Perfumes inspired by literature: volume 1
If the world of perfume has inspired writers, novels have also influenced perfumers. In this creative exchange, imagination plays a key role. To open a series of articles dedicated to this subject, we interviewed the famous perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena. Valérie Donchez
Like a novel, a perfume tells a story, sets out a universe, sublimates reality by introducing an essential ingredient: the imaginary world. Until the 18th century, the vocabulary associated with olfaction was very limited, the sense of smell being considered an archaic instinct. Over time, however, perfumery gained its letters of nobility and the olfactory vocabulary was also enriched.
A perfume created by Jean-Claude Ellena is instantly recognisable. And why is that? A fluid narrative, a message that hits the nail on the head, all in elegance – the elegance of the essential that he shares with authors like Haruki Murakami. The self-proclaimed ‘writer of smells’ spoke to us about how literature has inspired some of his creations.
INTERVIEW
‘Smell is a word, perfume is literature’. That’s how you introduced Diary of a Perfumer in 2011. What did you mean by this?
Jean-Claude Ellena : It’s not a gratuitous statement, it’s my way of conceiving perfume. For me, perfume is a poetic statement, not a concept. A concept is a matter of reason and science. Long before I became a perfumer, I called myself a ‘writer of scents’. For me, scents were words and perfume their literature. When I was creating fragrances for Hermès, I treated my creations, such as Terre d’Hermès, like novels, the Jardins series like short stories and the Hermessence series like haikus, thus establishing connections between literary forms and fragrance forms. My perfumes tell stories.
Giono inspired you to create one of the most beautiful of all leathers: Cuir d’Ange. How did that come about?
The idea for Cuir d’Ange, released in 2014 as part of the Hermessence collection, came from a sentence in Jean le Bleu*, in which the writer Jean Giono, describing his cobbler father, writes: ‘I can’t pass by a cobbler’s shop without believing that my father is still alive, somewhere in the world beyond, sitting in front of a table of smoke, with his blue apron, his trench, his ligneuls, his awls, making shoes out of angel leather, for some god with a thousand feet. ’ ‘Angel leather shoes for some thousand-footed god‘ was Hermès’ definition of the word, so I had to express this oxymoron in a fragrance. It took me ten years to create this fragrance. Time was not a factor in the quality of the fragrance, but the time needed to find the right expression of what I wanted to translate into a perfume, a supple leather, as light as a feather, with a soft sensuality that I had been able to get hold of in the house reserves. I asked Sylvie Giono, Jean Giono’s daughter, for permission to use the name, which she gladly granted. In doing so, I paid tribute to an author I admire.
What were your inspirations for the magnificent men’s fragrance Terre d’Hermès?
For Terre d’Hermès, unlike ‘Cuir d’Ange’, whose name I had chosen, the word ‘Terre’ was suggested to me, along with a little phrase that said a lot: ‘We want a GREAT masculine fragrance’. I translated ‘great’ as a big success. I liked the name, but it wasn’t a consensus in the house. I had re-read Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a major work in the history of art and literature which describes the creation of the world, of the earth, with Gaia as mother goddess (without the help of men). I read it with relish. I was also drawn to the character of Galatea, this woman with skin as white as milk. My first work was a very milky woody accord, but that didn’t work out for ‘Terre d’Hermès’. I felt that the fragrance, although seductive, was too elitist. It was later released in the Hermessence collection under the name Santal Massoïa.
Was Paprika Brésil also inspired by literature?
Paprika Brésil was born out of reading Tristes Tropiques** by Claude Lévi Strauss and the passage: ‘In the old days, people risked their lives in the Indies or the Americas to bring back goods that today seem derisory: Bois de braise (hence Brazil), red dye, or pepper, which, in the time of Henri IV, people were so crazy about that the Court used to put chewable grains in candy boxes’. Bois de braise’, “brûlure”, “poivre”, “piment”… words that I wanted to recount: recounting the burning emotion that chilli pepper provokes on the tongue and whose origin is Brazil; because this spice has little smell, but above all taste. In all creative endeavours, there is an idea, a theme, sometimes just a few words, which are enough to build new stories, in this case olfactory ones. Elsewhere there are novels, paintings, ballets and operas.
How would you like to end this conversation?
As a writer and perfumer, my favourite punctuation mark is the full stop. The end of a statement or an idea, the beginning of a new statement or a new idea, wave after wave as I write. Perfume is: A full stop and everything is said. Everything is there as soon as we put our nose to the bottle. Then, on the skin, the perfume evaporates, the elements of the perfume, like the words, disappear, fly away, fade away, cancel each other out. There is no way back. The composition of a perfume is a decomposition or a composition without breathing, a continuous wind of odour that weakens over time. You have to open the cork again, perfume yourself to be carried away in the wake of odours.
*Jean le Bleu, 1932, Éditions Grasset, Les cahiers rouges collection, 2005
**Triste tropiques, Claude Lévi-Straus, Editions de Poche, 2001
