The Diary of a Nose: A Year in the Life of a Parfumeur

by Jean-Claude Ellena

The French bestseller The Diary of a Nose is the story behind the creation of a perfume, from the head perfumer at Hermès.

Perfume creation is an exclusive and secretive endeavour. What is day to day life like for a perfume-maker? How does the creation of a new scent begin? How do you capture the essence of a smell on the skin?

For one year, Jean-Claude Ellena kept a diary of his life as 'parfumeur exclusif' ('le nez' or 'the nose') for Hermès. Believing that creating a scent is like creating a work of art, and describing himself as a writer using 'olfactory colours', he explains how all of the five senses come into play when creating a perfume. He also reveals how inspiration can come from a market stall, a landscape, or even the movement of calligraphy, and concludes this charming, perceptive diary with recipes for natural fragrances, each made up of three synthetic ingredients, to create the illusion of smells like freesia, orange blossom, grapefruit, pear, chocolate, cashew and cotton candy.

This is the story of a quest to capture what is most elusive. Jean-Claude Ellena offer readers a rare insight into the secrets of his business, his art, and his life as one of the world's most important and admired perfumers.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, France, Biography Memoir, Biography, Art, Unfinished

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Maya Panika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I expected from this little (and it is little, just 145 small pages and those only sketchily filled) book. Probably something closer to a laboratory journal, a history of the creation of a specific perfume, a detailed examination of the science of perfumery. What I got was something far more delicious. Perfume and perfumery are discussed at length, of course, this is a perfumer's diary, but there's little of the laboratory here. This is the collected thoughts - on nature, the city, music, food, fashion, scent and perfume - of a man whose passion also happens to be his job, with a little gentle philosophy thrown in. The overall feel is that of a favourite blog; bite sized pieces of a life; a Tumblr or Pinterest without pictures. No illustrations are needed, the word-pictures are enough. It's no wonder Jean-Claude Ellena talks of `writing' or `composing' perfumes; the pictures he composes have an enchanting, dreamy quality, in pastel colours, like distant music, watercolour landscapes, clean linen, pressed flowers, dried lavender. Beautiful and quietly extraordinary.

[Sophia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jean-Claude Ellena is a "nose", one of a small, talented and highly-trained group of experts who create fine fragrances. In fact, he's one of the most highly respected "noses" in the business, having designed iconic fragrances such as First for Van Cleef and Arpels, as well as many of the famous perfumes of Hermes. In The Diary of a Nose, he tells us a little of his methods, explaining the painstaking process of developing a fragance from its initial inspiration, through the laborious testing and refining process to its eventual launch to the public.

This is a short book, written in a diary format, which supposedly follows Ellena over the course of a year. In fact, it felt more like a series of very short essays or newspaper columns, as most entries focused on a particular idea or theme rather than a conventional description of the day's events. The entries were a little too short for my liking, and I would have enjoyed more development of some of these ideas.

The book seems aimed at readers who have much more than a passing interest in the subject of perfume, as there are some chemical formulae as well as a lengthy appendix explaining how to create various scents using different chemicals and essences. If somebody were considering a career in perfumery I would recommend this book wholeheartedly, and even with no knowledge of the subject at all I still found myself intrigued at how chemicals that have never been anywhere near a fruit can be mixed together to smell like a pear or strawberry.

I spent much of the book trying to get a handle on Ellena's personality from the way he writes. He's quite scant on personal information and his writing is completely humourless. There's not the merest vestige of a joke or lightness of tone to be found anywhere, and I'm afraid I built up a rather unflattering picture of a haughty Frenchman who strikes fear into the hearts of his quaking assistants. I know this is meant to be a serious work, but I would have liked to have seen a little chink of humanity.

I did find myself wandering over to my dressing table and sniffing my own collection of perfumes while reading this; trying to pay attention to all the different elements and seeing if I could detect a particular flower, herb or fruit. The book will get you thinking about fragrance and what it means to us, how it is linked to memory and how it can provoke an emotional reaction.

While perfume junkies will certainly enjoy The Diary of a Nose, the deadly serious tone and lack of depth and detail will limit its appeal. I think I would have enjoyed a more conventional autobiography more, but I'm not sure Ellena would have been up to the task. As a perfumer I'm sure he's a genius, but as an author he's a little too dry for my taste.

[Romain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ce n’est pas le Journal d’un lecteur, mais celui d’un parfumeur que je vous propose de découvrir. C’est un métier rare, mais ô combien précieux puisque l’objectif vers lequel il doit tendre est de faire naître des émotions – et non pas de faire vendre, ça c’est le boulot du marketing. En ce sens, il se rapproche de l’art, mais le savoir-faire qu’il requiert l’oblige à rester profondément encré dans l’artisanat.

C’est tout cela que nous raconte Jean-Claude Ellena dans son journal. Le parfumeur exclusif de la maison Hermès nous fait découvrir son métier, son quotidien, ses inspirations, mais aussi ses doutes.

