Lohi Telegram / In Conversation with a Perfume Expert

Christian Dior was a superstitious man. He had a greenhouse, where he grew lilies, symbolic of happiness and hope, all year round. His seamstresses hid a Lily of the valley in each garment that was presented on his runways, to ensure the collection’s success. Some might think it silly, but is it so farfetched to imagine that flowers might have influence also over such mundane things as fashion? Friedrich Nietzscheclaimed that a strong intuition was more important than a highly developed intellect. In Nietzsche’s times, intuition was strongly associated with scent, which might prove Dior correct.

Dior, who thought lilies would make him successful, was also right in believing in the strong link between flowers and wealth, though the actual connection is less esoteric than in his superstitious worldview. Globally speaking, almost 400,000 people are employed in the fragrance industry, and it amasses a yearly worth of more than 7 billion euros. If there were no more bergamot on the slopes of Calabria, or if the vast fields of lavender in Provence were destroyed, the entire world economy would collapse!

Grasse became the world’s capital of perfume as an effect of the colonialism of the 19th century, coupling the south of France with Algeria’s vast fields of flowers. But the history of flowers and perfume is much older than that. Fragrances, symbols of luxury and refinement, were highly sought after in the ancient world, and they also contributed to the growth of trade routes in the never-ending search for perfume ingredients. Cinnamon was brought to Europe from Africa, spikenard and cardamom from India, ginger, nutmeg, saffron and cloves from Indonesia. 

Too expensive to use as food, these ingredients were used in sweet-smelling concoctions in religious rituals, as medicine, and to perfume the body. It has been said that the world was discovered in the wake of perfume.

Perfume was not only a product but a way of life, for centuries shrouded in an aura of magic and mystery. The usually self-taught perfumers were an exclusive fraternity, the practical and theoretical inheritors of the traditions of alchemy that aimed to transform physical matter into divine essence. 

They kept their formulas secret and offered their elixirs in exquisite bottles to a distinguished few (for large sums of money). As international trade grew and the distillation process and other methods developed, more and more essences became available and spurred the perfumers to new great deeds. 

Towards the end of the 19th century, they had a new technique at their disposal, enfleurage, and thanks to this, they could start experimenting with fragrances from jasmine, orange flowers, and night hyacinth (tuberos). The art of perfumery was in full bloom.

The only “function” of perfume is to give pleasure. It’s ethereal and fleeting, essentially worthless. Even in this sense, it hovers between the tangible and the intangible, the earthly and the ethereal, the real and the magical. They exist between the physical and the metaphysical world and therefore acquire a uniquely powerful meaning for the psyche. 

The transcendental properties of good air have been recognized as far back as we can go. The oldest perfumers we know of were Egyptian priests, who mixed the juices of fleshy flowers and plants, fruit pulp, spices, resin, wine, honey, and oils pressed from seeds into incense and salves.

In 1905, François Coty let a bottle of perfume fall on the floor of the department store that had just refused to sell it. This staged event was a success and created hype around his products, as everyone wanted access to the product that wasn’t for sale. Coty then came up with the idea of packaging fragrance in flacons. 

He was also one of the first perfumers to use synthetic substances in combination with natural ones, the decisive factor in making perfume a luxury that the masses could afford. Synthetic substances were cheap, fast, and reliable. A bit like ready-baked bread.

More than a hundred years later, our sense of smell has been marginalised and numbed by all the chemical additives in food and the environment and by the overwhelming proliferation of unnatural smells. The world of natural smells has been conquered by industrial products; many people can’t smell a lemon without thinking of washing-up liquid. The oversaturation of chemical odours has compromised our ability to appreciate complex and subtle natural scents. We have lost touch with what originally attracted us to the scent of flowers and herbs.

The Umeda hunters in New Guinea are said to have slept with bundles of herbs under their heads to dream of a successful hunt. In the morning, they could follow the dream like a map. The Berbers of Morocco inhaled the fragrant smoke of mint, thyme, rosemary, and laurel as a cure for headaches and fever. And in Sweden, seven kinds of flowers under your pillow on Midsummer Eve make you dream of your true love.

That scents are strongly linked to emotions and to memory is not surprising. The sense of smell is one of the first senses to awaken in a new-born baby and it guides the baby’s movements through its first days. Babies only need their nose to locate their mother's milk. They smile when they recognize her body odour and prefer it over all other women's (which in turn makes the mother happy). 

This emergent and mutual relationship, built on the sense of smell, plays a crucial role in the emergence of an intimate relationship between mother and child.

Despite being so powerful, the sense of smell is the most overlooked of our senses. The olfactory membrane is the only place in the human body where the central nervous system comes into direct contact with the environment. All other sensory sensations reach us via the hypothalamus. The sensation of air is therefore processed first in the limbic system, one of the oldest parts of the brain and seat of sexual and emotional impulses. In other words, we have already received and reacted to a scent before we’re aware of it on a conscious level.

