Today’s guest post is from Persolaise, the author of the Le Snob – Perfume guide, published by Hardie Grant. He is also the editor of the Persolaise blog, as well as a regular contributor to Basenotes. He has won four UK Jasmine Awards, most recently for Closer To Heaven, a guide to incense perfumes which appeared in The Scented Letter.
I can’t believe that almost three years have passed since I last interviewed Francis Kurkdjian. For a while, his face was a regular fixture on my blog, headlining posts which invariably featured strong opinions and controversial views, many of which prompted readers to share their own feelings in the Comments section. But, for one reason or another, after a flurry of meetings, our paths refused to cross for months on end.
During that time, his eponymous brand has grown in stature and popularity: he now has his own boutiques in Taiwan and Malaysia. He’s continued to make perfumes for high-street names (Jean-Paul Gaultier, Nina Ricci, Yves Rocher). And he’s become an in-house creator, of sorts, for Burberry, Carven and Elie Saab. At the start of February, he popped into London’s Liberty store for an ‘Evening With A Perfumer’ event organised by The Perfume Society. But before facing his fans, he kindly agreed to have an exclusive chat with me, over a cup of coffee and a biscuit.
What do you really think of ‘meet and greet’ gatherings like the one being held tonight? Why do you do them?
I'm doing it because it's Jo [Fairley, co-founder of The Perfume Society]. I know her and I feel comfortable with her. And I'm doing it in London, because there is no other place in the world to do it. France is a disaster. In many ways. The French Jasmine Awards have been stopped. There have never been any major exhibitions on perfume in France. The FiFis are just a nightmare to go to, but I guess any FiFis in the world are a nightmare to go to, particularly the one in Paris, because it's all about who votes for whom and all that. And there's very little space left in newspapers and magazines to talk about perfume. You don't have as many blogs in France as you do in England.
So is it fair to say you actually enjoy these sorts of events?
I asked for this one. Jo came to Paris at Christmas time and I said, 'Would you mind doing it with me?' I follow the Perfume Society. And I come to London quite a lot for Burberry.
So you actively don't want to be the perfumer stuck in his lab?
I'm not the perfumer in my lab. I think that's so cliche. What inspiration can you get from glass bottles and paper?
Is an event like tonight’s about finding inspiration?
No, it's not. It's more about sharing views. It's always challenging, because perfumery is rather complex to understand. It's not visual at all. It's super difficult to make people understand. So it's always challenging to explain to a not-so-knowledgeable audience how you create. In my company, we don't have briefs. One day, my business partner says to me, 'It's time for you to think about 2017 and 2018 and 2019.' So I start thinking about it, but it's not rationalised by a brief, it's not formalised at all. It's just me, all of a sudden, deciding what the next perfume will be, what its name will be. And then, when you have to pass on your message, your creation, to the sales people, the training people, it's super hard, because I never think about that. So the challenge for me tonight — which I'm used to, in a way, because I teach perfumery — is to make things simple and precise. And true! To me, the ethical thing is very, very important. Being true to yourself and being true to the craft: those are the two first bullet points of my life. You could lie so easily. Perfume is such an easy subject to lie about. And people lie so much, about the synthetics, the molecules, the naturals, everything!
Do you think that, in recent years, people really have become more knowledgeable about perfume, or has the Internet merely enabled people to enjoy an illusion that they’re experts?
That's the complexity of the Internet. How far can you be free to say the things that you think? As I said once before, a comment doesn't make an opinion. Or an opinion doesn't make a critic. It's just an opinion.
When planning future projects, do you try to predict trends, or do you look to the past for inspiration?
I look at the past a lot, because the past is history and history tends to repeat itself. Not in the exact same way, but the values remain the same. So I think it's very important to know history by heart and to do research and to learn more. I would never have been able to make the leather collection if I didn't know how to create scented gloves and if I hadn't done all the research around that. I would never have been able to work on the bubbles if I didn't know that the fountain of Versailles during Louis XIV had been scented.
Which part of history are we repeating now?
I think the craft is old enough — about 120 years now — to go back to perfumers in their shops, which was basically what perfumery used to be 300 years ago. We went through fashion. And now we’re circling back, very slowly, to independent perfumers. Or if not independent, to real dedicated places for perfume, like Le Labo, Frederic Malle, Kilian and all that. And then, time will tell between the real and the non-real.
Does this change have an effect on the styles of the actual perfumes being released?