> Si j’ai une conscience aiguë de ce que je fais, je chéris le doute et l’entretiens : je ne connais rien de mieux pour créer.

Il aime aussi les mots et la lecture, il aime prendre le temps et ce court moment en sa compagnie est un vrai régal, une pause, une respiration. On aimerait l’accompagner lors de ses promenades à Cabris, sur les hauteurs de Grasse, où il a installé son atelier près de la source française du parfum et loin de l’agitation parisienne.

Il est difficile de saisir une odeur, de la capturer, de la conserver, de l’imaginer et encore moins de la retranscrire dans un journal. Une odeur est intrinsèquement insaisissable, fantasmée et c’est certainement cela qui la rend si attirante.

> Mettre un nom sur une odeur ne suffit pas pour connaître son caractère, ses limites, ses possibilités. Avec une volonté d’ignorant qui veut tout apprendre, tout contrôler, tout mesurer, j’ai rempli des carnets de notes sur chacune d’elles. […] Les odeurs ne sont pas des Lego que l’on imbrique pour construire un parfum, mais des objets immatériels que je cherche à rendre intelligibles.

Ce journal est le témoignage sensible d’un grand professionnel sur son métier et sa passion, le parfum.

> Quand l’odeur n’est plus liée au souvenir, qu’elle n’évoque plus les fleurs, les fruits, qu’elle est nue de tout sentiment, d’affect, elle devient alors matière du parfum.
> Quand je ne peux plus la décrire, qu’elle a une consistance, une profondeur, une largeur, une épaisseur, quand elle devient tactile, que la seule représentation que j’en ai est physique, je peux la mettre en forme et créer.

Également publié sur mon blog.

[Sps · Rating 3 out of 5]

In which Jean-Claude Ellena sets out to prove he is a true Frenchman, i.e. an intellectual and an aesthete, crafting works of art rather than "the icy perfections of the mere stylist" (As Mr. Charles Rennie Mackintosh would say.) He quotes Fernand Braudel on capitalism (p.45) and Charles Trenet on music (p.67) and travels the globe and namedrops and drinks tea.

He is PoMo and BoBo all at once: "When I want to evoke a smell, I use signs that--taken separately-- have no connection with the thing I'm expressing: there has never been any tea in Bulgari's Eau parfumée au thé vert, mango in Un jardin sur le Nil by Hermès, or flint in Terre d'Hermès, yet the public 'feels' they are there." (p.3) Comparing himself to a sculptor, winemaker, or other craftsman, he says "Where the master of wine is concerned, man adds to nature; as a perfumer, I remove myself from nature to reduce it to the level of signs." (68)

This clustering of signs around and about perfume is partly because we can't evaluate or sense a perfume without smelling it--interacting with the thing-itself--so we need representations in words, images, symbols. Ellena remarks, seemingly without irony, "marketing people understand this perfectly. Seeing advertisements has never meant being able to smell the perfume; at the very best it elicits a desire to smell it: such are the strengths and limitations of the exercise." (24)

Actually one could say this about all luxury goods. They are about desire and possession, and representations of desire and possession. One of Ellena's own perfumes, First, sort of represents all that in scent-symbol form: "Gorged on analyses of market archetypes, I collected, borrowed and conflated every signal for femininity, wealth and power into this perfume." (66)


The best thing I got from this book, however, was an idea for an experience akin to the Feast of Words nights at SOMArts: an event in which "the master of ceremonies burned ten different fragrances, one after another. For each fragrance, the participants were invited to compose a poem." (127) Now, who will humor me and actually do this?

[Camila Neo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gives a perspective of what it is like to work as a perfumer. I appreciated the openness of this book, despite perfumery being an art and it gave insight to the style of this work. Also enjoyed the parts where he talks about his travels, languages and cultures of the world. You feel like you are travelling with him through the different days. An awesome read and I finished it in only two days.

[Nadya Estefani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ternyata lebih kayak buku harian perfumer (duh the title!). Tapi lumayan dapat banyak pengetahuan baru juga tentang parfum, misalnya:

- wangi bergamot (dan raw material lainnya) bisa berbeda tergantung waktu panennya
- buat bikin the famous terre d’hermes perlu waktu 8 bulan
- amber tidak sama dengan ambergris (asli tadinya w kira sama)

[SONA · Rating 4 out of 5]

“When smell is no longer linked to memory, when it no longer evokes flowers or fruits, when it is stripped of all feeling and affect, then it becomes material for a perfume.
When I can no longer describe it, when it has consistency, depth, breadth and density, when it becomes tactile, when the only representation I have of it is physical, then I can bring it to life and create.”

This man could have been a poet in another life.

[Otone · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The way in which we read and perceive a book is not exactly the same today as it was yesterday, and the same can be said of perfume." A fascinating (if occasionally overly pretentious) read. As it is a diary, it can be choppy and is best read in several sittings.

[AskNezka · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely short compendium of thoughts, musings, information, and a peek into the mind of a perfumer who is always open to smells.

