Systematic Odor Composition

When I was a perfumer student in ISIPCA Versailles, I was told that I had a GC instead of my nose because I was able to duplicate the perfumes we had to study in less than 6 trials. I arrived extremely fast at their essence with less than 16 ingredients (I duplicated a FK creation with only 2 trials because I was totally disgusted by that perfume). Do I have an unusual nose? I'd rather say that many modern perfumes are not enough composed (I have bottles from the past which still leave me perplex). I also have a very different background which makes a huge difference and the process of duplication the easiest game. I am trained as an architect with many years of academic drawing. In high school I had to reproduce with maximum of accuracy the complicated shapes of the natural or man-made world. By the way, have you ever seen the amazing works of students in art / design / architecture from Moscow since the 1990's? When you have in front of you the copy of the marble sculpture of Michelangelo and you have to render with geometric accuracy all those impossible swirls which depicts Moses with horns on his head, reproducing a minimalist perfume takes less than one hour. I do not appreciate at all this type of perfumes and I am bored to death when I smell an "ingredient". Iso E Super has a peppery note? I thought it was obvious that woods and terpenic (woody) spices match. They are a futile intellectual game. When you do not master your ingredients and have zero ability to compose or imagine and zero message to share, the result is obvious. Every time I smell those sketches I go back to the true perfumes: Le Styx (Coty), Muse (Coty), Coque d'Or (Guerlain), Doblis (Hermès), Dioressence. I was shocked by Dioressence extrait which is less easy than Opium, I use it a few times, but what a masterpiece compared to many contemporary perfumes I presented on this blog! After many years, I am absolutely convinced that any Art Student (and music) can be trained to become a perfumer in the new order of scents. A master perfumer lost for ever my respect as an Artist when I heard him several times in Paris saying he's not interested at all to take students. It is certainly because he was NOT really the student of the great perfumer he pretended to be. As I always do, I test - I sent an application and I received a negative answer. A prolific artist is also a teacher, he has an "atelier" and students he initiates. For an artist it is of the outmost importance because, once you verbalize your thoughts you reflect on your "theory" and you can improve your work and knowledge. You feed your spirit with the thoughts of the new generation. When knowledge cannot be transmitted and shared with love and devotion all life was in vain and it is a sin for the Muses of Art who act consequently. Did you ever count when the "masterpieces" of a perfumer start and end? I am much grateful because living in Paris I had access to the documents / papers of several great artists / decorators / architects who lived more than 100 years ago. I've learnt more than in 8 years of architecture training.

Art is very serious and it's not about throwing a random stroke on a paper and call it masterpiece to the press. It is method and order under the impression of absolute freedom. Understanding complexity, being able to render the variety of elements with an unprecedented unity, deconstructing reality and reconstructing it within a new system, generating order but also creating the necessary contradiction which undermines the monotony is what an Artist does. It is also what a true Perfumer does. The rules for generating Beauty are identical, translating them is certainly not very easy because one has to master all these fields.

When I saw Jean Guichard almost 10 years ago in his office precisely at the angle of the "glass" building, I think I scared him. Architecture, pharmacy, art, literature and many apparently unrelated things do not pop up every morning at Givaudan Argenteuil in the old paradigm "we create perfumes for our clients". I loved his perfumes before I even knew he was the author (some perfumes haunts me without being at all my type). An artistic background is crucial in the new paradigm of creation because it opens new gates and something which was accessible to a very few number of perfumers in the past because of their education. An artistic background, which is totally different from an artistic sensibility, allows to manage both the subtlety of the detail and the whole picture - drawing the wrinkles of a curtain within a huge composition.

When I explain perfumes to small groups, I do it inside the Louvre in front of several paintings by Ingres and Delacroix located in the same room. They represent complementary notions to understand how a perfume works. Even if you take the avant-garde position of Malevitch you cannot avoid systematic odor composition. But all these elements from art theory are not taught in a perfume school, they are not even evoked. You will not find any of the ideas I developed on this blog inside ISIPCA, the most important perfumery school I graduated many years ago. Their importance however is crucial. It's not about being artistic, but something more complex called creativity. I enjoyed teaching design because the number of solutions I was given by the students was always impressive. If you enter an art school and see the works and themes, you'll be certainly amazed. An artist learns how to generate form+meaning and control them, he learns creation and its "tools" more than anything else. "Creation" is actually a language, spoken by a very small number on this planet. The ability to improvise like Mozart on any theme at any time, but preserving a delicate invisible thread (Ariadne in the Labyrinth) is the most important quality of a Perfumer in the New Order.

Many perfumers today lack both creativity and the ability to reinvent their tools when the world changes. With at least 2000 perfumes a year in 2020 and an increasing world population you can imagine that "being a perfumer" will dramatically change. Art is necessary for the perfume not for the press but for what it offers - the fountain of eternal youth in terms of original new ideas. Did you notice that only a very small number of perfumers possess today this amazing ability? They compose like Bach or Mozart and surf with amazing grace on the wind of change.

It's not about what the Perfume brings to the world of ART but more about what ART brings to the PERFUME. Is Oak moss a problem? I will not spend my life to defend an ingredient when people with more power did nothing. At home, more than 2000 km away from Paris, I have a piano and because I had not enough money to tune some of its 88 keys, I transposed some melodies I loved to avoid the "bad white keys". I discovered transposition and many musical elements when I was twelve and I thought it was extremely funny. I also think that everything should have a practical "conclusion", the reason why none of my texts is conceived as "philosophy". Today, with method and patience, everything from music, poetry and visual arts has a correspondence in perfume design. As I said many times in the past 6 years, Perfume becomes an ART once you believe it can be.

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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art