The Scent
How do you feel about being a Dior “nose”?
Proud! Especially when you think about the Dior heritage and the master perfumer who came before all of us – Edmond Roudnitska. It is a wonderful legacy to continue to nurture and build upon today.
What is your favorite smell?
"Odor di femina", the smell of a woman. If you don’t love women, you can’t create perfumes. Perfume is seduction, an extension of the process. But one can also hide behind a perfume, or change their perfume according to their mood. As Christian Dior used to say: "C'est la touche finale" (“It’s the finishing touch”).
What are the main characteristics of Dior perfumes?
What makes them unique? Dior perfumes represent true eclecticism. They also symbolize new challenges, new adventures. The fact that the perfume house was founded at the same time as the fashion house, the very same year, was something that attracted me to Dior because it was proof of a certain philosophy. Miss Dior, Dior’s first fragrance, is still around and considered the classic chypre fragrance. When you begin work in the perfume business, you are asked to study the classic perfumes, and you spend a lot of time smelling them, and in the process you gradually find that you literally “get inside” the perfume. This type of exercise is limited to the great classic perfumes. And luckily the classics are still available, and always will be. At Dior, to cite just a few, we have Miss Dior, Diorella, Poison, and Eau Sauvage, which in fact triggered the “Eau” phenomenon in men’s fragrance. All these great classics have made Dior the leader in single-flower fragrances. What characterizes Dior’s perfumes is their use of high-quality products, and I am trying to help enhance this trend by emphasizing them even more, so the House can set itself apart more clearly from the mainstream market.
You have created many perfumes, and major ones at that. But is there a fragrance that you still dream of capturing?
Roses! Up to now it hasn’t worked, but I would so like to capture the precise scent of roses. There are so many varieties and each is perfectly exquisite. Their aromas reveal everything about them: their shape, their color, their character. And just when you think you know them inside out, there are always surprises, new things to discover in roses. For someone who is in the profession, the ultimate perfume can only ever be the next one to be created. But roses are a different matter altogether, and more. No doubt they are my fantasy perfume. Perhaps I’m better off never actually attempting to create such a perfume; this way the desire will remain intact.
For you, is creating perfume like creating a work of art?
For me, perfume creation is high-level artisanship, it’s a domain in which luck, magic and expertise come together in varying proportions.
What does a “provocative” fragrance mean for a creator of fragrances?
There are different ways to wear a fragrance. You can wear it simply as a way to show off, you can consider a fragrance as something that reveals your own personality, or you can even use it as a mask, to escape the real world. But beneath this provocative sensory “garment” that a perfume can represent, women are aiming to seduce.
Do you have any advice or hints about how to apply perfumes? And what is the best way to store them?
A fragrance should be applied to the parts of the body that you want kissed! I like to tell people to treat a fragrance like a living thing, like wine for instance, which means that it should be stored in a cool place, away from changing temperatures and light. I would say that the best place would be in a cupboard. What advice would you give to young, “would-be” perfume designers? Avoid an excess of indulgence.