[Piwils · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je continue mon exploration du monde du parfum et c’est toujours aussi intéressant, j’ai beaucoup aimé le partage des réflexions autour de la création de parfums, de la vie d’un parfumeur et l’abrégé d’odeurs où Jean-Claude Ellena nous partage quelques “recettes”

[sigh ra · Rating 5 out of 5]

an absolutely enthralling read and rewarding for sure.

i loved his writing and appreciated the journey we were invited along in the garden perfume series from hermes. with each perfume, there’s a story, there’s context that i would never have if i just encountered it in a store. in fact, one of my sisters was given samples of this garden collection and i was given a gucci bloom roll on and i remember loving the smells of the hermes although at the time, i had no idea about this collection or about the sagacious nose behind the perfumes. i especially loved the process of his creation of the women’s perfume, a story that was never finished in this book. i also appreciated the ingredients he listed towards the end as a guide, perhaps a little foray for amateur perfumers like myself.

i need to save this article somewhere so i'm pasting it below.

How to Make Sense of Scents
Can language ever capture the mysterious world of smells?
By Rachel Syme

My obsession with perfume began when I was around ten years old, spritzing on layer after layer of my mother’s Anaïs Anaïs and Poison, until I reeked of a duty-free store. It continued through my mall-rat teen-age years, when I blew through my babysitting tips at Bath & Body Works, convinced that I could amplify my personality with a generous dose of Sun-Ripened Raspberry. Throughout my twenties, I collected hundreds of fragrance samples, bought for less than five dollars apiece from Web sites with names like the Perfumed Court and Surrender to Chance. Tiny glass vials of liquid tuberose regularly spilled out of my coat pockets. So when an editor at a newspaper for which I occasionally wrote about hair and beauty trends asked me if I had anything to say about perfume, I told her I did. I assumed that the main requisite for the task was personal experience, not technical expertise; surely I already had the vocabulary for detailing the scentscapes I’d been wandering for years. I knew I loved the smell of violets—their chalky, chocolate undertones. Or I thought I knew. Sitting down at my keyboard, I began to waver. Was it more like talcum powder and linden honey? Or like a Barbie-doll head sprinkled with lemonade?

Talking about smells can feel a little like talking about dreams—often tedious, rarely satisfying. The olfactory world is more private than we may think: even when we share space, such as a particularly ripe subway car, one commuter may describe eau d’armpit as sweet Gorgonzola cheese, another will detect rotting pumpkin, and a third a barnyardy, cayenne tang. What surprised me is that using phrases like “barnyardy, cayenne tang” is a perfectly valid, even preferred, way to write about nasal experiences. Many of the most seasoned perfume critics incline toward the rhapsodic, as do the would-be critics who gather on the Internet to wax eloquent about the things they’ve smelled. One of my favorite hubs for odor aficionados, the Web site Fragrantica, an online “perfume encyclopedia” that launched in 2007, has the feel of a cacophonous bazaar: on its message boards, users swap perfumed prose back and forth, racking up hundreds of new posts each day.

On Fragrantica’s page for Violette, a violet soliflore (the industry term for a perfume that attempts to replicate the scent of a single flower) from the French house Molinard, you will find little consensus and lots of enthusiasm: “reminds me of sweet tarts from my childhood”; “This is a dance of fairies, in the deep of a forest where all is about light and shadows”; “a twilight summer sky, a glaring garland of bare incandescent bulbs, larded fruit pies, some musk from the crowd”; “my 5 year old son told me it smells disgusting, like ‘something dead.’ ” The desperate maximalism of these adjective pileups has a kind of poignancy. Smell—bodily and human yet invisible and heady—defies our expressive capacities in a way that other senses don’t. In our clumsy efforts at the ineffable, there is both passion and melancholy.

Would it help if we had a scientific lingua franca for talking about these aromatic adventures? There is chemistry, of course, which explains why certain essences smell like pinecones, or cotton candy. Violets, whether you detect a puff of cocoa or a hint of Barbie, get their enchanting sillage (or fragrance trail) from ionones, aromatic compounds that invade and numb the nasal passages in delicate waves, giving the flower a bizarre ability to flirt with the nostrils. If we all knew about indoles, the fetid natural compounds found in both jasmine blooms and human excrement, or sabinene, a terpene that gives both cedar and oregano their herbaceous punch, would we be better able to understand our shared airspace?

The impulse to taxonomize our elusive sensory experiences is not a new one. In the 1976 book “Wines: Their Sensory Evaluation,” Maynard Amerine, a fermentation expert, and Edward B. Roessler, a mathematician, took fellow wine connoisseurs—who rival Fragrantica users in their love of florid verbiage—to task, insisting that poetic evocations be accompanied by statistically replicable evaluations. They didn’t want to know what made a wine “angular” or “austere”; they wanted to understand what accounted for our perception of acidity. A similar desire for precision lies behind Harold McGee’s nearly seven-hundred-page new book, “Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells” (Penguin Press), the result of a ten-year quest to name and categorize every noticeable fragrance on earth.

