Tag Archives: france
Talking To Top International Perfumers
By Janetta Mackay 9:16 AM Wednesday Oct 16, 2013 Janetta Mackay talks to two renowned perfumers who collaborated successfully before finding their own fragrance fame. Christine Nagel and Francis Kurkdjian. In the 10 years since they created a hit fragrance together, perfumers Francis Kurkdjian and Christine Nagel have each separately reinforced their standing as leading international “noses” with stellar solo careers. Both products of the tradition-steeped but commercially demanding French perfume industry, their innovative approaches have a boutique style that sets them apart. Their names are linked professionally as co-creators of the distinctively musky top-selling Narciso Rodriguez For Her perfume, but each has an impressive solo resume and a unique approach to their craft. Kurkdjian found early fame at age 25 when he created Le Male for Jean Paul Gaultier. He became a “go-to guy” for many luxury brands, among them Dior, Armani, Yves Saint Laurent and Ferragamo, most recently creating Elie Saab’s first fragrance. He has also opened his own bespoke boutique brand, Maison Francis Kurkdjian, in Paris and worked on art installations, including creating giant perfume bubbles spotlighted for public exposition at Versailles and in Shanghai. He combines artistry and accessibility, having also crafted Elizabeth Arden’s perennially popular Green Tea spritz and a shelf full of men’s top selling colognes including Joop, Kouros Sport, Davidoff Silver Shadow and, more recently, Rocawear for Jay Z’s company. He has reworked the classics for Acqua di Palma and bottled modern cool for Juliette Has a Gun. Christine Nagel’s newest fragrance, Si, for Giorgio Armani, is about to launch in New Zealand and, judging by sales overseas, seems destined to be another standout. Hers is the name behind a string of designer fragrances, including Miss Dior Cherie, Dolce & Gabbana’s The One and commissions for Kenzo, Lagerfeld, Lancome, Mugler and more. In recent years she has been busiest as master perfumer for the ever-so-English company Jo Malone, helping broaden its global reach. Like Kurkdjian, she is in her 40s, still relatively young for a perfumer. As their answers to Viva’s questions show, the pair’s working connection may have been brief, but the passion they share for perfumery seems set to ensure enduring excellence. Perfumer Christine Nagel. CHRISTINE NAGEL Do you have a signature style? I have the desire to look for new accords, new associations of ingredients. For [Jo Malone] Peony & Blush Suede, the peony flower does not exist as a natural essence in perfumery. This is where a poetic fragrant vision comes into play. The peony essence in Peony & Blush Suede is unique to Jo Malone London as it is my own interpretation, as a woman and a perfumer, of an English peony. The Jo Malone London collaboration runs to about 20 fragrances now, how is it evolving? I consider myself the olfactory instrument of the brand. I always take into consideration the values of the brand and create scents that connect with its philosophies and values. Even if the fragrances are from different families – fruity, woody, floral – there is the same philosophy. The brand has a real style and the fragrances are easily identifiable. I am extremely happy to create fragrances for it. Do you have a favourite Jo Malone London creation? English Pear & Freesia, one of my earlier creations, is a beautiful, light and refreshing fragrance. The newest addition, Peony & Blush Suede, is a very special fragrance to make, taking over two years to create. This fragrance is elegant and sophisticated. What is the fragrance you would have loved to have created? Feminite du Bois by Shiseido is a fragrance I admire; there is so much femininity infused in those woods. How do think women should approach the appreciation of fragrance? Fragrance to me is an aromatic message we send to everybody who has not yet perceived us. Therefore you have to feel at one with your fragrance . . . at this point, you are charming, appealing, seductive. In perfumery, there has been a return to authenticity, to fragrances with an asserted femininity. Once you have decided on a [fragrance] family that suits your style, spend time getting to know the scents to find your distinctive scent combination. Francis Kurkdjian. FRANCIS KURKDJIAN Is perfumery art, craft or a combination? I live my metier as an art. It is an “endless question” whether modern perfume-making is art, craft or business. No matter what, as a perfumer, you need the art of science and the science of the