Jean-Claude Ellena in-house perfumer of Hermès

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1 HERMÈS PARFUMS 12-16,RUE AUGER PANTIN CEDEX - TÉL. +33 (0) FAX +33 (0) COMPTOIR NOUVEAU DE LA PARFUMERIE S.A. A DIRECTOIRE ET CONSEIL DE SURVEILLANCE RCS PARIS - CAPITAL ? SIÈGE SOCIAL : 23, RUE BOISSY D ANGLAS, PARIS Jean-Claude Ellena in-house perfumer of Hermès In June 2004, Hermès entrusted Jean-Claude Ellena with its olfactory heritage and the creation of its new fragrances. This native of Grasse, himself the son of a perfumer, has created many classics (First from Van Cleef & Arpels, Déclaration from Cartier, Eau Parfumée au thé vert from Bulgari, Eau de Campagne from Sisley or Cologne Bigarade for Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle). From the first, the encounter between the Parisian House and the fragrance designer from Grasse has been marked by the same shared values, a respect for expertise and a joint aspiration for originality. An alchemy that owes less to chance than to a total and intimate complicity. In this great House, with its profound commitment to craftsmanship, I am realising a fantastic dream: living my passion with both creative rigour and complete freedom. A story of encounters A great admirer of Edmond Roudnitska who in his time revolutionized the art and theory of olfactory composition (for instance, in 1951, with Eau d Hermès, the first house perfume he created with Émile Hermès), Jean-Claude Ellena recalls: He became a part of my life, to the point that I long held a secret desire to be called a perfume composer, although on his business card he contented himself with the title perfumer. He recalls too how, as a young perfumer fascinated as much by the ideas as the creations of Master Roudnitska, he spent much time exploring the secrets of his expertise and his compositional rigour: I was attracted to his writings and to the aroma of his creations, which became objects of knowledge. 1/6

2 Knowledge and know-how which he himself continuously added to and experimented with, until he became capable in his turn of delivering up their secrets. Published in 2007 in Presses Universitaires de France s Que sais-je? collection, Le Parfum provides his own vision of the craft. Surely it is no accident either that, a few decades earlier, the same publisher had already released the writings of Edmond Roudnitska on the subject, under the same title and in the same collection. If we add the fact that Eau d Hermès is one of Jean-Claude Ellena s fetish fragrances, it seems self-evident that Hermès was one day destined to cross the path of its current perfumer. The sense of the craft Born into the trade, Jean-Claude Ellena took his first steps working in a perfume factory in Grasse, before entering the Givaudan School in Switzerland in 1968 and becoming a perfumer. When he began to compose fragrances for the international markets, he worked by combining materials, in the quest for a style or a creative revelation, but without having fully solved the riddle of perfume construction. His discovery of Edmond Roudnitska s work at the end of the 1970s proved a watershed, which would influence not only his creative method, but also his system of formulation. He soon restricted the scope of his palette, recast his approach to the shape and relationship of odours, ruthlessly eliminated the surplus and redundancy. He gradually adopted an approach founded on minimalism and simplicity, leaving the beaten track of olfactory noise, in search of a perfumer s ideal of authenticity, in terms that became even more patent from the nineties onwards. First by Van Cleef & Arpels (created in 1976, with over a hundred and fifty ingredients) and Eau Parfumée au thé vert by Bulgari (devised sixteen years later, using around twenty types of raw materials) bear witness to this evolution in his approach to composition. In his language, there is no mention of markets, or targets, or concepts: Above all, I believe that fragrances should have form, distinction, imagination, generosity, sensuality, surprise, so that no perfume is simply reduced to the status of a product, an object, a commodity. On the other hand, emotion, curiosity and above all, pleasure, are always there: Pleasure is selfish. Luxury is something you share. 2/6

3 The aim of perfumery, like all the arts, is to create products that arouse sensual pleasure. As a man and as a composer of perfumes, I have to feel pleasure in order to be able to give it. The pleasure of surprising, of evoking, of suggesting, of gradually hinting. An approach that could only match that of Hermès, both in the sense of craft and in the spirit of his creations. Sources of inspiration The meeting of minds between Hermès and Jean-Claude Ellena began even before he became the exclusive perfumer for the creation of Un Jardin en Méditerranée, the true start of their alliance. In the course of his olfactory journeys, inspired by the annual themes of Hermès, the designer has since revisited three other Garden-Perfumes which together delineate a new sensory geography. Garden Perfumes to share. The very first of these escapades resulted in the creation of Un Jardin en Méditerranée in Conceived as a watercolour, the fragrance is inspired by a hint of the poetic in the Tunisian garden of Leïla Menchari (Director of displays for Hermès). Like a travel journal, it evokes that universe of shade, water and light, themed around of a blend of fig and Mediterranean citrus. The fragrance emphasises the vegetal effect of crushed fig leaf and the bitter, acidulous freshness of orange peel on a woody structure, shot through with the light floral notes of hedione (a compound of jasmin). Intensities and proportions balance each other to bring back the aroma of that fig tree, a sign and symbol of the Mediterranean. With Un Jardin sur le Nil, composed in 2005, Jean-Claude Ellena adds a second destination to his impressionistic travel journal. A stroll through the garden islands of the Nile at Aswan is the starting point for this new olfactory journey. Green mango, lotus, incense, calamus and sycamore wood are at the heart of this refreshing ode. During the return journey from Egypt, I reread my notes and scribbled down a short recipe made up of fragments of juxtaposed odours. The perfume has taken form in my head. I just need to give it a form in which all is revealed: both light and emphatic, lively and generous, like an echo of those gardens on the banks of the Nile. 3/6