Learning to detect specific scent notes “isn’t just an intellectual exercise,” McGee writes. It’s a full-body transformation. He cites the French sociologist Bruno Latour, who, in his 2004 essay “How to Talk About the Body,” mused about the way that perfumers in training learn to identify increasingly delicate and obscure essences over time: “It is not by accident that the person is called a ‘nose’ as if, through practice, she had acquired an organ that defined her ability to detect chemical and other differences.” A nose isn’t born; she’s made.

McGee, a food scientist in San Francisco, is especially interested in the playful pas de deux between the nose and the tongue. His 1984 book, “On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen,” popularized what became known as molecular gastronomy and earned him a mythological status among swaggering chefs who wanted to test the boundaries between stoves and Bunsen burners. The award-winning British chef Heston Blumenthal, best known for his offal innovations and porridge made with snails, once said that McGee’s tome “defined my unconventional approach to cooking. I wasn’t inquisitive before that.”

McGee’s immersion in what he calls the “osmocosm” (from the ancient Greek root for “odor”) began with the mystery of why certain unrelated foods mirror one another on the palate. He noticed that some Parmesan cheese tasted like pineapple, and that some oysters had the same vegetal crispness as raw cucumber. Other analogies were more far-fetched, but compelling: green tea could be oceanic, and some red wine had a distinct aftertaste of horse manure. “The flavor echoes I’d perceived,” he concluded, “are similarities specifically in smells.” McGee started by breaking down gastronomical odors, but soon expanded beyond the kitchen, documenting the smells of asteroids, asphalt, urine, wet earth, seaweed, sourdough, yogurt, dead animals, sassafras, and smoke—the “mundane yet revelatory things that fill our lives.”

This collision of the mundane and the revelatory makes McGee’s book as enjoyable to thumb through as the Fragrantica forums, though his guide is much better researched and far less baroque. It unfolds like a set of smart answers to essentially silly questions about quotidian life. Ever wonder why sweaty armpits stink? And, in the worst cases, why they stink of shallots in particular? McGee reports that the apocrine sweat glands, which kick into high gear during adolescence, do their best to hide the evidence of their own microbiomal bouquet. Sugars and amino acids bind to volatile, potentially rank molecules, thereby preventing the release of any foul smell. But when bacterial interlopers, such as bacillus and staphylococcus, break these bonds and “liberate” compounds like hydroxymethyl-hexanoic acid, then the full power of B.O. is unleashed: “rancid, animal, cumin-like.”

McGee’s tangled web of fragrance families starts to reveal fascinating relationships. By charting the genealogy of the piquant invaders of teen-age underarms, he discovers that they are the “very same molecules that scent goat and sheep meats, milks, cheeses, and wools.” This is no accident. Traditional cheese-makers cultivated their curds with a “sweat-like brine” for weeks. Once humans realized they could mimic their own bodily ripeness in their food, they simply couldn’t help themselves. “The smells of the human body may be socially embarrassing,” McGee writes, “but for children, and privately for adults, they’re often irresistible.”

The cozy relationships between natural secretions and savory foods, or accidental emissions and eros, are well known to anyone who has nuzzled the dirty scalp of a loved one, but McGee lays out the molecular evidence for these desires. We might like to think we are most drawn to lovely, “clean” smells—laundry, linden blossoms, a eucalyptus breeze—but more often than not our greatest sensory delight comes from our most intimate, and most odiferous, nooks and crannies.

It’s tempting to wonder how my perfume writing might have been different if I’d had “Nose Dive” on hand when I was starting out. In 2010, I puzzled over a new trend in “animalic” perfumes—unwashed, nocturnal scents with names like Ma Bête and Bat. (These were synthetic essences; fragrance-industry overseers now heavily regulate the use of many animal-derived products, such as castoreum, from beaver glands, and hardened whale feces known as ambergris.) At the time, I took a philosophical view: maybe these carnal scents evinced a longing for strangers’ bodily funk in an age of alienation.

McGee does not make such grand claims; he is more interested in analyzing the deep origin stories of smells than in tracking changeable cultural trends. Many of the molecules we smell today, he notes, have been around since the planet’s earliest days. Plenty of them are toxic—ammonia, say—but, even when dangerous, these primordial scents often have an intoxicating allure. “The smells of earth will always be our reference points,” McGee writes. “Lighter fluid or stove fuel, scorched oil, a vinegar dressing, a deviled egg, a just-unwrapped cheese, a sip of wine or rum: all offer distant echoes of the early cosmos.”