art. What matters to me above all are the emotions I have when I create and the pleasure I give to people who appreciate my work. What is your earliest olfactory memory? I have a lot. My grandmother used to wear Femme by Rochas. I recall the scent of my grandfather’s aftershave lotion he used to blend himself and of my grandparents’ apartments. My father used colognes at night only. The first time I smelled fresh-cut grass is something I remember still. The fragrance you wished you had created? Fougere Royale by Houbigant, the first fragrance that mixed natural and synthetic molecules in 1882. Is there a fragrance note you consider a signature? Notes/ingredients are my vocabulary. My technique is my grammar. Overall, I think my style is about balance and sensuality. I am a storyteller, using scents. In terms of a trademark I may have, it’s always difficult to have enough distance to be able to analyse. I do not know if my style has evolved over the years. I have always been a huge fan of essentials [oils]. Each ingredient must have its position and its reason to be in. Less is definitely more in fragrance-making; however, you have to be careful not to be anorexic. The scent has to be big enough and have a nice, appealing trail/aura. I have tried to touch all kind of fragrance families to cover the biggest olfactory spectrum possible. What is the costliest ingredient you have used and how does it deliver? The most expensive ingredient is orris root absolute (the root of the iris flower). It costs about €$75,000 per kilo. I have used orris in my latest fragrance, Amyris for woman and Amyris for man. The most exotic? Think about a lavender field under the sky of Provence, France, or blooming orange tree flowers in Sicily overlooking the Mediterranean, women hand-picking rosebuds in Iran or Bulgaria when the sun rises in May. To be honest, I do believe each of the natural raw materials I use in my fragrances is exotic. The last I have used is oud oil or agarwood oil, a natural raw material that comes from the south Far East. I have used it in one of my latest works, named OUD, as a tribute to this extravagant, extraordinary ingredient. Do you discern any particular emerging trends in modern fragrance styles? Trend is not something I look at as I work at least 18 months ahead of a launch for my own house and sometimes it’s 24 months for other brands. So by the time the trend comes, I am already working on another fragrance and I have moved on to something else. However, right now there is a comeback on very sexy, glamour and feminine fragrances. Couture fragrances are back to the prestige market while celebrities’ fragrances remain popular. Any advice you would like to share? Perfume is not a beauty product. It is not lipstick, mascara or a nail polish. Perfume is not even a product because perfume is invisible. So let it lead you by the emotion of what you smell and experience. Read about perfumer Christine Nagel’s work with Giorgio Armani here. – VIVA Continue reading
Bigger Stink Means Higher Price as Men Crave Rare Oud Fragrance
By Susan Hack – Sep 19, 2013 For centuries, scent hunters have indiscriminately cut down old-growth forests in search of the resin produced by wild Aquilaria trees, which is burned as incense, carved into ritual objects and distilled into oud — the most valuable natural oil on earth. Photograph: Mitchell Feinberg/Bloomberg Pursuits The first time Mike Perez wore dehn al-oud — an essential oil distilled from the resin of Asian Aquilaria trees — he was so appalled by the smell that he hid inside his home. Enlarge image Musk Oud by Kilian. Photograph: Courtesy of Kilian Enlarge image M7 Oud Absolu by Yves Saint Laurent. Photograph: Courtesy of YSL “I put on way too much, and frankly, it smelled like animal butt,” says Perez, a 42-year-old manager for Barclay’s Real Estate Group in Miami. Fragrances reveal their true nature as they evaporate on the skin, Bloomberg Pursuits magazine will report in its Autumn 2013 issue, so Perez resisted the temptation to wash. “The barnyard note started changing into something intensely woody, damp and complex,” recalls the fragrance enthusiast, who has a collection of almost 1,500 scents. “It lasted 24 hours, and by then, I understood why some have described oud as transcendent. I invited a friend over to try a tiny swipe; after the initial shock, he became emotional as it evoked memories of a boyhood vacation by a lake and the smell of his skin and bathing suit and even the dock drying in the summer sun.” Akin to such potent, primeval scents as ambergris and Himalayan deer musk, oud (the name