I would love for it to have an effect, but from what I smell… [grimaces]. Once in a while, I go down to the circus and I smell things. And I'm not that impressed. But people can also say bad things about my work. I don't care. It's just my vision of things. I'm not there to impress people, anyway. My mission is to serve the craft as much as I can.
Are you trying to please yourself?
Please myself. Please my audience. Create popular — in the right sense of the word — products, distinctive enough to stand out, commercial enough to sustain my company's independence.
From where do you get your buzz for the future? Movies? Modern art?
How far into the future do you want me to look? You know, right now I'm working on the second semester of 2017, so basically, fall 2016 is done, next spring is done. I have the pitch.
So you don't, for instance, look to the fashion world for inspiration?
You think fashion is something to look at? To be honest, there is nothing to look at. You know, my perfume house is not a playground for that sort of thing. My house is not a playground to be connected to reality. To me, reality is more when I do the olfactive installations, when perfume is really worked as an art form. Fragrance is not an art form.
I wasn’t planning to open that can of worms with you today...
You can! My pitch for it is super prepared. When I teach perfumery, I try to explain to my students that the way perfume is sold in bottles at shops like Liberty is not art. First, the price of art is not based on the price of the materials. So when you see all the brands saying, 'I have the most expensive rose, I have the most expensive iris,' which, for them, justifies the price of the bottle... it's questionable. Second, Kant said, 'Art is not the representation of a nice thing, but a nice representation of a thing.' Meaning that the source of inspiration can be as diverse as you want, if you're an artist. Tell me the name of a popular, famous fragrance which took its inspiration from old women or blood or war or depravity or homosexuality.
We could think of a few, couldn't we?
That's your homework.
You don't think we could?
Would I be able to create a fragrance whose advertising is just, let's say, Guernica? Should I be able to take a picture of Guernica as an ad, create the smell of blood and suffering…?
But that's different, isn't it? Now you're talking about the advertising.
No, I'm talking about the inspiration for the smell.
But you could be inspired by whatever you want to be inspired by, couldn't you?
Okay, I could take A La Rose and call it Death.
Well, you could, couldn't you?
I'll give you an example. I created a perfume for Rick Owens. Basically, the pitch could have been 'dead lilies surrounded by dead animals'.
Sounds good, actually.
It's very evocative. You can smell it from the description. That's his personal perfume. He's very happy with it. Then he tried to diffuse it at the shows in Paris and London. The staff nearly went on strike. And that was Rick Owens staff! They're not like the staff at Chanel. No matter what people pretend, perfume in a bottle at Liberty is just a magnifying glass on beauty. And that's why we call it a beauty product. You don't put make-up on to look ugly, even though you might end up looking ugly. At some point, some perfume stinks, but it's a question of a point of view and aesthetics. The true inspiration that you can find in Baudelaire, Verlaine, Picasso and contemporary artists: you can't apply that in perfume. I don't see a way of creating a perfume with an inspiration coming from death or the death penalty or blood or cutting off heads or Daesh. That sort of thing you can do at an art installation. And I do it. I did an installation with a Syrian artist a year and a half ago; the smell of blood was part of it. And in an installation, people understand the meaning and the purpose of it.
What's your third argument?
Longevity. Perfume has to be on time. It's not about yesterday; you can't be too nostalgic. You can still make nostalgic perfumes. I'm thinking about Roja Dove, making perfumes that smell like old ladies, like his mother. But if you are too much avant garde, it's not like a piece of art that you could store in the basement of your house for years. So in perfumery, you have to be in the right time. Fourth, secrecy with formulas. Major issue. If perfumery is an art, then you should be able to patent it the same way you can patent any other art form. But you can't. And no-one really wants to.
Do your students get annoyed with you when you tell them that perfumery isn’t an art?
No, because the times have changed a lot. They see that perfume, smell, scent, can be used in different ways. In my time, [perfumer] Guy Robert would never have done an art installation. That was unthinkable. At least now you have other windows to look at. And one of my goals is to look at the other windows.
So if I’ve understood correctly, you're saying that perfumery can be art, or a perfumer can be an artist, but not all perfumes are works of art.
No, a perfume in a bottle is not a work of art.
But some of the work that you do as a perfumer is art.
But that's not in bottles.
Okay, but in a similar way, we can say that cinema is an art form, but not all films are works of art.
Yes and no. The only difference with cinema is that it has the same format. It's like being a photographer. You have a commercial part of your work — and you sell your talents to Dior to make an ad, or you make a very commercial movie to make money — and then you can do something that no-one is going to look at, just because you want to do it. What I love about today is that you have a multiplicity of storytelling.
