40
‘You’ll see. I’ve changed everything!’
I stop dead in my tracks.
‘What do you mean, you’ve changed everything?’
I’ve just bumped into Bertrand at the biennial raw materials exhibition organized by the Société Française des Parfumeurs. This is the very event where we’d re-connected after that fateful radio show, and attending it has been a striking way of measuring just how far I’ve come in a world where I took my first steps just three years ago. The last time, I drifted among unfamiliar faces. Now I keep running into the lovely people who’ve taught me, guided me, spent hours discussing the art of perfumery with me: Isabelle Doyen, Sandrine Videault, Mathilde Laurent, Dominique Ropion, Mathilde Bijaoui, Élisabeth de Feydeau, Annick Le Guérer, Pamela Roberts, Olivier Maure … It feels as though the cast of my fragrant Wonderland has come together for the grand finale. But I hadn’t expected to see Bertrand, who’s popped in one hour before closing time and who is now dragging me from booth to booth to smell raw materials.
Our latest exchange was a bit stormy. I’d written to him to express my doubts about the latest mods he’d done: I felt the larger quantities of vanilla and musk and the addition of rose were pulling the scent towards too-familiar grounds. He replied that he’d already moved forward, based on a mod picked by L’Artisan Parfumeur in the meantime. That riled me up so much my fingertips were tingling. I shot back that, if my opinion wasn’t considered relevant, there was no longer any point in my testing.
It wasn’t the fact that L’Artisan Parfumeur had weighed in on the development that irked me: that was entirely normal. After all, much as I considered Duende to be my baby, it was their product, to be part of their collection. They weren’t going to let Bertrand run off for a year and a half and come back with a finished product, however much they trusted him. But I was annoyed that Bertrand hadn’t kept me informed, and hadn’t mentioned which mod they’d picked. What if the submission they’d preferred was precisely the one I felt was the least interesting? There wasn’t much I could do if they had.
Fortunately, minutes later, he was apologizing for the way he’d put it: actually, the people from L’Artisan Parfumeur had felt the same way I did about his most recent tweaks, and he saw their point, so he’d gone back to mod N°90 and was going to move forward from there. Clearly, I didn’t have to worry about the brand’s aesthetic options. I shouldn’t have done in the first place, considering Bertrand’s body of work with them.
Still, changing everything? Bertrand, what have you done to our baby?
But he’s got such a huge grin on his face, and seems so happy with his new take on the formula, that there’s only one thing for it. Take the leap of faith.
‘You’re scaring me … But I trust you. Absolutely.’
* * *
Once I’m back in the lab one week later, I’m so distracted at the prospect of finding Duende radically altered that I can’t smell properly. I’m pecking my nose at my blotter fan like a hen that’s afraid it’s lost its chicks, frantically asking about this or that material rather than analysing the new mods.
Bertrand reassures me: everything is still there, though in different doses, except the jasmine absolute because it felt too cloying. The formula was so tightly packed the accords couldn’t breathe freely, he explains. As he was working on another product, he found a new way of doing the orange blossom accord that was more expressive, more diffusive and less costly. More expensive doesn’t necessarily mean better, and in this particular case he is convinced that this formula for the orange blossom accord is an improvement. I agree. It is more faceted: brighter, greener, more cologne-like in the top notes and more sensuous in the base notes.
When Bertrand asked me, almost one year ago, whether I knew what I wanted, I couldn’t say. I just knew that, if the orange tree was there, there was no one under it. We’ve spent months wandering in the labyrinth, trying to summon the presence, the soul that is conjured when a heartfelt story finds its fullest expression in scent. When we almost got lost because I’d made us take a new turn with Habanita, and Bertrand was bumping into dead ends, I’d written to him: ‘You’ll get there, and your perfume will be heartbreakingly beautiful.’ And then I went to light a candle to Mary Magdalene.
She’s just answered my prayer.
Now I know what I want. I want this: mod N°123. Is there any magical thinking involved? Today is the 23rd. I was born on the 23rd. One-two-three: two people and an orange tree.
It’s so obvious there isn’t even a decision to make. Everything is there, but everything is clearer. Bertrand has spilled sunshine into the Sevillian night. It isn’t my olfactory memory of Seville I am regaining when I breathe in Duende N°123: it is the emotion of walking into beauty. The duende.