Jenny Lantz, associate professor affiliated with the Stockholm School of Economics, has a deep fascination for the cultural and creative industries. Having previously researched the international fashion industry and trend agencies, she turned her professional interest to the world of scent. Specifically, her research focus has been on niche perfumes. Over coffee at a café in Stockholm, she explained how her fascination with fragrances began.

How did you first become interested in perfume?

I spent a lot of time in France, and I had been to Grasse many times, which is only natural if you’re in Nice (which I had, as my parents had an apartment there). When you’re in that area, you notice and think about the presence of fragrances in a different way. Like at the perfume museum in Grasse. So, I had been thinking about perfume quite a lot.

But then it happened, in the early 2000s, that I would visit a perfume shop in Nice. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be something I thought of as particularly exciting, but the way that this shop was designed was very new. It was called Tanagra Parfumerie and carried many perfume brands that I hadn’t heard of before, like Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle and several others. The first niche brands.

I went there so many times, and I had just finished my dissertation and was doing a research project on fashion, and it just became so fascinating to be in this perfume world. And the way that they talked about perfume. Because I hadn't even thought about “noses”, or if I did, I just thought of them as anonymous figures in the background, but at Tanagra they had big portraits of the perfumers, hanging on the walls. Portraits of Fredric Malle's noses. That brand had made a point of elevating the perfumers. So, it was very special.

It was very enjoyable to spend time there because they told me so much about the world of perfume, the salespeople were so knowledgeable, about the history of the brands and about the different perfume families. It was a brand-new way of approaching perfume. I had mostly worn Cacharel Lou Lou when I was in high school [laughs] and then continued buying blockbusters. But now, every day I would sit at home, writing on my research project at home in the apartment, but I would regularly take a trip to the store, check out some perfumes, and then go home to read perfume blogs about these different perfumes.

It was a world that had been hidden until that point. Gaining knowledge about perfume had previously been difficult. I knew very little about the history of perfume before that, but thanks to the internet that all changed. The fact that you could read these perfume blogs, combined with the fact that you could try the scents in shops, which all required effort, was all part of the charm.

What’s the difference between blockbusters and niche?

The mainstream perfume world, with its blockbusters and designer perfumes, is very marketing-driven, defined by its method of development. The specialised brands resisted this business model. The blockbusters were often connected to a fashion or beauty brand and would develop a perfume the same way as you would create a shampoo, by asking what the consumer might want. What is the target audience? And so, they would try to give consumers what they thought they wanted, benchmarking new products with existing ones and simply creating variations on an already existing theme. Then they put a lot of money into the campaign, into the advertising. And the perfume was gendered in one way or another. The face of a celebrity was used in communication.

And they did consumer tests all the time, asking test groups what they thought of the samples. This creates a problem as it means that all new products will resemble what already exists, as test groups will base their preferences on what they already like and use. This is a problem with all cultural products, that if you ask consumers what they want, you get what has been successful in the past. Because you don't know what you can get instead.

That explains why all new music sounds the same today, they have developed a generic formula for success.

Precisely. And the new niche perfumers revolted against this. They broke away from this existing perfume industry structure. And what they also objected to was that the mainstream brands put so incredibly little money into the actual creation of the perfume, the perfume itself and its ingredients. So, this was a new way of making perfumes, and it shows. It can even be seen in the names of the perfumes.

Previously they could be called Opium and Poison – and I don't mean that these classics are bad at all – but so many variations were developed based on all these bestsellers, so-called “flankers”. A flanker is a new version of an old bestseller, a spin-off of an existing one. Because you’ve put so much money into the campaign, that you want to squeeze as much out of it as you can.

The niche label is about being a very small part of the market already from the start. Now perhaps a new term, rather than niche, should be invented, but the old still lives on, even though niche is a much larger market today than back then. But what they wanted to do was put the perfume at the centre. The noses were given much more freedom to create, finding inspiration in perhaps creating a leather perfume or wanting to create an exciting aquatic perfume or whatever. They pretty much had free rein to develop what they wanted. There was so much more focus on ingredients and on perfume families, which you notice in the titles of the perfumes. The new perfume names communicated that this was the start of something new.

And the bottle design was much simpler, from the beginning they were just standard bottles, which also underscored the anti-marketing perspective. At the time, department stores and chains dominated, where, especially in France, it was self-service. People working with niche fragrances were annoyed that perfume was sold through self-service [laughs]! But I tend to agree with them; as I experienced at Tanagra in Nice for example, a well-educated salesperson can tell you so much. You really miss that otherwise, if it's like a duty-free shop where you spray and buy... and that's the worst thing they know, when you only spray and then you only feel the top notes, because nobody has time to wear it for more than two hours before buying, so only the top notes count in the mainstream perfume industry.

It sounds as though it’s not only about the scent, but about the world around it.

Fragrance is a composition, and it must be explained and conveyed. Something more than just giving "praise" and saying that it smells good on you. You have to awaken the recipient's idea of what a fragrance can be, in different ways. There will also be a lot of storytelling in perfume. But that has also always been the case in the mainstream fragrance world.