I don't think a lot of people would disagree with that.
Pretending that you're an artist when what you've made smells like the fragrance right next to it... all that bullshit! The business is full of bullshit.
And you find that frustrating?
No, not frustrating. I don't care.
It doesn't sound like you don't care.
It's annoying. That pretension! That attitude! You don't have to pretend to look good and to look great.
Part 2 of the interview will appear on the Persolaise blog tomorrow. Update ~ see "Seventeen Families" - An Exclusive Interview With Francis Kurkdjian [part 2].
Note: top image is a still from the video Maison Francis Kurkdjian – Installation olfactive PréamBulles – Château de Versailles 2007 et 2008.
Great interview, interviewer, and interviewee–a rare treat! I very much appreciated Mr. Kurkdijian’s straighforward answers, and there was much to consider at the end.
Karen B, thanks very much indeed. Hopefully, you’ll find part 2 equally thought-provoking 🙂
I’ve tried 2 of his scents, Feminine Pluriel, and Absolute Pour le Soir, and each smells nice to begin with but after a while I start feeling like I’ve just walked into a women’s locker room, after some team sports teams were in there cleaning up. Too much estrogen equivalent for me, I guess. 🙂 People discuss Guerlinade, which is a real thing, and Tauerade, which may or may not be a real thing. Is there a Kirkdjian-ade, which suggests I should give up on the house altogether, or have I just been unlucky to get two of his scents that have the same something in them that I do not enjoy?
Hmm… interesting question. I’d say: try some of the other ones, like maybe Aqua Vitae or his first Oud. The former is particularly transparent and most unlike Absolue, in my view.
For me there is a sort of Kirkdjian-ade, because he constantly uses a similar orange blossom accord in many of his creations.
Orange blossom? Do you think so? Now I’m tempted to re-smell his scents.
Do you get that note in his Oud?
No, not on his Oud ones, but in some of his former creations it’s quite clear to me. It also pops in his creations for other brands (Classique, Ellie Saab, Carven comes to my mind now).
Ah yes, in those ones, I couldn’t agree more. All his Elie Saab scents are basically variations on orange blossom.
APOM e APOM Homme also joins those for me.
I’d ask him why he’s using so much white musks, I can’t take it! I’d rather smell good old aldehydes to brighten compositions, I find white musks smell cheap, not sophisticated
If I ever have another opportunity to interview him, I’ll try to remember to ask him about musks 🙂
“Once in a while, I go down to the circus and I smell things. And I’m not that impressed.” 😀
One of the many fine quotes from Francis Kurkdjian .I like this man and I admire his work and his honesty. Thanks Persolaise and Robin for this.
Many explanations here make sense to me though it may be a hard swallow for some to believe perfumery is not art. It smells like art, it feels like art and sometimes is presented so artfully ..well …….
Mitsouko, thanks for reading. Yes, the whole ‘art’ issue was one I genuinely had no intention of going into with him, but I’m glad I did. His views were fascinating.
Well, and I think I would take issue with the idea that art can’t have the purpose of being beautiful. It’s true that not all art has that intent, but the notion that because beauty and beautification is the purpose, it therefore can’t be artistic seems silly to me. It’s rather a modern perspective on art that’s allowed us to have paintings, sculptures, symphonies, etc., etc, that are thought-provoking and unpleasant rather than beautifying and glorifying. Mozart didn’t write Shostakovich because there wasn’t a market for it back then!
Marjorie, yes, I agree with you. But I wonder if some of the things we consider to be ugly today will be seen as beautiful by future generations. Unless I’m mistaken, some of the old art we currently consider aesthetically pleasing was seen as shockingly vulgar when it was first presented.
Just a thought.
Very interesting, thanks so much. I didn’t quite understand all his answers, or maybe I just didn’t think he answered the question exactly. And I have to disagree with him that perfume in a bottle is not art. I still think it is, sometimes at least, art. I appreciate some fragrances as art whether they are sold as a beauty product or not.
Springpansy, for what it’s worth, my personal view is that it’s always art… but sometimes it’s bad art and sometimes it’s good.
Who decides whether it’s bad or good is a whole other subject, probably best saved for another day 😉
It’s an interesting topic, isn’t it? What’s art, what isn’t and who decides. We can save it for another day, but let’s discuss it sometime!
Deal 😉
I think that Etat Libret D’Orange challanges the arguments of Mr Kukdjian that you cannot do some kind of themes. Still, what i understand from his point of view is that perfume as a personal product as an art has a very limited reach. What people might accept as artful in an exhibition is not what they would use. But then, i question: why does perfume has to reach the ugly to be considered as a form of art?