means wood in Arabic) is an alluring mystery even to those who know it well. Used by the Ancient Egyptians for embalming and mentioned in the Bible’s Song of Solomon, the resin is produced by a rare and little-understood defense mechanism: When disease-carrying microbes breach the trunk of an Aquilaria tree, a dark and extremely aromatic resin is secreted, invisible beneath the outer bark. Burned as Incense For reasons still unknown to science, fewer than 2 percent of wild Aquilaria trees ever produce resin. For centuries, scent hunters have indiscriminately cut down old-growth forests in search of the substance, which is burned as incense, carved into ritual objects or distilled into the most valuable natural oil on earth. Half a teaspoon of oud oil made from 100-year-old trees for Oman’s Sultan Qaboos in 1982 sold to a private collector in 2012 for $7,000. In China , demand for top-quality resin has pushed prices as high as $300,000 per kilogram. Despite a ban on the harvesting of wild Aquilaria by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species , such pricing has triggered widespread poaching and a race to perfect sustainable techniques for artificially infecting farmed trees. Smell of Money To the $31.6 billion fragrance industry, oud and its aficionados smell like one thing: money. Sales of oud fragrances rose 34 percent in 2012, according to New York-based consumer research firm NPD Group Inc. Such scents were virtually unheard of in the global market before 2002, when Yves Saint Laurent released Tom Ford ’s M7, widely acknowledged as the first Western oud fragrance. Today, out of more than a thousand new scents released annually, one in eight contains oud. The developing taste for oud reflects “trends for intense, intriguing, daring scents that tap into a desire to travel and experience other cultures,” fragrance historian Elena Vosnaki says, and has helped drive sales of prestige male fragrances in the U.S. alone to $953 million. In the past year, Armani, Dior (CDI) , Ferrari and even the Body Shop have all jumped on the bandwagon. Perfumer Kilian Hennessy — the cognac heir who introduced Musk Oud, the latest in his line of oud fragrances, in June under the By Kilian label — caught the bug on a 2008 trip to Dubai, where oud incense wafting through malls, mosques and hotel lobbies has become as signature a scent as lavender is to Grasse, France . ‘Weapon of Seduction’ “To Westerners, men’s fragrance is a weapon of seduction,” Hennessy says. “But to people in the Arab Gulf, oud is comforting, part of their olfactory world and an envelope in which they feel protected.” The oud used in all By Kilian fragrances is synthetic, bioengineered to approximate the real deal. That said, “I have never smelled a synthetic oud that re-creates the complexity and intensity of the real one,” Hennessy says. According to Robert Blanchette , a forest pathologist at the University of Minnesota , the scent released by the highest-grade natural oud oils comprises more than 150 separate compounds. “Even with mass spectrometry and gas chromatography, we still don’t have the complete signature,” he says. Blanchette, who has spent two decades investigating Aquilaria trees in conjunction with the Amsterdam-based Rainforest Project foundation, has patented a technique to artificially infect saplings, 100 percent of which go on to produce resin, although it’s less dense than that of centuries-old trees. Chemical Signature “The chemical signature is very close, and our hope is that in the future, it will become a viable source,” he says. Meanwhile, “harvesting wild trees will eventually kill oud, because of the loss of biodiversity,” says Ensar, an online purveyor of organic oud who declines to reveal his full name and who spends much of the year in Asia seeking out the best resin. “Aquilaria trees have to fight disease and sometimes die for oud to come into existence,” he says. “I wanted to cry when I cut down a farmer’s 60-year-old tree in Thailand that was fully loaded with resin. It’s all extremely existential.” “Oud takes a commitment, both financially and in the way you wear it,” Barclay’s Perez says. “I wear it only on special occasions and never to the office. But most of the time, I wear it for myself.” To contact the reporter on this story: Susan Hack at hacksusan@aol.com To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ted Moncreiff at tmoncreiff@bloomberg.net Continue reading
Weltec Biopower Develops 4 Biogas Plants In France
Taylor Scott International News Taylor Scott International Taylor Scott International, Taylor Scott Continue reading
