The Diary of a Nose (11 page)

Unlike with language, where no individual can single-handedly change the meaning of a word, when a perfumer puts forward a new interpretation of a smell, he can change its significance. For example, the smell of ionone beta – a molecule discovered in 1893 – was synonymous with the smell of violets right up to the end of the twentieth century. In order to create the accord with tea in
Eau parfumée au thé vert
for Bulgari, I used this synthetic compound in a different way and combined ionone beta with hedione. The perfume became a market archetype, and the smell changed: Ionone no longer smells just of violets, but also of tea.

In the Hermès perfume
Poivre Samarcande
, traces of absolute of violet leaves combined with a high dosage of iso E reveal the peppery aspect of this molecule, hitherto unrecognized. Phenyl ethyl alcohol, used since it was first discovered to evoke the smell of roses, is now used to evoke the smell of sake or cooked rice.

I know that words, and even more so smells, do not have the same significance for each of us; all the same, smells are elements
that perfumers can transform, bring to life and change. It is because they change meaning that they are alive, and that perfumes are alive.

Cabris, Tuesday 24 August 2010

Narcisse bleu

A work meeting about current projects. We have a lengthy discussion about the composition of
Narcisse bleu
, an improvisation that I am putting forward for the Cologne collection. I explain that, although the smell is important, what I am particularly hoping to express in this perfume is the tactile aspect.

A perfume never speaks to one sense alone, but offers itself to all the senses. In saying that, I do not mean its name, the packaging or the bottle, but the perfume’s smell. I am reminded of Paul Cézanne who said that, from its colors, he could tell whether an object was velvety, hard or soft and even what it smelled like. I found my subject in the smell of narcissi. Not the flower, which hovers between the fragrance of roses, white flowers and horse droppings, but an extract obtained from the flowers as well as the stalks, which – for me – has a green, abrasive, rounded, powdery smell. With a juxtaposition of green, abrasive, powdery, woody and floral notes, I have interpreted this olfactory perception by playing on contrasts between the abrasive, powdery and woody notes, and the green and floral ones. Narcissus may be the main premise of this cologne, but I will not actually be using an extract of it, because I am trying to achieve a density and a thickness that only synthesized compounds can give me, because their characteristics can melt together without detracting from the way the subject is interpreted.

Cabris, Thursday 26 August 2010

Mediterranean

I was born in Grasse, and yet I do not feel Grassois by nature, nor Provençal, for that matter. My parents and I left Grasse too early for me to feel I belong in the town, although I am fond of it. My attachment to the place is due to my paternal grandparents, who were of Italian descent and who set up home there; but also to the people who helped, taught, instructed and supported me during my apprenticeship there, people who were mostly not Grassois. As for the image of people from Provence as boastful, chauvinistic, noisy and generous – characteristics that gave Pagnol’s films much of their charm – I do not recognize myself in it. I prefer Jean Giono’s world. Pagnol the Parisian tended towards regionalism, Giono the Manosquin had his eye on the universal.
⁶

I try to avoid the sun, and favor shady woodland. I find the languor of beaches boring, but am drawn to creeks and reefs. I love the sea and its horizon, where my gaze gets lost as the blue of the sky and that of the sea merge. I appreciate the beautiful bodies, the drape of light clothing, the discreet elegance and restraint. I have never been able to truss myself up in suits; their restrictiveness denotes a rigidness of mind and disenchantment with life. I believe in happiness, in man, in a lay spirituality; I do
not trust religions. I would rather have eye contact for a long time than chatter for a long time. And, although I like to seduce, I have a sense of propriety with words. As I write this, I am reminded in particular of Camus, who wrote in
L’exil d’Hélène
:

I have never sought to impose anything. My research is driven by a constant desire to find a balance between what can be felt with the senses and what is intelligible to the mind. I am Mediterranean.

Cabris, Wednesday 1 September 2010

Subject

A perfume does not necessarily need a subject, a concept; if it is beautiful it exists in itself.
Un Jardin en Méditerranée
was created with a subject as its starting point: the smell of fig leaves, which represent the Mediterranean for me.
Terre d’Hermès
evolved differently. At the start, the only pointer I had from my chair- woman was the word
‘terre’
(earth). This name had been registered as a trademark for a perfume several years previously. Clearly, it was not a question of reproducing the smell of earth. I began with a perfume structure that I had kept in reserve, one created without a subject in mind, and one I believed in. As the composition included a high percentage of woody notes, I came up with the image of a wooden post driven into the ground against the background of an Irish landscape. The post symbolized man’s presence, man on earth.

As I work for a company, I do not create only for myself; I make it my duty to explain what I am doing and to establish a sincere dialogue, which airs my doubts and convictions, and can also be reassuring.
Terre d’Hermès
took eight months of work. Along the way, I sustained the creative process with dialogues and olfactory images, and later these were used in the launch brochure and to train sales staff. The subject assumed its definitive form with the final trial. It is not the hundreds of trials that prove the value of this work, even though they were necessary, but the gradual process.

I have managed to create some perfumes in less than a week, others in several months; some have been works in progress for several years, and I keep them to one side because they do not match the idea I have in mind. What I do know is that I give a great deal when I feel free.