Oh, I wish I had seen your comment before I posted mine. You said it so much better!
Absolutely! Etat Libre couldn’t possibly be left out of any discussions about perfumery as art.
And your comment about ugliness is very insightful, if you don’t mind my saying. Why is it that prettiness is automatically dismissed as not being worthy of the ‘art’ tag?
I don’t mind at all. I also notice that, that prettiness is dimissed as less worthy indeed. And then i think that some forms of art, at least paintings, value exactly beauty, shape, proportions. This gives a deep discussion i guess.
Btw, great interview, i like how you always conduct the conversations. I have the impression that your interviewed feel comfortable and thus give more honest answers.
Thank you so much 😀 And thank you for reading.
I hope my interviewees feel comfortable. I certainly never try to catch them out. And I genuinely love talking to them.
Many of them have taken the time to let me know that they feel my articles have been accurate reflections of our conversations, and that’s very gratifying.
I’m no art historian, but I guess the dismissal of notions of ‘prettiness’ is a rejection to forms from the past, which favoured more overtly aesthetic intentions. But even so, I think it’s a shame that some perfumes are applauded purely because they’re… ummm… somewhat unpleasant, in the same way that some books are applauded purely because they’re ‘difficult’.
‘Unpleasant’ and ‘difficult’ are fine, but not in and of themselves, right?
This discussion made me remember of two interesting Umberto Eco books i had a chance to peruse one time:
http://www.amazon.com/Ugliness-Umberto-Eco/dp/0847837238
http://www.amazon.com/History-Beauty-Umberto-Eco/dp/0847835308
I love how we’ve gone from perfume to Eco… and now you’ve given me two more books to add to my Eco ‘must read’ list.
So many Ecos, so little time…
I am no art historian either, but it seems to me that in the past, art as provocation was a valid movement, when so many social mores prevented any but the most bland self expression, and so many things were taboo.
But a great deal of art-as-provocation today seems childish, and made purposely to offend. I think of it as performance, not art.
You know what, a few days ago, I went to the National Portrait Gallery in London, to see their exhibition celebrating 100 years of Vogue magazine.
There was much to enjoy, but in relation to this discussion, one of the thoughts I took away from the show is that the most radical thing modern fashion can manage is scruffiness… which is pretty childish, to echo your word.
!!
Agree , Persolaise.
Wonderful interview, thank you! I appreciate his candor and strong opinions. I go back and forth on perfume as art; I agree with a great deal of Mr. Kurkdjian’a arguements against perfume being an art
BUT, as I personally define art, perfume is indeed an art form.
Art for me is that which is beautiful, and stirs the soul; it is similar to music in that sense. Of course, not all art is beautiful, but my own preference for art is that it be uplifting.
I would also like to point out that if materials such as oils, acrylics, watercolors, etc were thousands of dollars per ounce, we WOULD likely see paintings based in part on the price of materials.
I would say that a bottle of fragrance such as Mitsouko or Nuit de Noel is every bit as artistic as a photograph of a potato, one of which sold recently for over a million dollars. And that ELdO’s Secretions Magnifique is a much better work of art than Piss Christ.
In truth, art and perfume in some of their current forms share similar qualities of absolute bullshit and pretension.
Scentalicious, thanks for your thoughts.
I think your words hit on a question which is more pertinent, in my view: not ‘Is perfume an art?’ but ‘What sort of art is it?’
Yes! Maybe each sense should have its own art…
And I am not opposed to perfume being classified as craft rather than art, BUT I would require a great deal of so-called art to then be classified thus.
Ah yes… another good point! 🙂
Such a great interview! Can’t wait for part 2 tomorrow. I find his view on perfume as “art in a bottle” both honest and refreshing. Would love to attend one of his classes someday!
Laura, oh wow, yes, what a thought! I’d love to attend one too!
What a treat! Nothing like a brave interviewer facing a master. Thank you, Persolaise.
No, thank YOU for reading and for your kind comment 🙂
I have to say, though, that I didn’t feel particularly brave. Kurkdjian is very easy to chat to, and he was forthcoming with his answers.
‘You can still make nostalgic perfumes. I’m thinking about Roja Dove, making perfumes that smell like old ladies, like his mother’.
Oh no he didn’t!
Yes, he did… but is that a bad thing? I took this to mean that there is a legitimate space for nostalgic work.