In your research, you’ve explored the difference between natural and synthetic scents. Often, natural scents are described as somehow being better.

That's how it is in marketing. I’m not a perfumer myself, but the perfumers really agree that it is misleading to say that natural scents are automatically better. There are many synthetic materials that enhance and add something to fragrances, which makes them more interesting. Then there are also many natural ingredients that are not allowed to be used anymore. In that case, the synthetic ingredients become a substitute. So, there are various reasons for using the synthetic option. But mostly the romanticising of the natural is about marketing, it allows the brand to say that their flower petals are harvested in Grasse... and there is economic value in talking that way. There is not as much storytelling around synthetic materials.

How has the general consumer’s awareness and knowledge changed over the years?

Both the level of knowledge and the market have changed significantly; there are so many niche brands now. All the brands that were founded before 2010, when the market exploded, are today considered more authentic [laughs]. They were the first real niche brands; they were the pioneers. Then there have been successors, but nowadays many suspect that the newcomers’ driving forces are more commercial, because they have seen that the niche fragrances do so well. People don't think they’re as genuine.

It sounds very much like the independent music scene in the 90s.

Yes absolutely! They must prove their authenticity. That’s something that’s changed, today it's a much bigger market with more brands. It’s more difficult to navigate. And certain aspects have been lost along the way, like the original idea of the perfumers. Because this was the essence of niche perfumes; that they cared about the creative process. Some of the new brands are not so particular about it. The perfumer's role adds value, the fact that someone has created the fragrance, who can talk about the perfume and who knows what makes a green fragrance feel contemporary, for example. Or not.

There are three, four huge industrial conglomerates that employ a multitude of perfumers, offering easy development. Today it’s quite easy for a brand to say that they've used a perfumer based in France, which of course adds value. But the consumer has also become much more knowledgeable and interested in niche perfumes. Even at airports you can see how they talk about perfume families, and there are also often niche brands represented. I think the awareness is greater. But quite a few people are still afraid to talk about perfume, they feel like they don't know how to talk about it.

A bit like with wine?

Exactly. Many people think that they have to know about the ingredients when they talk about fragrance, that they must first know what a fragrance contains. It's a bit like a different, foreign culture.

You have mentioned Grasse several times. How is it that Grasse has had such a prominent position in the fragrance industry?

To explain, one must go back to the Middle Ages. At that time, perfume was not that big in Europe, but they didn't want to use water because they were so afraid of the plague. They used perfume to wash away body odours. Throughout the Middle Ages new methods were developed, such as using alcohol. The reason Grasse became so big was that there were many tanners there. And they made gloves for the nobility. When softening the leather, it was dipped in urine. It wasn't so nice. They compensated by perfuming the gloves. That's how this whole idea of fragrance – because there had been perfume before – spread, because then it became easier to wear daily, especially among the nobility who obviously placed a lot of emphasis on luxury.

Wasn’t it Catherine de' Medici who popularised the perfumed gloves?

Yes, absolutely. The trend originated at that time, and they also had a great plantation there, where they grew roses, jasmine, and lavender. The peak for Grasse came just before the breakthrough of the synthetic materials, in the 1920s, with the advent of modern perfumes.

Related to modernization, industrialization, and the emergence of modern society.

Yes, suddenly, you could produce materials in the lab, which made the fragrance palette much larger. What they had done before, even in Grasse, was to use soliflore, which refers to the use of only one flower per perfume, but now they could compose more clearly and create a perfume structure, thanks to these different ingredients. The scents were much more interesting and complex from then on. But long before that, Italy had already become the leading country for leather tanning, so the perfume industry had been decoupled from glove making a long time ago.

They brought in a lot of migrant workers who came and harvested by hand. They harvested ten kilos per person, by hand, a day. The industry in Grasse was thus also based on exploitation.

For the French luxury industry, a strong connection to Grasse has always been important. Chanel and other major French brands own properties there, for strategic marketing reasons. Many perfumers, even if they aren’t overly critical of synthetic materials, seem to think there is something special about the natural materials. If you have hand-picked roses in your perfume, people assume that there is a variety to the scent that makes it more interesting, with more nuances. There is value in nature.

What’s your advice for anyone visiting Grasse today who wants to learn about the fragrance industry?

There are of course flower fields to visit. I also think the international perfume museum in Grasse is great. Then the three most famous manufacturers have their respective museums. Fragonard, Gallimard, and Molinard. Fragonard is centrally located in Grasse and there you can also look at their company history, how they have changed over time.

Eze is perhaps even easier to visit, that’s where Gallimard is. However, it’s a little smaller. They also have quite a lot of seminars and lectures on perfumes, with invited perfume makers, you can go and listen to that! They also regularly have art installations, where fragrance meets art, of varying quality. But I still think they do it in an insightful and good way to learn more.