The Diary of a Nose Read online

  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.

  1 Our translation. All further translations of quotes are our own.

  2 This play on words sounds like the expression for ‘a narrow escape,’ and also implies a wonderful moment of escape.

  3 This translates approximately as ‘the wandering temperament.’ Originally the title of a 1971 film by Édouard Luntz, it is now the title of an arts show on the France Inter radio station.

  4 ‘Numbers and letters’ – the equivalent of Countdown in Britain.

  5 In La Fontaine’s fable ‘The Cicada and the Ant,’ the industrious ant refuses to give food to the cicada, who has been dancing all summer rather than preparing for the winter.

  6 A Manosquin is a native of Manosque, a small town in the Alpes de Haute Provence region.

  A SUMMARY OF SMELLS

  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.

  vanillin

  labdanum (absolute)

  APPLES

  A colorful basket of apples.

  GREEN APPLES

  fructone

  benzyl acetate

  cis-3 hexenol

  YELLOW APPLES

  fructone

  hexyl acetate

  benzyl acetate

  RED APPLES

  fructone

  allyl caproate

  hexyl acetate

  CACHOU

  Although the name cachou may not mean much to English readers, there are similar bitter, minty lozenges in many countries, and they are a part of my childhood. My maternal grandmother carried cachous in her black handbag, and offered me some every time I saw her. I tasted them, and then swiftly went off to hide and spit them out. As a child, I did not like bitter tastes.

  anethol

  ionone

  methyl cyclopentenolone

  menthol

  CANDYFLOSS

  Whether it is white, pink or green, candyfloss is more a smell associated with carnivals and children’s amusements than a taste – because then it is merely sugar.

  vanillin

  ethyl maltol

  CARAMEL

  Absolute of tonka bean and bezoin resinoid both evoke caramel. The olfactory illusion is perfected by associating vanillin and methyl cyclopentenolone.

  tonka bean (absolute)

  vanillin

  methyl cyclopentenolone

  CHERRY

  I like cherries picked s
traight from the tree, perhaps because they are a symbol of spring, but mainly because they are crisp, acidic and sugary. The taste we remember is mostly the flavor in, say, yogurts, and this condemns us to the same bland olfactory reference.

  beta ionone

  heliotropine

  benzaldehyde

  CHOCOLATE

  The aroma of cocoa beans alone is made up of hundreds of molecules, but, by roasting the beans, man has given this distinctive flavor a very human complexity because he has tripled the number of odorous components. This juxtaposition of smells demonstrates that perfumers are above all illusionists.

  isobutyl phenyl acetate

  vanillin

  To ‘make’ plain chocolate, I recommend adding patchouli; for a ganache, a trace of civet; for ‘orangette’,7 orange zest; for an After Eight, spearmint; and for the smell of cocoa powder, concrete of iris.

  FIG

  Stemone gives an impression of mint leaves or fig leaves, it all depends on what I want to make it say.

  stemone

  gamma-octalactone

  For the smell of ripe figs, I recommend adding ethyl maltol, but for dried figs the answer lies in concrete of iris.

  GARDENIA

  The gardenia perfume I like best is Chanel’s, because it does not smell of the flower but of happiness. The fragrance of gardenias is a drama played out somewhere between jasmine and tuberose.

  aldehyde C-18 prunolide

  styrallyl acetate

  methyl anthranilate

  GRAPEFRUIT

  If there is one disappointment for perfumers, it must be grapefruit because, although it has its own essence, this essence smells of oranges. Fortunately, our arsenal includes sufficient artifice to satisfy the enthusiast.

  sweet orange (essence)

  rhubofix

  HYACINTH

  ‘… The smell persists, always the same, always so precise and so demanding, insisting that I carry on seeing images of vats of wine superimposed over the real image of my books until the moment when I finally grasp that it is simply (but what an admirable entanglement of riches in that simplicity!), it is simply the smell of three hyacinths in flower.’ Jean Giono in Arcadia! Arcadia!

  phenyl ethyl alcohol

  benzyl acetate

  galbanum

  Adding indole brings the hyacinth more fully into bloom, while cis-3 hexenol evokes hyacinths in bud.