He is occasionally drawn to poetic diversions, citing research showing that petrichor, the sublime scent emitted when rain hits rocks or pavement, comes not from the minerals in the stone but from an imperceptible layer of “volatiles” covering all outdoor surfaces. These volatiles, generated by fungi, plants, and even human technology, are, McGee writes, “usually too sparse and omnipresent for us to notice them in the air around us.” It is only during a storm that what soil scientists call a “wet-up” can occur, and a fine mist of abundant life becomes perceptible to our noses. Rain reminds us of what is already there; it reattunes us to the ambient magnitude of the natural world. (Many perfumers have sought to bottle petrichor: one scent, inspired by a foggy hike in Northern Ireland, contains “ozonic and radiant materials.”) Our sense of smell has many functions: it’s a warning system, a taste enhancer, a pheromone alarm. But it is also an instrument for wonder, for noticing that which we often take for granted, and for which we rarely have a name.

In 2014, a Rockefeller University study claimed that the human nose, long thought to be inferior to dog or bear snouts, could isolate more than a trillion smells. The study, part of a burgeoning academic field called scent studies, did not stand up to review—it turned out there was a flaw in the mathematics—but it kicked off more research to determine the actual might of the human organ. In 2017, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University named John McGann published a provocative paper that, by comparing the olfactory bulbs of different animals, also seemed to suggest that we’re better smellers than we’ve gotten credit for. “We put the human bulb next to the mouse bulb and gasped,” he wrote. “It was gigantic.”

Scent studies were good for business, too. In recent years, the number of scented products for the home has exploded: where there was once just “lemon fresh” or “ocean breeze” dish soap, now there are hundreds of varieties, including “honeycrisp apple,” “sea salt neroli,” and “palmarosa wild mint.” One study predicted that the scented-candle business will net $4.22 billion by the end of 2024. You can now find candles that mimic the smells of Catholic Mass, a warm French baguette, a tomato vine in the hot sun, and a rotting bouquet inside a funeral home.

In “Smells: A Cultural History of Odours in Early Modern Times” (Polity), the French professor and historian Robert Muchembled is eager to note a cynical connection between the recent boom in the science of fragrance and the expanding scented marketplace. “The recent surge of interest in the human sense of smell is part of a vast cultural phenomenon whose underlying causes are deep-rooted, yet readily identifiable,” he writes. “You just have to follow the money.” Muchembled grumbles that the emphasis on novelty has overtaken a crucial aspect of understanding our nostrils—of how they adjust not only to molecules but also to changing societal mores.

Muchembled evokes the sensory world of Europe from the Renaissance to the early nineteenth century, a place and time that were extremely stinky. The streets of Grenoble, France, he writes, were stagnant cesspools of human and animal excrement, where “the hoi polloi were expected to let their betters walk on the higher side away from the gutter” to avoid being splashed with the repulsive muck. Human noses were always sensitive, but also highly adaptable. People in the Middle Ages did not think that roads lined with chicken droppings smelled pleasant; they simply got used to the stench. This phenomenon persists, as my colleague Charles Duhigg found while digging into the marketing of Febreze spray in his book “The Power of Habit.” The smell-masking product was initially marketed to smokers and people with pets, but nobody bought the stuff; people with “smelly” houses no longer noticed the smell. It was only by appealing to obsessive cleaners—people who didn’t actually need Febreze—that a wild best-seller was launched.

Febreze is hardly the first fashion to be born of our attempts to control the scentosphere. In smellier eras, certain professions took a large load of the olfactory burden: leather tanners, fishmongers, and fabric cutters (urine mixed with vinegar was a common color fixative for textiles). Creating a barrier between these trades and the general public led to fragrant innovations. Perfume became popular as a method of masking the curdled, meaty scent that emanated from leather goods. “Scented gloves,” Muchembled writes, “were the absolute height of high-society fashion in the reign of Louis XIII.”

And it wasn’t just the floral and the powdery that were in vogue. After a perfumer submerged a hide for gloves in a bath of orange-flower water, he would rub it with a mixture of ambergris, musk (glandular secretions from a deer), and civet (the perineal discharge of a bushy, mongoose-like mammal). French women, it seems, wanted their hands to smell at once like nature’s serenity and its monstrosity. The British, ascetics to their core, apparently found this practice distasteful; one Elizabethan playwright wrote, of kissing a lady’s glove, that “civet makes me sick.”

While we’ve lived in lockdown for the past year, daily encounters with surprising smells have dramatically diminished. The mask that I wear on walks filters out most of the odors of city life. I cannot remember the last time I was lured in, like a hapless Gretel, by the caramel allure of a Nuts 4 Nuts cart, or forced out of an elevator by a cloud of noxious gardenia, wishing a stranger had practiced more restraint. It takes effort to seek out novel aromas these days, and I’ve become increasingly madcap in my pursuits, ordering pickled beets, incense papers, and double-ginger tea just to shock my nose out of its stupor.

