Until quite recently, if you had asked me how I felt about the rise of the perfumer-as-star I would have told you enthusiastically that I thought it could only be a good thing. Though some have complained about his omnipresence in the press, I think Jean-Claude Ellena’s ability to articulate his vision and his process have done more to raise the general public’s Perfume IQ than any ad campaign, as have the varied projects of perfume adventurers like Christophe Laudamiel, Mandy Aftel, Bertrand Duchaufour, and Francis Kurkdjian, just to name a few. I was moved by the passage in Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent where a perfumer recalls drifting anonymously around a launch party, forbidden to claim any part of the spotlight. I assumed Frederic Malle’s auteur model would give perfumers a greater share of power along with credit and name recognition.

The recent launch of Belle d’Opium made me re-think my views. The PR campaign featured videos of the talented perfumers Honorine Blanc and Alberto Morillas, but their mark seemed absent from the perfume itself which, at best, hews carefully to market-tested preferences. In the middle of it all, I found myself thinking about the far more anonymous creators of the original Opium. I wondered how they might feel watching the relatively high amount of attention paid to perfumers, while knowing that the launch depended on their original, now reformulated, work. Would it seem like the industry had changed for better or worse?

Recently one of Opium’s creators, Raymond Chaillan, was gracious enough to answer a few of my questions by email…

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