  JASMINE

  As a child I liked to go out at dawn and – using my thumb, index finger and middle finger – pick porcelain-white jasmine flowers, intoxicated by their light, tender, green fragrance. Towards noon, the last chalky-white petals exhaled a warm scent of orange blossom. By evening, the forgotten, yellowing flowers gave off a penetrating, animal smell of big cats.

  benzyl acetate

  hedione

  clove bud oil

  indole

  methyl anthranilate

  LILY

  Lilies ‘announce’! In the fifteenth century many paintings by Italian masters depicted the angel Gabriel handing lilies to Mary as he announces that she is to be a mother. The choice of lilies is never made innocently. Their shape and color are symbolic, but their smell also contributes to their symbolism.

  benzyl salicylate

  phenyl ethyl alcohol

  methyl anthranilate

  Depending on botanical varieties, you can add linalool, indole or geraniol.

  LIME BLOSSOM

  I have never succeeded in using this tree’s blossom to my advantage. All I can do is fall asleep in its dark shade.

  lilial

  undecavertol

  MANGO

  I bring it to my nose. The smell seduces me. A profusion of fragrant images, resin, orange peel, grapefruit, carrot, sweet myrrh, juniper; a smell that is fresh yet sweet, energetic yet tender. I can’t resist it any longer. I let it caress my senses, overwhelming me with smells.

  ionone

  aldehyde C-14

  blackcurrant buds (absolute)

  OLIVE

  This smell describes the Mediterranean single-handedly. From black olives to olive paste, via olive oil, my nose and palate find endless connections: smells of truffles, castoreum, human smells, smells I am drawn to.

  castoreum

  benzyl salicylate

  To which you can add styrax resinoid and thyme if you want to produce the taste of olive paste.

  PEAR

  This Friday several stalls are selling winter pears, small crimson-colored pears whose fragrance reigns over the market …

  fructone

  hexyl acetate

  rose (essence)

  PINEAPPLE

  This exotic fruit needs few elements to express itself. A simple molecule called allyl hexanoate smells of pineapple, but also evokes some kinds of apple; there are sometimes tenuous differences between two smells. To get the pineapple smell just right it is important to add ethyl maltol.

  allyl hexanoate

  ethyl maltol

  PISTACHIO

  I think you have to be a Turk truly to know the taste of pistachios. On every street corner in Istanbul, traders go to ingenious lengths to build pink hills of pistachios on their stalls, and they make little paper cornets to sell fifty kurus’ worth of them.

  benzoic aldehyde

  phenylacetic aldehyde

  vanillin

  RASPBERRY

  Unlike cherries, which have more taste than smell, raspberries are all about smell.

  fructone

  beta ionone

  frambinone

  Adding cis-3 hexenol gives a sour, green quality, while geraniol will give a taste of lipstick.

  STRAWBERRY

  As an apprentice perfumer, I learned that the smell of strawberries could be made with C-16 aldehyde, which is known as ‘strawberry’ – both terms are misnomers because chemically it is in fact acetone, and it smells mainly of apples. I would suggest another combination:

  fructone

  ethyl maltol

  And for wild strawberries:

  fructone

  ethyl maltol

  methyl anthranilate

  SUGARED ALMONDS

  I asked a girl on work experience with me to create the smell of sugared almonds in a few words. She bought a hundred grams of the best sugared almonds from a confectioner, and this is what she wrote:

  vanillin

  benzoin (resinoid)

  benzaldehyde

  7 A confection of chocolate-coated bitter orange.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people who encouraged me to write, and those who read this diary at different stages in its development – some of them even on several occasions – and who demonstrated their friendship with their suggestions and comments. My thanks for this generosity go to: Susannah, Annelise Roux, Julie Gazier, François Simon, Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, Olivier Monteil, Catherine Fulconis, Quentin Bertoux and Stéphane Wargnier.