The stupor can be systemic. Some people with COVID-19 seem to have been afflicted with lasting anosmia—the loss of smell—and the effects go beyond missing the zest of a just-peeled orange or the salt of a sea breeze; they may report feeling depressed or adrift. Dr. Sandeep Robert Datta, a neurobiologist, recently told the Times that, while many think of scent as “an aesthetic bonus sense,” it is a vital link between people and their environment. Losing that link can be traumatic. “People’s sense of well-being declines,” Datta said. “It can be really jarring and disconcerting.” Perhaps anosmia feels so traumatic because smell is so personal, wrapped up with one’s own idiosyncratic narrative and memory. Spongy vanilla cake dunked in tea may have rocketed Marcel Proust backward into his pampered youth, but the whiff of madeleines will mean something entirely different—if it means anything—to you.

I’ve continued reading Fragrantica late into the night in my own little cloister, hoping that we will one day soon return to inhabiting a common scentscape. But I also have a new appreciation for the elusive quest to track down smells: while there is an undeniable appeal to pursuing a “proper language” for discussing the osmocosm, there is also something to be gained by accepting that much of the pleasure of nasal perception is untranslatable. When we are at last able to swoon together again, unmasked and unmoored, over lilacs or hot brioche, what we will really be sharing is secret reverie.

[^ · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my life I have, to date, fallen in love at different times with a mere two lovely eau-de-parfums. One, launched in 1977, was inspired by the Orient. The second is a floral/fresh first marketed 1978. Since then I’ve never felt any necessity whatsoever to wear any other. So I was intrigued when this book, ”The Diary of a Nose” turned up in a charity (thrift) shop. I simply had to buy it (and at such a reasonable price, too)..

Having read other reviews of this book on Goodreads, I opted to ignore the book’s diary-structure, and instead treat it simply as a series of episodes in the life of the master perfumier Jean-Claude Ellena, who likes Italo Calvino’s definition of a classic book: “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say” (at https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/sear...). It’s hardly difficult to spot the applicability to perfume. Very arty.

J-C E appends names, not numbers to his formulations in progress. Yet his mind works differently when, later on in his book, he outlines (giving little away) how his memory internalises and classifies primary scents. I’m different. I’ve always found it easier to use alphanumeric codes to clarify relationships between formulations at a glance. He also uses ’moleskin’ notebooks; which, having trouble visualising pegged-out talc-rubbed drying pelts of moles (of the family Talpidae,) I take to mean the products of the American company Moleskine

That as the character of a wine should communicate the character and personality of its maker, J-C E claims so should a perfume. Neither, I conjectured, would such a tactic risk harming the marketability of its ‘creator’! Alchemists have recognised for centuries the significant value that can be added by product positioning supplemented by lashings of imagination. Later on he recounts a very enjoyable dinner party in Gembloux, near Lièrge; where the guests are given noteboooks and pencils to record their impressions of what they will be eating. He refuses to play along with this; claiming that he cannot simultaneously “live intensely; and make notes about my feelings at the same time.” (p.96). I cheered for him at that point, before carrying on to read his interesting description of the menu; which anyone who regularly entertains will find both thoughtful and helpful.

The odd proof-reader’s error greatly amused me. On page 73, J-C E writes, “I have just spotted sweat peas in every colour.” I was immediately reminded of the highly successful BBC sit-com ‘Allo Allo, (1982-1992), set in France during WW2, where the abominable French-speaking gendarme is really a British undercover officer (Crabtree), in permanent disguise.

The interacting sum of parts creates and defines a perfume, whether bought and worn to attract or to disguise. Likewise it is the sum of parts that defines this book, whether bought to read or to give as a present together with a phial of eau de parfum. I certainly enjoyed these pages all the more whilst wearing perfume, rather than unperfumed straight after a bath.

[Mayra Correa e Castro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jean-Claude (França, 1947) é um perfumista muito, mas muito famoso – mas não é um pop star. Trabalha há quase uma década para a mesma casa, a Hermès, que não é lá uma marca faiscante comparativamente a outras que detêm linhas de perfumes próprias, como Carolina Herrera, Calvin Klein, Diesel ou mesmo a Chanel. Filho de perfumista, nascido em Grasse, já trabalhou pra grandes casas de fragrâncias, como Givaudan e Symrise, criando perfumes para Bvlgari, Balenciaga, Giorgio Armani, L´Artisan Parfumeur, Van Cleef & Arpels e Yves Saint Laurent. Mas seus maiores sucessos vieram mesmo a partir de 2004-05 quando criou a série Hermessence e “ Un Jardin” para a Hermès.

De lá pra cá já publicou quatro livros, colaborou em outros dois, sendo este, Diário de um Perfumista (2009-11), o primeiro traduzido no Brasil. É que seu nariz é muito literário. O mais apaixonante em Ellena é seu amor pela literatura. Acostumados que estamos, desde Septimus Piesse, a encarar a perfumaria como uma composição musical, vem ele e abre o livro com a epígrafe “O odor é uma palavra, o perfume é a literatura”. Pronto, você precisa de mais nada pra ler o livro.