So, is that it then? Are we done?
Bertrand shakes his head.
‘When you find the accord, it’s easy to make it evolve up to its near-final form, which corresponds to ninety-five per cent of the completed formula. But you’ve got to realize one thing: the main effort of the perfumer – and, I believe, of most artists when they are working on a piece – bears on the last five per cent.’
This fine-tuning, he explains, is the most crucial part of the process. For a fragrance to be successful, there are two prerequisites: a good hook, those expansive top notes that will draw you in, seduce you. And a well-balanced formula, which will give it the maximum volume it can reach.
‘To give it soul, you’ll work for ages until it’s perfectly polished. No. Not perfectly polished. Perfectly within the idea and balance you want to give it.’
How long will that take? I’ve more or less resigned myself to picking up the work in September – the French summer holiday debacle is soon approaching.
And then, a few days later, an email drops into my inbox. The final version will be selected in two weeks by Sarah Rotheram, the CEO of L’Artisan Parfumeur.
This is it.
* * *
Before this last session, Bertrand and I are meeting again, this time with Alissa Sullivan, who is in charge of olfactory development for the brand and studied at ISIPCA.
Though I’d exchanged a few emails with Alissa when we discussed potential names for the scent, we only met a few weeks ago at the press launch of a new product. I spoke with her and Nick Steward, the head of marketing and product development, about getting together to share our impressions on the last steps of the development. And here we are.
The last mods Alissa evaluated pre-date the latest shake-up, so she’s come to find out where the formula is at, and to weigh in on possible adjustments to make before Sarah comes in with Nick to take the final decision.
I’ve been skin-testing Duende N°123 and getting extremely positive comments. The orange blossom accord is marvellously expansive during the first couple of hours and very long-lasting. But it slacks off a bit in the heart notes, and Bertrand has been experimenting with ways to give it even more volume.
This is where things get tricky. We both love the way N°123 smells, and that’s pretty much where we’d like to keep the scent. But there is no magic ingredient that can amplify the volume of a perfume without skewing its form. You’ve got to alter proportions in materials that are already in the formula or add something new, but whatever you do it won’t smell exactly the same.
Bertrand has come up with three new mods, all based on N°123, all beautiful, and different enough to present clear options.
N°125 is the brightest. Alissa feels it might be a good pick for a spring launch, though we all feel that Duende is rich and complex enough to be a perfume for all seasons.
N°127 has an even stronger orange blossom note, but the dose of Luisieri lavender has been reinforced to bolster the incense accord. As a result, it is the darkest, most balsamic and most sensuous of the three, but it’s also a little bit flatter in the top notes.
As for N°126, Alissa and I are both less keen on it. It isn’t so much an orange blossom because of a new material, alpha-damascone, one of the components of rose. Bertrand is nothing if not stubborn: this is the third or fourth time he tries working in a rose note.
‘I’m insisting wickedly, because rose always amplifies the volume of the heart notes.’
‘Yes, but it also changes the smell,’ I point out.
‘OK, so I’ve moved the cursor slightly, but bear in mind that you have to take in the whole of the line on which the cursor is moving. The note is a little less orange blossom in N°126, but isn’t it worth toning it down to achieve more volume?’
Bertrand insists we try 126 on skin, so as both our wrists are scented with 125 and 127, we squirt the crooks of our elbows and indulge in a session of perfume-testing yoga, six arms twisting around like a fragrant Shiva as we sniff each other out.
‘It’s girlier, younger,’ Alissa comments, but not as though these were necessarily positive attributes: she’s just stating the facts.
‘I’m fed up with young-and-girly,’ I grumble.
‘Hey, wait a minute, this isn’t girly,’ Bertrand protests. ‘It’s not an innocuous perfume.’
‘But it is sweeter,’ I insist.
‘You’re absolutely right. The damascone fruits it up, it juices it up. It makes the heart notes redder. Like red apple juice. Whether that’s necessary or not, I don’t know.’
Alissa doesn’t seem to think it is. Like me, she finds that the new note pulls the scent towards a more common, more commercial register and, again, she doesn’t mean it in a positive way.
