The Diary of a Nose by Jean-Claude Ellena Read Free Book Online

it
Eau de mandarine bleue
, a playful title inspired by the poet Paul Éluard, although he preferred oranges.
    I also have a new Garden perfume underway and have christened it
Un Jardin sur le Toit
, a homage to the terrace at 24 Faubourg Saint-Honoré, which, during the Second World War, was a vegetable plot intended to provide some produce for the Dumas-Hermès family, and was transformed into a garden when Jean-Louis Dumas took over as chairman of the company. A garden made up of white flowers through the seasons, roses, irises, pansies, impatiens, tulips, not forgetting the pear tree and apple tree.
    The women’s perfume whose draft disappointed me in Hong Kong – but with which I still have an affectionate relationship – may yet turn into something.
    I am also working on the Hermès classics
Calèche
and
Bel Ami
, which I am interpreting like jazz standards, with my own sensibilities. I have named them
Vétiver de Calèche
and
Cuir de Bel Ami.
I could mention other work, such as
Bois amer, Bois de pierre, Fleur de porcelaine
and
Narcisse bleu
, that may never see the light of day.
    For now all these perfumes are ‘in progress.’ Although their names do not reveal much about the form I have in mind for each of them, but they make it easier, once I have set them aside, to find them again. Of course, I could have assigned them codes or numbers, but I prefer names, names are one of the keys to their stories.

    Cabris, Thursday 25 March 2010,
after listening to the writer Patrick Modiano
in
L’Humeur vagabonde
3 on France Inter
    Temperament
    Up until the 1970s, perfumes prided themselves on being accomplished works. They were complex rather than structured; they were piled high, an accumulation, an addition, and afforded only one reading. There was a sort of pretention in this, a desire to dominate that tolerated no criticism. I followed this model when I composed
First
for Van Cleef & Arpels in 1976. Gorged on analyses of market archetypes, I collected, borrowed and conflated every signal for femininity, wealth and power into this perfume, which, over time, has become alien to me. I certainly do not disown it. The loving relationship I had with it lasted only the time it took to create it.
    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 already features the next. That is not to say that they are alike, but they are unitedby subtle connections. I never take an existing formula as my starting point. Every formula is forgotten once the creation is completed. In fact, I work from memory on variations on a few themes that are special to me; I try to revisit them, correct them and take their form of expression further, somewhere else, in a different direction. None of which means I do not look for new themes. Charles Trenet said that of the thousand songs he wrote only a dozen were successes to his own ears.
    This approach does not imply a desire on my part to impose on people, but a constant need to awaken pleasure and curiosity, and create an exchange. So I deliberately leave gaps, ‘spaces,’ in perfumes for each individual to fill with their own imagination; these are ‘appropriation spaces.’

    Paris, Tuesday 30 March 2010
    ‘Shrewd’
    I am at the Paris book fair with Gérard Margeon, who is Alain Ducasse’s sommelier, and the philosopher Chantal Jaquet, to talk about smells, wine and perfume. Gérard Margeon expresses his hope to see wine tasting go beyond a purely figurative conversation. Citing notes of raspberry, blackcurrant, oak, rose or leather is only a starting point. This sort of vocabulary is used in the first stages of apprenticeship, but it needs expanding with references to location, soil, mineral