Scent is a peculiar thing. It is fascinating how something intangible can be so powerful in bringing back memories: places, moments, persons. Over the years, I have experienced my fair share of scents, or rather fragrances, that if I were to smell them right now, will transport me back instantly across time. There were cheap colognes that I saved up to buy in my teen years, of local brands that I could not even remember anymore. Then there was that bottle that encapsulated what it felt like to be a young adult, to have my first taste of freedom as I graduated from being a ‘child’. Then, there was that bottle that I had refused to touch after all this time, because a whiff of it brought me back to my first heartbreak over someone no longer in my life.
There was a fragrance behind every chapter of my life, and behind these fragrances, is always a person whose nose unknowingly shaped my memories.
I quite recently had the opportunity to spend my morning with L’Artisan Parfumeur’s French master perfumer, Daphné Bugey. To her, perhaps, I am but another writer. To me, she is someone akin to shadows. Many are familiar with her perfumes and artistry, but only a handful may know who she is. Quite the odd predicament, though I secretly wondered if she knew the kind of impact she had. After all, who is to say her fragrances have not defined a part of someone’s life?
Like scents, our chat began with a time-travel to when Bugey was 10. That was the turning point of her life, the moment she had decided that being a perfumer was it for her. “My mom and her friends used to give me small vials of perfumes, the kind that they gave out in stores, and I started collecting them. I would spend hours identifying them, and that carried to me trying to identify people’s perfumes on the street. It was a true passion of mine,” she shared with a smile. It is an experience not unfamiliar to me. There are moments that I do that too, though perhaps with much less expertise. “One day, my parents took me to the south of France: Grasse. We had visited theMusée de la Parfumerie — the Museum of Perfumery — where a guide had told me of a school of perfumery in Versailles called ISIPCA. That was the first time I had known there was such a profession, and I made up my mind about being a perfumer.”
Being a perfumer is not as simple, either. There are many technicalities behind the profession, steps to take before one can conjure up bottles of memories. “I had to study chemistry in order to study perfumery, which was not easy. Not everyone can be a perfumer because not everyone has the patience nor the capability to study chemistry at such depth, and to me it felt like a ‘selection’. I did it still, because that’s how much I love it.” She then laughed, describing it as a rite of passage. “Nowadays, I don’t even use it as much anymore. It’s similar to cooking; of course when I’m working with my ingredients, I need to know my alcohols from my esther, what the reactions will be, what kind of discolouration can arise. At the end of the day though, chemistry is just the stepping stool.”
What, then, is important in creating her library of perfumes? “The DNA and story,” she explained simply. “When I work with a brand, I immerse myself in it. I understand its value and aesthetic before penning down any ideas I want to explore. I think of an olfactive form, be it centering around an ingredient or an olfactive family, and note down a draft of what I envision my perfume would be like. Then comes the details: which ingredients do I want to use to reach that? What kind of experiments and trials do I need to get that down to the minute precision?”
The way Bugey described her craft reminded me of a fairy tinkering her magic. Of course, that is a romanticised imagery of what she actually does, but I could not help but picture it in my head: a lady in a botanical garden, crushing herbs and flowers until their scents permeate the air. Minus the cauldron and everything else in between. I asked if there was anything she wanted to explore or experiment with in her future scent exploration with L’Artisan Parfumeur, and her answer was immediate. “I want to create a perfume from the Immortelle flower, which is famous in Corsica.” She then showed me pictures of the lush yellow shrubs, noting down their medicinal properties to me. “There is also one that is quite unusual, coriander.” The notorious green piqued my interest (on a personal anecdote, I actually do not dislike coriander). “It is not an easy scent, but it is an interesting challenge to turn a plant not many love into a fragrance. I find its bitter grassiness unique, and beautiful to itself.” As a lover of green scents, I expressed my keen interest in its release. I can almost smell it already, the familiar intense pepperiness.
For someone who surrounds herself in fragrances, I then asked her what her signature scent was. “I don’t have one,” she said matter-of-factly, much to my surprise. My reaction (however toned) may had been amusing to her, because she then smiled and explained her statement, “I smell everything all day long, so I often don’t wear anything on myself.” Though, there are scents that are memorable to her. Scents that, similar to me, bring her back in time. “A powerful scent to me is that of cooked caramelised apple, fresh from the oven.” She recalled how in her childhood, her mother had used to bake tarte tatin on Sundays. “The smell of crystalised sugar and crisp apples — I can never forget it. It smells like home, warmth, and love.”
Scents are many things, and they are powerful. They link so intricately to our memories that subconsciously, they evoke emotions. Behind powerful scents, are the ‘noses’. The genius that concoct each bottle to pin-point accuracy. Next time a scent moves you, remember it is all thanks to an artist like Bugey who captured emotions in a bottle.
