Nose

It's not bad.

It's green.

Incredible

It's oily ...

It's good for the arms.

The smell is still strong because it's too fresh

Is seeing patchouli worth a three days trip ?

For me it is

I had never seen patchouli like this, here in Indonesia.

It's very important to see the product in its natural habitat

to see both the method they use and what the material looks like

I find it quite moving to witness this

This is where it all begins for perfume

Is this office representative of what is going on in your mind ?

It's a bit of a mess...

...But I do know where all the project trials are though

For me, a perfume is a land of sharing

Double kiss !

-What perfume are you wearing? -Ah...

It's a special one.

You don’t want to tell me.

I can't recognize it.

-It's smells very nice. -Yes.Thank you.

A perfumer is an artisan.

It requires creativity and intuition.

as well as a lot of expertise.

It’s a sort of...

fragile balance between these two aspects.

What are you working on now?

On the Dior Homme perfume.

How to balance...

a top note with a bottom note.

The top notes are the most futile ones.

They only last a few seconds or a few minutes depending on their volatility.

Then we have the middle notes.

It’s the warm and generous heart of the perfume... and it lasts a few hours

And then the bottom notes that last longer.

They are long-lasting notes. The ones you remember.

Depending on whether it is eau de toilette or eau de parfum,

you get to these bottom notes more or less rapidly and they drag you to the bottom...

All of this balance itself and creates a kind of symphony.

-What is the bottom note? -It’s elemi.

Elemi is similar to incense.

My aim is to bring them together.

I don’t know, I haven’t figured it out yet.

But that’s the idea.

So...to try something new

This is...

...a note we stopped using. People forgot about it.

-You're making it again? -Yes, I personally love it.

It smells very nice.

And the smells lasts a long time.

Did you create your first perfume for someone ?

When you start, you go through a training. At the time, it was still a training.

-So you work with other perfumers. -Of course.

And they have you do what they don't want to do themselves.

The first thing I did was a perfume

intended to whet the appetite

-of bovines. -Really?

-So they would eat the fodder. -That's crazy.

My first real perfume was Diva from Ungaro.

I made that perfume for my wife.

-For your wife. -Yes.

-It has to do with desire and femininity. -Always.

Perfume is about emotions. It starts with an emotion

-and it leads to seduction etc... -Of course.

So desire is of course the underlying theme.

-What drives all your perfumes. -Yes.

He often envisions perfumes based on the people he meets.

It's no secret that women inspire him a lot.

Brunettes, blondes... They're different when it comes to perfumes and perfumery.

But...

For him, it's about finding what people might like.

That's his challenge.

When he sees someone, he thinks, "What would suit them?

What would I do for him or her?"

The person comes first and then comes the inspiration.

-I'll go get my jacket. -Okay. Let's go this way.

-Sure, this way. -That way?

-Yes, this way. -It's better this way.

-Is it better that way? -It's nicer.

Okay, I'll just go get my jacket.

-It's starting. -Did you notice I had everything planted?

-Yes. -I had the conifers removed.

Yes.

-The gardener didn't want to. -Why not?

I don't know, I said, "No, plant the osmanthus,

it'll be nice when we walk past, it'll smell.

When we go out as well."

François and I are united by something very specific;

we must create the best perfumes for our two respective Houses.

What we share is our passion, our knowledge of the raw materials,

our olfactory education as well since we are both from Grasse.

Have you seen the pomegranates?

Let's see. Yes, they're ready.

They're beautiful.

Here in Grasse, people have extracted raw materials for four centuries.

They started mixing them and making perfumes

that were based on raw material they collected themselves

and materials that they imported and that would go through Venice, like ambergris.

Grasse is a small town of about 55,000 or 60,000 inhabitants

that enjoys the biggest amount of knowledge in the world

regarding raw materials for perfumes

as well as the arts and skills involved in making perfumes.

When you were born in Grasse, when you have lived in Grasse,

when you were raised in a family where...

...the sense of smell is as important as sight or hearing,

you don't have the same background as others,

you're not cut from the same cloth.

There's a little bit of nostalgia about being here since this is where I grew up.

I remember getting past here early in the morning

because back then there were nightclubs around Valbonne over there.

The road to get back to Grasse went through here.

And since it was during the summer holidays, in August,

the jasmine was blooming.

The smell of jasmine came from right here next to us.

These memories are embedded in me.

This is one of my favorite smells

because it has a mysterious and also magical side to it.

This is ambergris. This one is black

because it is relatively recent.

It's about 20 years old.

This one is grayer.

It's a bit older. The name ambergris comes from its color.

This one is white.

It's one of the most sought-after notes.

Those three all have a different price.

But for perfumery, I prefer the gray one or even the black one.

The black one is more wild.

What is it exactly?

It's a sort of concretion.

It comes from sperm whales.

They eat a lot of cuttlefish.

Cuttlefish have a bone, but also a very pointy and sharp beak.

After a while, the beak ulcerate their stomach,

so they secrete a substance that wraps around the beaks

and they eject it.

It's lighter than water, so it floats.

Because of the effects of the sun, the air and the sea,

it changes little by little.

Can you mentally create a perfume without having any material?

A complete perfume? Yes, more or less.

In the same way as when we read a formula, the recipe,

we manage to imagine more or less what it will smell like.

The problem is this "more or less" part.

So between the idea you have of the perfume,

and the formula you write down or read in order to make a perfume,

there is a difference that we notice when we go through the trials.

Which is precisely why we do these trials.

This is a formula, the recipe in a way.

There must be as much information as possible on each line

about each material in the formula.

The number of materials in a perfume varies a lot.

It depends on the perfume and on the perfumer.

Generally speaking,

I would say there are between 15-- At least for me,

between 15 and 50 products.

The only thing that all Noses have in common

even the young apprentices I have met in schools, Brazilians, Japanese, Chinese,

is the passion for recording smells.

It's being passionate enough about the idea of recording smells

that you're willing to go through the torture that is a perfumer's training.

I think the only comparable field in terms of difficulty when it comes to learning

is maybe ballet.

Every day, every single day, you have to refresh your own memory,

You memorize the smells and combinations of smells all over again.

And that is still not enough to guarantee

that what you will make, your recipe, will be exactly what you envisioned.

Just like a ballerina can dance on pointe 425 times in the morning

and still fail on the 426th time because she messes the spin.

The worst for us is to think you know.

It's very important to keep up to date.

It's getting back to the baseline. I'm constantly practicing.

Yes. Every day.

It's musky.

We can say they're all musky indeed.

Of course the musk ketone isn't at ten percent but at one.

It's not soluble.

And the vulcanolide is at 11.

Can you smell how strong it is?

I'm surprised by the Galax's start.

The Vulcanolide has touches of pear to it.

-Vulcanolide is indeed-- -It's exceptional.

-It smells of undergrowth. -It's very earthy.

Yes.

The undergrowth above Grasse,

-in October, during mushrooms season. -Yes.

-The first flowers of the morning. -They're nice.

With François, it was the meeting of a lifetime for me on a human level.

I was lucky enough to take part in a conference in 2006,

the World Perfumery Congress which was held in Cannes that year.

After the conference, a man came to talk to me and we had coffee together.

Humbly, he told me, "I make perfumes

and I am looking for exceptional raw materials.

I want to bring back exceptional materials to the heart of my creation

and I would like to start with flowers from Grasse

and I would like to embark on this journey with you."

I thought, "Okay, he makes perfumes."

And then he showed me his card:

"François Demachy, perfume creator for Dior"