To acquire this luxury, naturally it takes time and hired expertise. You have to hire a professional ‘Nose’, which, can cost upwards of 90,000 USD and require six months and 12 trials to structure your divine, made-to-measure nectar. Common perfumes bought in stores - though often expensive, prestigious, and wonderful smelling - are certainly not one of a kind (hmmm….where have I smelled that before?) and can take a Nose on average two years to create, before the fashion brands or large perfume houses bring them to market. In fact, only about 35 per cent of the price of commercial perfumes goes to the production of the actual scent, and the rest to packaging and marketing (which of course is hard to resist). But as with all bespoke items, the quality to price ratio, and the indulgence of customised service and detail, can sometimes justify the cost.
For the country that takes the luxuries of life seriously, this is no new art in France. Professional Noses are competitively trained for seven years in postgraduate schooling, usually at one of the three perfumery schools between Versailles, Geneva and Grasse. This last town, amid lavender fields in the south of France, is the historical home of perfumery, producing at least 60 per cent of the world’s perfume essences today. While the Nose’s three-hour work day and very high salary may sound ideal, it comes with its limitations – Noses cannot drink alcohol, coffee, smoke nor eat spicy food in order to remain in top form. They’re a bit like an olfactory professional athlete.
Noses will assess your preferences, targeting the families of flowers, fruits and spices that access your subliminal emotions, associations and desires, including favourite perfumes or natural smells from childhood. Pure wild rose? Wooded vanilla? Some services, like that offered by storied jeweller Cartier, begin with a three hour conversation, which serves a foundation for understanding the desires and personality that the scent, created over many more future meetings, will ultimately express. Others houses, such as Jean Patou in Paris, will take you on a day trip around the city, and take detailed notes of your preferences at the colourful flower and vegetable markets about town.
A wide range of more humble bespoke perfume services are available, from the roughly 35,000 USD it costs to employ Roja Dove, “the perfume world’s equivalent to haute couture” located on the 5th floor of Harrods in London to Francis Kurkdjian who makes worldwide house calls to clients at about 12,000 USD. Noses will firstly identify the base notes of your scent, then the heart notes and head notes to follow, yet the final effect of the alchemy falls in the other direction - head notes are the immediate and lightest part of the scent that quickly wears off, while the heart and base notes carry the perfume’s more intense character.
For those simply interested in this process and in training their own noses, there is always a visit to the town of Grasse or, while in New York, a visit to the boutique of New York and Grasse-based perfume house Le Labo, which has deconstructed the mysterious art by reducing the principal essences found in most perfumes into ten (plus one baby perfume) blends that will be mixed by hand, on demand, to give the effect of a bespoke creation without the time commitment and price tag.
“A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future,” Coco Chanel once famously stated. Then what better way than to shape your future, than exactly as you like it?