Cabris, Friday 3 September 2010

Tools (objects used in everyday life)

Nowadays, most perfumes are made of ambroxan, phenyl ethyl alcohol, citronellol, coumarin, hedione, heliotropine, hydroxycitronellal, iso E, ionone, lilial, methyl ionone, synthesized musk, patchouli, synthesized sandalwood, salicylate and vanillin. What dictates this choice of products is their unchanging characteristics, their linearity. They are fragrant substances manufactured in vast quantities and used in all perfumes: they are tools.

A century ago, these odorous compounds were new to perfumers’ noses. It took intuition and repeated trials to find their uses. Then, once every combination had been tried out, perfume composers sought to use these olfactory substances in different ways. They are currently utilized in percentages that our predecessors would never have dared use. What they offer – their smells – has become common currency that the perfumer dresses up in all sorts of different ways. To satisfy the need for swift economic return, when marketing departments noticed how much time was wasted in this ‘dressing up’ process, they suggested that researchers should try to find molecules with similar smells. Which is what happened with the fifty or so synthetic musks available.

It takes about a decade for a new smell – whether naturally derived or synthetic – to become an ‘olfactory convention,’ and longer still for it to become common currency, a tool. Time has its uses, and so do tools, but only if they are properly used.

Cabris, Wednesday 22 September 2010

Suggestions

I remember that when the painter Émile Bernard described how Paul Cézanne approached watercolors, he came up with this idea: ‘His method was unique, quite outside the usual technique and excessively complicated. He started with painting shadows and with an area of color that he covered with a second, larger one, then a third, until all these colors screening each other modeled the object by coloring it.’ If you look closely at Cézanne’s watercolors you can see that the areas of color do not completely cover each other, but are mostly juxtaposed. Their interplay creates a remarkable harmony.

I proceed in a similar fashion when ‘modeling’ a perfume, by freeing myself from the mind-set of proportions that I could have chosen – the wiser from previous experience – and by thinking only about the raw materials. It is the raw materials that shape a perfume; when they are juxtaposed, they set up resonances. When I try to establish harmony, the proportions establish themselves.

Cabris, Thursday 30 September 2010

The moleskin notebook

My tools are test blotters, a pencil, a block of paper and, for a number of years now, a notebook. It was as I approached forty that I started making notes on accords, ideas for perfumes, writing down thoughts, copying out quotations, at first on loose sheets of paper that piled up until I arranged them alphabetically in files of various sizes. Then there was the moleskin notebook. I like the size and shape of it because I can slip it into my pocket, like a wallet. I appreciate the elastic strap that keeps it closed, and means it can hold notes jotted quickly on to loose pages.

Because ideas and thoughts spring up freely and I do not trust my memory, I write things down. In the early days I wrote in pencil, an HB pencil, scrawling so quickly and clumsily that I had terrible trouble reading myself afterwards. I sometimes even wrote my notes out again, going to some effort, believing they were important; but they only have whatever value I give them, and that can vary. Although it made my reading less easy, I liked the idea of using pencil. There is no simpler writing implement, and I stuck to it for a few years; then, as I had more and more trouble reading what I had written, I bought an expensive fountain pen to encourage myself to write legibly. Since then, I have been decipherable. Sketches and watercolors have been added to the notebook – but only rarely. This second memory bank actually frees my mind, and allows me to concentrate on working with raw materials.

Paris, Wednesday 6 October 2010

A composer of perfumes

I have sought freedom in composing perfumes, and I have been a slave to smells. I cannot stop myself smelling and thinking about smells, for fear of losing the ability to compose. As with all artistic work, I need to work physically with the material and to have an understanding of it. That is the price I pay for being a composer of perfumes, and that sometimes worries me.

Cabris, Wednesday 13 October 2010

Smell

When smell is no longer linked to memory, when it no longer evokes flowers or fruits, when it is stripped of all feeling and affect, then it becomes material for a perfume.

When I can no longer describe it, when it has consistency, depth, breadth and density, when it becomes tactile, when the only representation I have of it is physical, then I can bring it to life and create.

In this summary I have reduced smells to the level of signs. This is how smells, such as amber, cherry or jasmine, are achieved using a minimum of juxtaposed materials
.

Taken separately, the materials smell nothing like the subject headings I give
.

This summary is essentially a game in which you subject your nose to a minimum of two test blotters sparingly impregnated with fragrance, wafting them like a barely opened fan. Sometimes, due to its intensity, one of the blotters may have to be held further away. This is not about finding proportions, but producing an interconnection, an attraction
.

With each ‘hand’, I recommend smelling the blotters separately before putting them together, and I would not make more than seven smells in order to keep the nose alert. Occasionally, a combination of blotters really doesn’t work for some people; you will have to experiment with how you arrange them, bringing some blotters closer or holding them further away
.

(All materials should previously have been prepared as a 5% solution in 90° Celsius ethyl alcohol.)

AMBER

Amber used in perfumery is an olfactory convention which bears no relation to the fossilized resin, yellow amber, or to ambergris, an intestinal secretion produced by sperm whales. It was the first abstract smell in perfumery and appeared at the end of the nineteenth century with the invention of vanillin. This simple juxtaposition went on to generate an extraordinary number of perfumes
.

APPLES

A colorful basket of apples
.