My job is to create something beautiful. I have to build something like a musician or a painter, create something in accordance with the quality of the haute couture of Patou.
— Perfumer Jean Kerléo, quoted in 1986. Read more in Jean Kerléo, Former Jean Patou Perfumer and Osmothèque Cofounder, Dies at 93 at Women's Wear Daily via MSN.
Some of the 27 ingredients Pliny described were hard to come by nearly 2,000 years later, and getting the proportions right was a challenge too – since in Pliny’s time raw materials weren’t distilled or synthesised, but crushed and burned. It took all [perfumer Jean] Kerléo’s skill, and a year of his life, to achieve a harmonious balance. But achieve it he did, and the hedonistic parlours of ancient Rome sprang to life in a haze of cinnamon, honey and wine.
— Read more in Is There Such A Formula As The Perfume Of God? And Other Fragrance Dreams From A Perfume Conservatory In Versailles (that would be the Osmothèque perfume museum) at Vogue UK.
Rare Perfumes (the French version is called Parfums Rares) is a celebration of niche perfumery, in a coffee table format with large illustrations and plenty of white space (see images below). It was commissioned by the Osmothèque, the museum and scent archive in Versailles, and sponsored by The Fragrance Foundation France, InterParfums, Robert Piguet and Parfums de Nicolaï, among others. It was written by two fragrance journalists, Sabine Chabbert and Laurence Férat, and features a preface by Patricia de Nicolaï.
If you’re looking for a critical, in-depth analysis of how niche perfumes fit into — or don’t fit into — the larger fragrance market, or how niche influences mainstream or vice versa, look elsewhere (and tell me where you find it). This is not that, nor is it a niche version of something like Michael Edwards’ Perfume Legends: French feminine fragrances, with its focus on perfume development and the interplay between brands, perfumers, marketers and designers. Other than in passing, you will learn relatively little about individual fragrances or how they differ from from their mainstream counterparts…
In my early days these were Bayley’s Ess. Bouquet, Lubin’s Chypre, Piver’s Le Trèfle Incarnat, Roger & Gallet’s Vera Violetta. The greatest perfumer of his time, Mr Parquet, created Le Parfum Idéal, Fougère Royale and Cœur de Jeannette, all admirable perfumes, and later Mr Bienaimé composed Quelques Fleurs with its new note of lilac that proved a considerable success for the house of Houbigant.
— Perfumer Ernest Beaux on a few of the perfumes that left an impression on him. From Perfumers on Perfume : Ernest Beaux on Fragrance Masterpieces at Bois de Jasmin; it is the first in a projected series of translated articles from the archives at the Osmothèque perfume museum in Versailles.
Perfumistas will want to take note of two special events hosted by the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program in Washington, DC this coming February:
The Art of Fragrance (In Collaboration with the Embassy of France With Sparkling Wine Toast) with Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, Friday, 5 February at 6:45 pm:
Tonight, we cut through the usual perfume-babble to illuminate the art of fragrance…