Mas se quiser outros argumentos, ei-los, do mais óbvio ao menos: se você brinca de perfumaria, vai amar algumas fórmulas que ele menciona no final do livro; se você é aromaterapeuta, vai gostar de saber sobre algumas (poucas) essências naturais usadas na perfumaria na França; se você também acha a Anvisa um porre, vai encontrar pelo menos duas boas e fundamentadas opiniões de por que ela e o IFRA são uns chatos de galocha; se você queria ter nascido na França, vai ficar com mais vontade ainda – Jean-Claude tem tudo que um francês deve ter: senso politico, consciência da fugacidade da fama, propensão a filosofar em cima do banal e amor pelo sofisticado-simples; se você gosta de literatura, vai achar incrível as reflexões que ele faz em cima de seu ofício, o de um escritor de símbolos fragrantes.
Depois da leitura, só lhe restará uma atitude sensata a tomar: ir até uma boa perfumaria e cheirar as criações de Ellena. Leve mais braços: mesmo que borrife nos pulsos, nas dobras internas dos cotovelos e nos bíceps, faltará espaço pra cheirar tanta beleza.

Voici les meilleures parties.

Leia o restante da resenha com as citações em: http://asmelhorespartes.blogspot.com....

[Dave Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I mentioned in my review of his previous book, Ellena is genius perfumer and is really a celebrity in the perfume world. Though I didn't like his previous book and found it tedious, I was still very excited to read this, since it was entries from his diary over a year's time.

Overall, I was very pleased with this book. It managed to keep the spirit of the first book but was what I really wanted from the first book without all the boring details. I do have a few criticisms. It's a short book, and it really only about a third of the year in entries, not the whole year. I don't necessarily mind that it's short, but it bothered me some in conjunction with my next problem with it: Ellena tends to ramble a lot, and some entries are either not related to perfumery or are only loosely related. So when you notice that the entries were selective, you start to ask why didn't other days replace these entries? Now it could be the fault of the editor, or maybe Ellena himself didn't write entries every day, but I just found some entries to be pointless. Also, I think that Ellena tries too hard at being philosophical. It works on occasion, but most of the time it's too forced. Also, there's not really a thread to tie in the whole book, or a poignant ending, so reading this all at once (like I did) probably isn't the best way to read it. Perhaps it's best if savored little by little.

But mostly I really enjoyed the book. I found that I really liked hearing about his experience as a perfumer and his day-to-day routine. I loved how he explained some of the secrets to his creations, and I loved how he has a section at the end of the book listing ingredients that can make common accords (even though it would still take trial and error to figure out the proportions). I really enjoyed the entries about his camaraderie with Edmond Roudnitska (another iconic perfumer from a generation prior). At times I found this book informative, beautiful, poetic, and philosophical. But mostly I just like this book because it tickles my nosiness about the life of an uber-popular perfumer that I really admire. For those who love fragrances--particularly Ellena's--you will want this book.

[Salomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a voracious reader, I found myself drawn to books on perfumery, starting with this 175-page book written by the iconic Jean Claude Ellena, 'parfumeur exclusif' or 'le nez' for Hermès. I expected this book to help me unravel the why's and how's of the perfume creation process - a topic I find myself contemplating on, time and again.

What I got was abstract prose that wove stories through the memories and experiences of the perfumer himself. The book narrates Ellena's thoughts on what inspires him and glimpses into the disjointed nature of the creative process. Jean-Claude unpacks his process of creation through diary-style entries - meandering past the confluence of fashion, culture, travel, food and language, without elaborating on the interconnectedness of the trails of inspiration. I must admit that in spite of being a sucker of the abstract style of writing, this book has left me wanting to read a less eloquent and more personable account of a perfumer.

That aside, this is an easy book - one that may take you further down the rabbit hole of our olfactive senses! I find it to be a great introduction for newbies like myself, who want to find their way in this space, but, struggle to find their bearings within the expansive landscape that is the art and alchemy of perfumery.

[Mike Kleine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good. A bit more philosophical than I expected. There's formulas at the end of the book, for those who are interested. Picked this up, mostly, because I am fascinated by the Hermès "Un Jardin..." series (I own all of them). An interesting look at the life of a parfumeur. I guess, in that regard, the book does exactly as the title implies. Still tho, feels like there is something missing... (Not sure what yet tho). I guess, maybe, I wanted to know more about the actual process and thinking behind each fragrance (and there's a bit of that). But then, also, there's a ton of meetings with people, traveling to different countries and towns and just, musings about daily life. Ellena is French after all... Not bad. Not great. Just, good.

[Michael Meeuwis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pleasant enough for what it is, although pretty insubstantial. This is a short series of diary entries from a perfumier who works for Hermes, in which he talks about various influences--quotidian and developmental--over his work. He gives an interesting account of the development of discernment over a lifetime; I think this will be very interesting to anyone working in an artistic field other than perfume, as he presents essentially what was to me an account of taste in a field whose very difference defamiliarized familiar accounts of how one "reads" an artwork. Still, pretty nugatory for the most part, although a quick and satisfying read.

