The Diary of a Nose: A Year in the Life of a Parfumeur

I like pleasures when they are shared, that is my definition of luxury.

All of a perfumer’s art summarized in a single word. So could you say perfumers are characterized by this ability to sniff things out, this ‘sixth sense’? The idea is both amusing and gratifying.

Perfumes and fashion may go hand in glove and may appear together in public but they do not live together. The timetable for couturiers’ collections does not follow the same rhythm as the development of a perfume. Perfume, in fact, avoids the short-lived fate of fashion. Fashion is, by definition, something that will be out of fashion.

‘the true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible’.

He tells me how, when he started out in cartoons, he loaded his pictures with detail, but as he grows older he is more and more inclined to use a clear line, which implies a perfectly distilled drawing, luminous, sharply distinguished colors and a spare linear narrative.

With successive creations, the way in which I conceive perfumes has changed. I no longer listen to the market – creativity sometimes needs a deaf ear. I no longer pile in components, I juxtapose them; I no longer combine them, I associate them. My perfumes are accomplished perfumes but not finished ones. Each perfume is linked to the one before and