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Eleni Horne
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Photo courtesy of Bradley Wakoff.
Internationally renowned perfumer Francis Kurkdjian led a fragrance masterclass for community members on Tuesday, Oct. 6, detailing the scientific and creative processes behind perfumery. Kurkdjian, who is based in Paris, is internationally recognized for both his eponymous fragrance house and his creations for luxury brands including Jean Paul Gaultier, Burberry, and Dior. This on-campus event was sponsored by the chemistry department and the Oakley Center, which supports research across the humanities and social sciences.
As attendees filed into Wege Auditorium, they were each handed a booklet of fragrance test strips. The booklets included nine individual olfactory notes and three accords, which blended different concentrations of each note.
Over the course of the 90-minute workshop, Kurkdjian guided participants through each featured note and its impact on the composition of a fragrance. He then invited participants to reflect on their unique perception and the subjectivity of each scent. For instance, some members of the audience found the aroma of jasmine appealing, while others found that it resembled animal waste.
Kurkdjian also explained how some raw elements are obtained, such as ambergris, a rare, waxy substance produced in the digestive system of sperm whales, and natural musk, which is extracted from the abdomen of male deer. During the talk, Kurkdjian shared that he refrains from wearing fragrances himself to keep an open mind in his craft.
After the masterclass, community members were invited to a showing of ICON(S): Maison Francis Kurkdjian, The Alchemy of Senses at Images Cinema. The film documented the creation of a multisensory art installation at the Palais de Tokyo last autumn that paid homage to the cultural impact of one of Kurkdjian’s most famous perfumes, Baccarat Rouge 540. Associate Professor of German and Director of the Oakley Center Christophe Koné facilitated a question and answer session between Kurkdjian and the audience after the film.
Audience members were handed a scent book featuring a trio of Maison Francis Kurkdjian scent blotters upon entering the theatre. Kurkdjian encouraged the audience to smell the three fragrances during different intervals of the film. “Each scent, basically, is a [liaison] with what you see on the screen,” he said. He instructed viewers to smell the test strip blotted with the original Baccarat Rouge 540 eau de parfum while the film showed him in New York with his business partner Marc Chaya.
The second, Ambergris Accord, was intended for a scene in which Kurkdjian was tracking sperm whales in the Mediterranean sea, while the final fragrance, Baccarat Rouge 540 extrait de parfum, was chosen to accompany the conclusion of the film.
Initially intended as a limited release in 2014 for the 250th anniversary of the French luxury crystal brand Baccarat, Baccarat Rouge 540 has become a defining fragrance of the early 21st century. Its widespread popularity among celebrities and mainstream consumers alike has cemented the scent as a classic and Kurkdjian as one of the most influential perfumers working today. Rather than retrospectively detail the inspiration and process of the fragrance’s creation, the documentary looked at the fragrance as a source of inspiration itself. For the installation, five artists across different disciplines were invited to translate the iconic fragrance into their medium of expertise, with each work representing a different sense.
Michelin-starred chef Anne-Sophie Pic, Kurkdjian’s close friend of 12 years, was tasked with the sense of taste and appeared to encounter the most difficulties in the film. To Kurkdjian, the proximity of scent and taste made translating between the senses more difficult. Kurkdjian reflected on the challenges of the project, especially those Pic experienced. “The idea was not to translate the perfume and to have an edible scent,” Kurkdjian said. “The idea was more to translate the feeling of the philosophy behind the scent into a taste, and maybe it’s much more complex than just mixing.”
Perfumery for Kurkdjian brings up questions of ownership. “At some point, the piece of work is not yours anymore,” he said. “It belongs to the public or to the audience. It’s outside of yourself.”
“It’s like having a kid,” he added. “You have to raise [it], you have to make it alive with the same desire, with the same love.”
When asked about his literary inspirations, Kurkdjian cited his love for the authors Émile Zola and Françoise Sagan. “I love the musicality of words… I [practiced] ballet for 20 years, and I think that has a lot to do [with how] I work and how I feel perfume, because I feel perfume in a very tri-dimensional way,” he said.
Kurkdjian highlighted the connections between perfumery and musical composition. “The technique in perfumery… It’s the way you blend ingredients together,” he said. “It is also the way you manage to write the perfume formula. So, in other words, think about a music score, and you have two composers writing on the same score. If those two [people are] dramatically different in terms of how they write, how they think, how they put notes together, it’s not gonna work because you have … to connect somehow. Otherwise it doesn’t work.”
The film first premiered in Paris and was shown at additional screenings in London, New York, Berlin and Milan this past spring. “ICON(S)” is now available for general release on Prime Video, allowing audiences everywhere insight into “sculpting the invisible.”