone allows for new readings of the same premise, but I consent to complexity when it affords subtlety. The perfume
Bois Farine
that I created for L’Artisan Parfumeur is a simple formula, comprising about ten components, yet it is complex because it uses a base that contains thiazoles and pyrazines, which are difficult and, in some cases, unstable chemical compounds, and can only be used in very diluted forms.

Spéracèdes, Friday 6 August 2010

Bees

‘What color stripe do you start with to draw a bee?’ When my grandson asked me this question I was at first surprised, then dazzled. Surprised because I had never thought to ask this myself, and dazzled because it was about a minor detail that was not, in fact, minor at all as it pertained to millions of bees. I told him I did not know and that he could color his picture however he liked. I regret that I could not give him an answer. His question denoted a concern to find the truth, an attentive eye and a curious mind. We could have looked for images of bees together on the internet and found an answer – there was bound to be one. Later in the day I opened my moleskin notebook and wrote down the question; it is an example of the child’s view that we should all try to nurture in our own thought processes.

Cabris, Tuesday 17 August 2010

Back to work

The first thunderstorm breaks sometime around the 15
^th
of August every year. I like listening to the thunder; it’s one of the most beautiful drum rolls. The grey of the clouds gives some green back to the trees. The rain sets free all the smells that the sun condemned. The months of intense heat are over. There is something reassuring about this renewal.

This morning the sky is spreading out its blue above the workshop. I open the door after three weeks away. The smell hits me. Despite all our precautions, the place is fragrant. I had forgotten that I am cloaked in this smell all year long. I think about visitors encountering it for the first time. It is a presence, a distinctive feature. I know that I need it.

Cabris, Wednesday 18 August 2010

Féminin H,
still

It is a pleasure to get back to the latest work on
Féminin H
; the trials are promising. The inclusion of sandalwood has smoothed the coarse camphor effect of the patchouli. The overall form is full, dense and elegant; but it is not airy enough. I embark on some trials with different types of patchouli that I had put to one side ‘just in case.’ An ester of patchouli gives good results because it has the earthy notes of the traditional essential oil. I carry on with my trials, changing the quality of the musk I originally used, to improve its longevity. At this stage, my task is that of a craftsman perfecting a completed piece. It is systematic work during which I experiment with the different qualities of some of the raw materials used in the formula, paying closer attention to the technical aspects – diffusion, persistence and presence. Later I will put more work into achieving crispness and gorgeousness, and the mischievous smile I want this perfume to have.

Cabris, Friday 20 August 2010

Changing direction

Language lives freely and quite independently of us, and, over time, the words that make it up alter their meaning. (Until recently the word
‘escagasser’ –
which is originally an Occitan word and has a ring to it that I love – meant only to stun or knock senseless; now it can also mean to bore (to death).) The same is true of smells, which can change their meaning over time, without actually losing any of their former significance.