Olivier Polge: "You Don't Make Beautiful Fragrances with Complicated Ideas"

"Preferences change. In the 1990s, people wanted a very light fragrance. Today that’s not the case.

There are now so many heady scents, like ouds galore. I’ve heard that superstrong scents are meant to please customers in places like the Middle East and Russia. 

That’s a reality: Certain stronger scents do better in the Middle East, and Asian countries like their scents lighter. But I try not to be so opportunistic. I care less about geographic territory than spirit territory. Is this scent in the spirit of Chanel?"

Olivier Polge on the left, at the advertising campaign of Valentino Uomo, via welt.de

The above snippet comes from an interview of perfumer Olivier Polge at Chanel (formerly creator of the gorgeous Dior Homme, Balenciaga Florabotanica, Balenciaga Paris and all its flankers, Guerlain Cuir Beluga, Valentino Uomo, Viktor & Rolf Spicebomb, the newest Mugler Les Exceptions fragrance series and of the perfume best-sellers Flowerbomb, Lancome La Vie Est Belle, and Dior Pure Poison) given to the New York Times and Bee Shapiro.
Please find the interview in its entirety on this link. 

As we had reported before, concerning Olivier Polges' first scent for Chanel, named Misia after Coco Chanel’s friend Misia Sert, which joins the Chanel Les Exclusifs lineup of more-experimental scents midmonth (retailing at $160), the young perfumer is at the helm of the prestigious French house from now on, succeeding his father Jacques Polges. (Who in his turn had succeeded Henri Robert, who followed Ernest Beaux, essentially making Olivier only the 4th ever in-house head perfumer at Chanel).

 Smelling of lipstick, rose and powder, Chanel Les Exclusifs Misia perfume is said to conjure the dressing-room scents of the Ballets Russes.

Hermes Le Jardin de Monsieur Li: new fragrance

It is official. The final chapter in the Jardin fragrance series by the historical house of Hermes is inspired by a garden redolent of in house perfumer Jean Claude Ellena's favorite flower: jasmine. The flower he grew up with (Jean Claude was taken as a child alongside the family, working with the workers, for the dawn picking of the lush white blossoms which smelled halfway between flower and flesh, as he recalls in his Journal d'un Parfumeur/Diary of a Perfumer).

The inclusion of the unusual note of kumquat, a small citrus fruit with a rich scent favored for the preparation of a special liqueur on the island of Corfu, recalls the fruity hesperidic note in Colette 1873 by Histoires de Parfums.

The name, Le Jardin de Monsieur Li, is of course recalling a garden fantasy, as previous editions in the series did: the plate of figs offered in a garden in North Africa as translated into Un Jardin en Mediterannee (2003), the green mango and sycomore trees in Assouan, Egypt, in Un Jardin sur le Nil (2005), the monsoon in Kerala, India in Un Jardin apres la Mousson (2008), and the actual garden atop the Hermes headquarters which provided vegetables for the Dumas family during WWII in Un Jardin sur le Toit (2011).

Of course this is the swan song of Jean Claude Ellena for Hermes as well. He is to be succeeded by Christine Nagel, as we had announced on Perfume Shrine a while ago.

The new Jardin fragrance by Hermes, Le Jardin de Monsieur Li, is set to be available at the flagship Hermes boutique on Madison Avenue (in NYC) in early March 2015.

Perfumery for Everyone: Italian Course in Perfumery

Cult perfumer Dominique Dubrana, going by the alias Abdes Salaam Attar, responsible for the wondrous offerings of La Via del Profumo, is organizing again on of this famous perfumery courses in the idyllic setting of Italy, in Rimini.

"After years of interruption in teaching, I am organizing a 5 to 7 days seminar to teach my philosophy of perfumery and my method of making perfumes. The course will be held in the hills of Rimini from 10th to 15th June, and there is an accommodation package.

Teachings will be about natural raw materials, including animal scents and rare essences, several of which can be smelled only with me. Then the crucial point of how to understand and evaluate the quality of natural raw materials will follow. The sourcing of the best essences will be explained so that who has learned how to make perfumes with me can carry on as a perfumer. Then perfume descriptive language, philosophy and ethics of natural perfumery which are fundamentally important because the nose is only secondary to the mind in making perfumes, which is before all a mental attitude.

There will be everyday blending workshops of different methods and approaches in order to keep the interest high. I shall teach how to proceed in custom blending for private customers and friends and also how to apprehend concept blending for companies. Last but not least, Lavender will be full blown in Rimini by June and there might be a distillation course with a further day."

For more info & contact visit the Facebook page and the Profumo blog.

Thinking about Calone & Controversial Notes

This morning, for no particular reasons, I woke up thinking: “I need to make a Calone* centric fragrance”. The second thought was “maybe with a big flower next to it. That would be so odd, maybe a tuberose or rose”. The third thought was “there is a reason why I do not have Calone here in my perfume studio/lab/creative mess”.

*Calone is an aromachemical with an  effect of watermelon, which became huge in the 1990s thanks to its inclusion in "marine" scents. 

Thus starts an entry on the blog of indie perfumer Andy Tauer titled "Was Calone Putting an End to High End Male Perfumes?" which you can read here. It highlights something that has been bugging me as well for some time: how much of what we object to has to do with the very nature of the thing and how much with the associations we make with it? And more importantly, how much does the creator cater to their own impulses and how much do composers of perfumes cater to the taste of their perspective audience? And why should this be good or bad.

On to you: Do you have a bad association with a specific note and why is that, you think?

Vintage Advertising Champions: Mitsouko or The Geisha & The Sailor

"For one crazy moment he feels he will stay. Then he turns towards the gangplank and walks very slowly in the mist.
Each one of their moments -the shy beginning, the electric touching of fingertips, the transporting passion, will disappear in the universal solvent of time plus distance.
Years later, a woman in a silk dress will pass by wearing Mitsouko. 
And 1921 will flash through him like a shock. He will not be able to forget the long black hair, the incredibly soft skin, the infinite tenderness...
Mitsouko by Guerlain."

In a Madame Butterfly context (harkening to the original novel La Bataille which inspired the creation of Guerlain's famous perfume Mitsouko set during the Japo-Russian war) the text of the above 1974 advertisement zooms in onto a powerful connection and perfume marketing apparatus: that of recollection triggered by scent. "1921: a fragrance will not let him forget."

What irony that the beloved memory of one might be felt off the sillage, the fragrant trail of another...