By Silvia Manzoni. Cover by Kristine Urban for I’M Firenze Digest.
Fragrances. A female realm ruled by men? It was indeed originally a bit like that. For decades (or even centuries), olfactory creativity was mainly in the hands of male experts, much like in cooking. Great chefs and great perfumers. Then Germaine Cellier* emerged, and everything changed. A fragrance militant and the first female perfumer.
From the 1940s, for 20 years, this independent, avant-garde woman revolutionised the classic codes of the industry, creating jus for Piguet, Balmain, Balenciaga or Nina Ricci that have entered the history of the Grande high-end perfumery. Bandit, Fracas and Vent Vert are still worn today by Sofia Coppola, Courtney Love or Isabelle Huppert, and all bear her signature. Far from reflecting graceful and carefree femininity, these fragrances exude character and are the result of an overdose of raw materials. Innovative and borderline.
Female perfumers, the issue of perfumes and gender
Can we still talk about feminine perfumery, a reflection of creativity that is characterised by the creator’s gender? “No, I don’t think so,” says Dora Baghriche, a young parfumeuse at Firmenich, “In my opinion, there is no feminine or masculine way of composing perfumes. It depends on the sensibility of each creator, regardless of gender. It is the same issue as with a fragrance, which is given a label and a belonging to a category by marketing and our cultural background.”
Yep, old question. Does perfume have a gender?
Since the arrival of niche perfumes on the market in the 1990s, it has become increasingly clear that the question is more pertinent than ever, and the answer, according to creators and experts, is unequivocally no. Perfume belongs uniquely to the wearer, regardless of the ingredients and colours of the packaging.
Female noses, the rule-breakers in perfumer world
The fact remains that women are becoming increasingly influential in the fragrance industry, with younger generations showing the same progressive mindset as their predecessor, Germaine. They are also starting to lead the creative direction of major luxury maisons, asserting their vision.
Mathilde Laurent, Cartier‘s in-house perfumer, was the first to launch a major brand fragrance (the Onzième Heure, l’Heure Perdue) uniquely composed of laboratory-built molecules. To show that it made no sense to oppose synthetic and natural ingredients.
Christine Nagel, the director of olfactory creation for Hermès, spent countless hours in the stables and later in the leather ateliers of the French fashion house to study the scents emanating from the saddles and bridles of horses. She used this inspiration, along with the smell of roses, to create a wonderful fragrance that is unique to the brand: Galop. These intense projects are paving new paths in the world of olfactory creation.
The amazing creativity of female perfumers
Younger female perfumers, such as Dora Baghriche (Firmenich), have created popular fragrances like Glossier, which has captured the attention of Gen Z with its warm musk notes. Another perfumer, Fanny Bal (IFF), is a patisserie lover who incorporates unique notes of smoked Nutella into her compositions. She approaches perfume-making like crafting cocktails, as seen in her creation Roxo Tonic for Les Bains, a cult Parisian night spot similar to Studio 54, which features lemon, ginger, gentian, tea, vetiver, and musk.
Liqueurs also seem to appeal to Aliénor Massenet (Symrise), who combined rum and whiskey for Maison Margiela’s Replica Jazz Cluband went so far as to use oyster leaves for Davidoff’s Run Wild. Passionate about music, Céline Barel (IFF) has worked with theatre director Robert Wilson and took a course in olfactory set design at the Norwegian Theatre Academy. She explored the concept of smell as a main character in a performance and curated the olfactory soundtrack for DJ Kid Koala’s show (who is also the composer of the Great Gatsby musical score). Irish perfumer Meabh Mc Curtin (IFF) created Roisin Dubh (literally, little black rose, from a provocative 16th-century song, which has become an enduring emblem to Irish writers) for the Cloon Keen brand.
This fragrance narrates the life in Paris of Irish writers such as Joyce and Beckett. Literature is also close to the heart of Delphine Jelk, who has joined Thierry Wasser at the helm of Guerlain fragrances. The creative perfumer read the entire oeuvre of Antoine de Saint Exupéry to compose Néroli Plein Sud, inspired by one of his books, Courrier Sud, and imitated the writer by annotating drawings and words in a little notebook that served as a launching pad for her scented ideas.
In today’s most famous perfume schools, such as the French Isipca, there are more female students than male. Moreover, a new generation of great female perfumers is emerging, as the daughters of renowned perfumers like Jacques Cavallier, Olivier Cresp, and Jean-Claude Ellena are following in their fathers’ footsteps. This marks a significant shift, breaking the glass ceiling and ushering in a new era of modernity in the perfume industry.
* A graphic novel that tells her story, and in parallel, that of the society of the time and its tastes, has been released in recent months in France. The book is written by Béatrice Egémar, with illustrations by Sandrine Revel. “Germaine Cellier, l’audace d’une parfumeuse ”, ed. Nathan