4 In 2008, it is the facets of an unexpected India that are explored in Un Jardin après la Mousson when the monsoon restores to the earth what the sun sucked out, and drives away the burning breath of drought. A rebirth of nature captured in Kerala, in a world engorged with water. The deluge ceased. The black clouds gave way to a serene blue sky. The canals became mirrors. The suffocating air became perfume. I take my nose for a walk. The great garden breathes. The trees have straightened. The leaves regain their greenery. The grass ripples. Young shoots appear. Scent is reborn, lively, clear, moist. It is this welcoming garden that I have bottled. Ginger, cardamom, coriander, pepper and vetiver, a world away from preconceptions, contribute to this new olfactory translation of India. In 2011, Un Jardin sur le Toit goes back to the source and takes us to an unexpected place. The contemporary artisan theme has taken Jean-Claude Ellena to the roof of the 24, faubourg Saint-Honoré, at the heart of the Hermès House. Here, we discover a garden, a miniature handmade slice of nature, next to the workshops, a miracle right at the centre of Haussmann s architectural kingdom. A perfumer s place is everywhere and nowhere, admits Jean-Claude Ellena. That s how, one day, I found something I thought was a long way away right under my nose. I had been there several times. My footsteps had produced a burst of aromas, lush grass, damp soil, and I loved letting them work their way inside me. An apple tree, a pear tree, a magnolia in the air of Paris, together create a perfume formed of light and pleasure. In praise of the material For Hermès and for Jean-Claude Ellena alike, expertise has its source in the passion for their trade and the love of fine raw materials shared by these two artisans of the beautiful. For me as a composer of perfumes, the relationship to odours and fragrances is not only analytical or synthetic, but also physical, because I need to handle them, to mould them, in order to possess them. Odours are like words or colours. Building materials. Of my own construction, explains the perfumer. As if to illustrate his words, in autumn 2004, Jean-Claude Ellena laid the four foundation stones of a collection, Hermessence, exclusively created 4/6

5 for Hermès boutiques, with new perfumes regularly introduced to the range. Like hymns in praise of transformed materials, these fragrances, now numbering eleven with Epice Marine, adopt a set of exceptional materials and reinvent them as poems of the olfactory sense. As a self-confessed pillager of aromas, Jean-Claude Ellena has taken advantage of working for Hermès to feed his insatiable appetite for sensations. Everything is a potential source of inspiration: A perfume s theme can emerge not only from the rediscovery of a substance, but from an attraction to an olfactory territory such as the odour of a fabric, of tar, of a wood... All of these sensations provide creative pathways which the perfumer likes to follow in his development of, for instance, the Novel-Perfumes range. Hence Terre d Hermès, a masculine metaphor for earthy materiality, entirely structured around a vertical alchemy of wood. Or Kelly Calèche, the interpretation of the memory of a visit to the Hermès leather store, a hide warehouse where Jean-Claude Ellena devised the first notes of that new symphony of emotions. Or still, Voyage d Hermès which tells the story of the profound and unique relationship that Hermès maintains with the travel. And in 2013 Jour d Hermès, a profusion of flowers, as a luminous and sensual celebration of feminity. In true craftsman fashion, the perfumer deeply respects traditional skills and simplicity of approach. He returns untiringly to raw materials, celebrating them for what they are through spontaneous creativity, as if painting a watercolour. More recently, in 2009, he has been focusing on using materials for their intrinsic qualities through his exploration of colognes and the creation of a new collection based on Eau d orange verte (created in 1979). He has also offered a series of material-based olfactory vignettes with Eau de pamplemousse rose and Eau de gentiane blanche with their lucid, direct and generous style. And in 2013 Eau de mandarine ambrée and Eau de narcisse bleu. 5/6

6 Perfume in capitals Perfume as an extra element of the soul, neither whim, nor object of desire. Perfumes as a way to experience sensuality in its most authentic sense, as well as to delight the mind in their ability to conjure dreams. Perfume, olfactory form, in the same way as we say work of art, or source of emotion within the confines of memory and culture. Perfume as a shared ambition or vocation, a pact sealed in total sincerity and complicity between Jean-Claude Ellena and the house of Hermès. A writer of smells «Smell is a word, perfume is literature» Jean-Claude Ellena In 2011 Sabine Wespieser éditeur published Jean-Claude Ellena s Journal d un parfumeur (Diary of a nose, soon to be published by Penguin classics) in which he gives intimate and authentic insights into his passion for his work, the people he meets and his pleasures in life, but also the periods of doubt and hesitation that go hand in hand with creativity. It is his way of offering a wide readership an opportunity to be immersed in the everyday reality of his exciting work as a perfumer. The book ends with a summary of smells which invites readers to juxtapose the raw materials that, together, produce the illusion of jasmine, pears, candyfloss and many other smells, making this Diary of a nose a celebration of, amongst other things, intuition, curiosity and the imagination. In 2013, the writer of smells delivered his first novel, La note verte, also published by Sabine Wespieser. Hermès, /6

Light is the promise of dawn, of eternal rebirth. Pierre-Alexis Dumas

Light is the promise of dawn, of eternal rebirth. Pierre-Alexis Dumas At Hermès, every woman is a mystery. A mystery that we try to elucidate. With a discreet glow. With patient knowledge. With a singular