Jean-Michel Duriez / Calice Asancheyev-Becker / Vero Kern ~ Scent Treks through Time

by Marian Bendeth, 07 July 2008

Editor's note: These interviews are the seventh part of a series in which Marian Bendeth explores what a panel of modern perfumers would say if they could travel back to the time of their choosing, to meet, chat and co-create with a perfumer of the past. An introduction to the series and table of contents is here.

Jean-Michel Duriez

In-house perfumer, Jean Patou

Creations: Enjoy, Un Amour, Yohji Essential, Lacoste for Women, Yohji Homme, Sira des Indes (more...)

Marian Bendeth: If it was possible to travel back in time to any particular century and decade of your choice to meet your number one inspirational Perfumer:

When would that be? Please state century and decade

Jean-Michel Duriez: The story tells that in 1380, in Hungary, the Queen aged 70, infirmed and sick, received from a monk a potion to drink and use on the skin. That potion was made of Aqua Vitae (i.e. a refined alcohol coming from the distillation of wines) added to Rosemary, Marjoram and Sage. She received so many fantastic benefits from that potion that later on, she married the King of Poland who fell in love for her youth and healthy character.

That was the beginning of an era when monks and nuns made what people called “Miraculous Water”. In the 17th century, after decades of production in monasteries and convents, one of those, located in Santa Maria Novella in Florence was producing the “Aqua Regina”, mainly made of citrus fruits coming from Italia. That “Eau” was much appreciated for its properties on health and beauty. One day, an Italian dealer called Gian Paolo Feminis, living in Germany in Cologne (Köln) was very much interested in finding the recipe of that well-appreciated product. He convinced one the nuns to give him the secret recipe and took it back to Cologne where he created in 1690 the “Aqua Mirabilis”. After his death, his grand nephew Gian Maria Farina changed the product name to “Eau de Cologne” (Kölnish Wasser) that became very popular.

During a war in Germany, the French army found the Eau de Cologne in Köln and took it back to France, where Napoleon I totally fell in love with it. It is said he used 60 litres per month of that product! He was using it everywhere and even drinking it! In time, the Eau de Cologne became more and more complex, and people added extracts of flowers, spices, woods, etc. and that simply became a “Perfume”.

I don’t have any specific name [of a perfumer] to give as we finally do not really know who was the very first inventor of the Eau de Cologne. He probably was a monk somewhere in Hungary …. It is always fascinating how and where a genius idea can pop-in and become a reality. That man decided one day to add some herbs to alcohol and that actually became the very first step in the invention of what we call today a “perfume”, that is to say a product made of essential oils and alcohol.

MB: What specific questions would you want to learn from them?

Sir, why did you do that? Did you envisage that millions of people would use variations of your product everyday with pleasure and delight and simply call it “Perfume”?

MB: If you could team up together in that time period, who would you like to co-create a fragrance for?

Well, you know that in Jean Patou we propose the “Parfum-Couture” which is a proposition of bespoke perfumes, so I would probably like to make fragrances for Kings and Queens of that time.

MB: If you could bring anything back with you, what would that be?

I definitely would like come back with the parchment of the very first recipe …

www.jeanpatou.com

Calice Asancheyev-Becker

Fine Fragrances, Givaudan

Creations: A Taste of Heaven - By Kilian, Beyond Paradise Blue Estee Lauder, Donna Karan Gold, Tommy Girl, J'Adore de Christian Dior (pictured) (more...)

MB: If it was possible to travel back in time to any particular century and decade of your choice to meet your number one inspirational Perfumer:

When would that be? Who would that be?

Calice Asancheyev-Becker: I would go to 1570 and meet Rene Bianchi.

MB: What specific questions would you want to learn from them?

I would envy him to be able to create fragrances on a virgin market. Everything was possible.

MB: If you could team up together in that time period, who would you like to co-create a fragrance for?

For Catherine de Medicis of course but also for all the elegant beauties of her court. The fragrance market was empty at this time. Obviously I will have to forget that he knew how to poison people as well as creating fragrances.

MB: If you could bring anything back with you, what would that be?

The orris from Florence.

www.givaudan.com

Vero Kern

Perfumer and founder, Vero Profumo

Creations: Rubj, Onda, Kiki

I’m sometimes dreaming and longing to travel back to the year 1944 when Robert Piguet, a former modéliste at Poiret, was founding his own fashion house in Paris. He invented a kind of young refreshing fashion, corresponding to a new lifestyle after the dark years of war. 1944 was the year when Bandit, a wonderful chypre-animal scent, created by Germaine Cellier for Piguet, was rising up on the fragrance sky.

I would love to meet Germaine Cellier.

I’m totally fascinated by her creativity, her non-conformism, and her original findings and combinations of divergent materials. Her creations are bold, square, a little raw…sometimes dissonant. I was studying some of her work at the Osmotheque at Versailles and smelling these gems, her creations made me very happy. She was an artistic person with a free spirit, is an important inspirational source for my own work. I feel in many ways very close to hers…

It is said, that for her, ‘perfume is a gift, it has no rules and cannot be taught.’

I would love to know where she found her inspiration. She was surrounded by some of the greatest artists at that time and I wonder if she ever considered her creations also as artwork.

Finally, I think I would ask her exactly the questions I’m trying to answer now. This would be most interesting to hear.

I can’t imagine Germaine and myself co-creating a fragrance but I would have loved to visit her cabinet by looking trough and learn all of her secret material.

MB: If you could bring anything back with you, what would that be?

The “souvenir” of happy moments with Germaine by sharing and discussing perfumery insights, having dinner together with Jean Cocteau and her other friends. Visiting elegant fashion boutiques and discovering luxury fragrances. I would bring back samples of some of her unreleased perfumes, which she would ask me to test and give her my advice – somehow a kind of conspiracy friendship service between professional “scent-lovers”….