I completely missed the “old ladies” and just saw the word “mother” in reference to Roja Dove. I certainly didn’t perceive it as negative especially when he said you can’t be too avant-garde either.
Looking forward to Part II on your blog. I agree that you are a great interviewer.
Lindaloo, thank you so much. It’s gratifying to have such great readers 😉
If you quoted him, then I think he meant it as a jab against Roja Dove. For what it’s worth, some of the perfumes he created were memories from when he was a child so his mom couldn’t have been an “old lady’ then! Also, there is nothing wrong with making perfumes that smell like old ladies – they just don’t sell as well (although I could be generalizing here).
Yes, you’re absolutely right. And as for selling, I think Dove has demonstrated that there’s definitely a market for scents which play the retro card.
Thank you for this very insightful interview and the very interesting discussion that it has spawned.
Though I don’t happen to agree with his opinion on whether perfume (the commodity) can be considered art, to echo many above, I appreciate his opinion and understand that the perspective of a practicioner may be very different from that from an aficionado.
Gi, thanks for reading. And yes, there are bound to many different views on this matter.
Great interview, Persolaise! I love his Ciel de G.U.M. perfume, so much so that I spent weeks trying to order this online ne to no avail but I succeeded once I got a hold of the Paris boutique via email.
Thank you so much. I confess, I’m not aware of that scent.
A general question: Have any of the perfumers you’ve interviewed defined their work as art? I’ve read all your interviews and get a sense that few do, but I may have forgotten.
Off the top of my head, yes, a few of them certainly have. Ellena. Cresp. Benaim.
Some of them keep changing their minds, though 😉
Interesting interview, thank you! One request: I wish the interviewer questions/comments were in bold, which would facilitate reading.
Thanks for reading, nozknoz.
The interviewer questions are in bold, so perhaps there’s an issue with the platform on which you’re reading the article. They’re in bold on my PC screen and on my iPhone. If you can’t see the bold sections, I appreciate that must be a pain. Sorry!
Noznoz, same here — they are in bold on all the platforms I own — my desktop, my iphone, my ipad, my laptop, using Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
The fonts look somewhat different on my iPhone, not at all here or on Persolaise’s blog (for part II). I’m using Chrome on a MacBook Pro (Yosemite OS, I think). The only thing I can think of is that I might have selected a larger than default print size at some point.
Zooming in /out, in Firefox or Chrome, should not change the bolding (just tested). So not sure what it is unless you changed the actual font. But anyway, it is bolded, sorry you can’t see it!
Hi, everyone. Does anybody shop on beauty spin discount perfume website? I want to buy Lancome Mille and Une Rose and it’s much reduced…. Thank you! I loved this interview.
I utterly adore Absolue pour le Soir! It’s one of his favourites but it doesn’t sell like hotcakes, I read
Ah! Do read part 2 to find out exactly how ‘well’ the gorgeous Absolue sells…
Wow. I generally dislike reading Q and A interview pieces as they can feel trite and labored. But this was great.
I am not sure I agree with Kurkdjian on what is art, but that makes reading this so much more interesting. Probably more of a reflection on which Kurkdjian perfumes I’ve sniffed than anything else, but so many of his scents seem to stand out for their prettiness (I own a few perfumes from his own house and others). Probably unfair to extrapolate a whole opinion from a brief interview, but he does seem to correlate tough subject matter (war, blood, etc.) with art. But I agree with others that while Guernica is great art, so is the work of Klimt–which is very pretty. But he makes the distinction between something that is created as art (his scent installations) and what is sold as a commodity in a bottle. Here I totally agree with him. I do think that perfumers, even the greatest perfumers, sit on the cusp between art and craft–but isn’t all that fine a point.
We live in a world where so little of what the average person surrounds herself with is genuinely master-crafted that it is easy to blur the distinction in our minds between great craft and art when we come across extraordinary craft. (And sadly the currency of craft has been devalued from zellige tiles to knitted tea cozies…if it is “handmade” it qualifies as “craft” these days.)
So I guess I am in the camp of folks who think of perfume as a master craft, even when a perfume’s scent IS inspired by “old women or blood or war or depravity or homosexuality.”
Thanks for this comment. I have to agree with you that I think of perfume as a master craft. Artistry rather than art, and as you say so rare these days. This artistry is why I find it so enjoyable to watch the Hermes videos that show the hand-craftsmenship that goes into their works.
Lindaloo, yes, that kind of craftsmanship has definitely lost some of the currency it used to have. A real shame, in my view.
Thanks so much for this. I agree that we need both Guernica and Klimt. And I love the idea of a master craft.