‘That’s the problem with rose,’ I argue. ‘Because it does give more volume and appeal to a floral note, it’s a trick of the trade, which means adding it makes the perfume a little less original.’
‘You’re right,’ says Bertrand.
Alissa shakes her head.
‘I’d rather we didn’t go for something too sweet. The last two perfumes we’ve launched are both sweet and fruity…’
As I let out a sigh of relief, Bertrand nods.
‘All right. You’ll have the final choice anyway.’
* * *
Meanwhile, the darker mod N°127 is asserting itself on our skins. Alissa asks whether it wouldn’t be possible to do another mod based on it, but with more contrast in the top notes so that they’re as fresh as those of N°125.
While Bertrand tinkers with his formula, Alissa and I go on smelling the mods and chatting. This is the first real chance I get to have a proper talk about Duende with someone from L’Artisan Parfumeur. As it turns out, they started following the project quite early on, before Bertrand even mentioned to me that they were interested. In fact, Sarah, Nick and Bertrand had been discussing developing a fragrance based on a novel just about at the time I came into the picture. So when I told him my story, which I had always intended to use in a novel about my adventures in Seville (I may have even mentioned that to him at some point), it all clicked. This doesn’t make the way the stars aligned at that particular moment any less serendipitous; on the contrary: it could have been anyone but me, any story but mine.
But like Bertrand hearing the call of his materials, perhaps I heard his call for a story – heard it in his willingness to be carried off by my tales; in his yearning for faraway places. Heard it in Al Oudh, the first fragrance of his I understood from the inside, which meant we could talk. Heard it in Nuit de Tubéreuse, which I felt had been meant for me, though it hadn’t. Heard it in Vanille Absolument: a call from Habanita though it took me months to realize it.
So it turns out that Bertrand wasn’t the only one to hear me. Thinking back, I guess there was never another option than L’Artisan Parfumeur for Duende: they were the ones who pioneered the idea of perfume as travel sketchbook, and they’ve always based their scents on stories rather than sticking on a story after the fact … Though as I smell the three current versions of Duende on my arms, I tell myself that what started out as a narrative scent has also become an incredibly complex abstract perfume, as well as a reflection on the history of perfumery with its references to cologne, fougères, white florals and orientals …
It may also be, quite simply, one of the sexiest scents L’Artisan Parfumeur has ever put out although, oddly enough, it isn’t flamboyantly feminine. And that too is what I’d envisioned it to be: a fragrance that would reflect the story of a man and a woman; the original one I told Bertrand, but also our own creative journey.
* * *
Bertrand re-emerges from his lab shaking a 5ml phial and, from the look on his face, Alissa and I can tell he’s pretty happy with the result. In fact, as we lean in to sniff fresh blotters of 125, 127 and the new 128, he’s practically whinnying with excitement.
‘N°128 is a little less settled. But … whoo! My first impression is very good. This is going to be tops!’
‘Of course, with the parents it has, it can only be good,’ I gloat.
Bertrand throws a sly glance at Alissa.
‘I’ve added a product that will explode the budget.’
She looks up from her blotters.
‘Rose … but this time, in the form of rose oil,’ Bertrand explains.
This isn’t stubbornness; it’s sheer pig-headedness. But it works. We all find N°128 more contrasted and expansive than N°127.
‘And even more mysterious,’ Bertrand adds.
He’s sprayed his forearm with N°128. I lean forward to smell it on him. His hairs tickle my nose and I back off, stifling a sneeze.
‘I’ve put in body hair absolute!’ he jokes.
I rub my nose as the three of us burst out laughing.
‘Perfumer hair headspace? Now that would be a new concept!’
As Bertrand pops back into his lab to prepare another set of samples for Alissa to test over the weekend before they are presented to Sarah and Nick, he’s still hooting about how good he thinks Duende has become.
I’ve never seen him so exhilarated. Does he feel that way every time he reaches the end of a project? For his sake and for the sake of the art of perfumery, I hope so. But I’d rather think none of his perfumes has ever been so lovingly nurtured by its muse.
And now I’m about to present our brainchild to the lady who’ll unleash it into the world. I’m sure she’ll love it.