[Sabrina Chapadjiev · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recently became engaged with texts on perfume, after finding 'The Emperor of Scent' by Chandler Burr, at a trains station that had wild hyacinths blooming in the parking lot. I searched out like minded books on scent, intrigued at how little I'd considered this sense of mine, and was hoping to get a deeper understanding of scent from this book.

This book is, simply, a journal by a composer of perfumes. Jean-Claude is certainly an intriguing figure, but he seems so engrossed in his own scent-wanderings, that it's hard to bridge the gap if you're also not a super-smeller. He's not known as a writer - although it's clear from his thoughts, he's an artist. But as a non-writer, there is little sense or true cohesion or finality to this book. It does, indeed, read like a perfume would - it wafts past enticing scents of fashion, culture, food and greatness, without settling specifically on a thought. It lingers, but only slightly so. I think perfume-obsessives will love this, but the man does not extend his thoughts to those who do not understand it. He simply invites you into his mind-wanderings, which are at times interesting, but collectively, nothing to write home about. A simple, easy book that may intrigue you further down the rabbit hole of scent, but has no true lasting effect on me otherwise.

[Ly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is liberating, inspiring and beautiful; especially for those who practice art in any field. Jean-Claude shared his perspective in how he see things, small things and situations in his daily life and his interpret into his craft. The book is in diary writing style, each pages is a new day, a new insight. The writing style is easy to read and follow. He occasionally share about the process of making perfume, most of the time are his aesthetic eyes (and nose) looking at life. The book has no picture but a lot of words to describe smells to let us play with our sense by imagination.

Personally (as a person who also practicing art), Jean inspired me a lot through his open-minded view of life and give me a easier look into how we create meanings. It forced me to look at things in different ways in order to embrace the fun in it. Like the meaning of perfection, individuality, learning style or even oil painting.

[Jackie Weltman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ehhh.
I get it. Ellena is a storied perfumer and an oh-so-Gallic artiste du plus haut niveau.

Were there passages from which I learned about perfumery? About being a nose and what it takes? Yes.

Were there passages about days in the life of Ellena that explained his approach to his art as a high art akin to great writing or painting yada yada? And about the many, many speaking engagements he so generously books, toned disingenuously as aw shucks I don't know bout that but hey they wanted me to talk about it, so...? Yes.

Were many of these passages egocentrically tiresome? Yes; yes they were.

Though I don't exactly consider the book not worth reading, I battled through it. I'm glad I didn't get a hard copy and would not refer to it again. I did want to know about nosedom and perfumery, generally, but didn't get as much as I was looking for. For those of you who are JCE stans/groupies, perhaps it was written for you - have at it!

[Gil Segev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jean-Claude is a professional perfumer, but he is almost as much a poet. He writes beautifully about creativity, craftsmanship, curiosity, and of course topics related to perfumery like the nature-synthetic debate, quality and market trends. This book reads like a diary, each entry a snippet into his though process. Fans of Hermes or of perfumery as an art will appreciate this.

[Camryn Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ellena shares some very elegant perspectives on the art of perfumery in this book, and his passion makes for a very compelling read. All-in-all this was an alluring, easy-to-digest book that most creatives can appreciate, but lovers, or those who are curious, about the art of perfumery will especially love it.

[Codee Hallett · Rating 4 out of 5]

a master at work

As we walk though this diary we get a rare glimpse into the world of perfume but that’s is the most skin deep description you could provide within this book you get the insights of a true artist and craftsman and you get the sensibilities of a perfumer and enjoyer of life

[Cathrine (Trine) Mork · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast, easy, and fragrant read for perfume lovers. More than a diary of perfume concoctions: rather, random bits and pieces of thoughts and opinions from a man who is lucky and talented enough to be living his passion. Enjoyed!

[Ankit · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for students and admirers of perfumery. J.C.E is one of the most creative and sought after perfumers in the world. His perfumes are pieces of art. In this book he lets us into is everyday life, and the way he sees the world.

[Chantal Ladias · Rating 5 out of 5]

This would have been my dream life ; a life of a nose is the return to our psyche, to our heritage , to our childhood and our ancestors’ childhood . My dream would have been to become a nose … I remember so distinctly this excursion to Grasse and the feeling of belonging

[Laura B · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like this would be terrific in French. The sounds, cadences. It’s poetic and now I need to study French in Duolingo. I mainly read it at bedtime and found it soothing. A small, sweet book. Not at all ordinary. If you’re expecting a narrative or scenes, perhaps think again.

[Brian Kovesci · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's the diary of a creative, those tend to be both abstract and philosophical while deeply in the weeds of their craft. I'm glad I read these perfume books in the order I did. I don't think I could have made the connections I did without laying the groundwork as I had.

[Laurène Sturm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un livre empreint de la poésie naturelle de l'auteur, qui se décrit non pas comme un musicien mais comme un "écrivain d'odeurs".

[นู๋ Ploy · Rating 5 out of 5]

good