2023-11-21 14:32:45
Fourth perfumer of the house of Chanel, Olivier Polge embodies a new generation that is as demanding as it is innovative. Interview with an olfactory composer.
You are the 4th nose of the house of Chanel. Is joining Chanel like entering religion?
Olivier Polge: The religious aspect would require other parallels, but it is true that there is a Chanel specificity. When Gabrielle Chanel had the idea of creating N°5, fashion and perfume were completely separate. She collected them. As is often the case with Chanel, when we create something, we integrate all the know-how. The perfumers stayed a long time, probably because they were happy there and it is a house where you can express yourself.
What legacy did your father, Chanel nose before you, pass on to you?
He wasn’t the one who taught me my trade. He had the intelligence to supervise my training, but by sending me abroad. The heritage I have from him is closer to a question of sensitivity.
How do you succeed your father, creator of Coco Mademoiselle?
With philosophy. I’m often asked if it’s intimidating to create perfumes, especially after N°5. It’s quite the opposite. I believe that it is through these perfumes that the style of the house was forged. It is a wealth that rises, as much because of identity as raw materials.
How do we manage to modernize and establish ourselves in the midst of olfactory signatures as marked as those of Chanel?
I believe it is in our history. Each time we have created a perfume, we try to capture something of the spirit of the times and go beyond it. Fragrances like Cristalle by Chanel, which was created in the 1970s, take something of those eaus fraîches that existed at that time and had some success, but without going overboard. This perfume has a greater modernity today than some of its competitors of the time.
Passionate about the piano, you explain that “music and perfume share the same language”. Do you feel like a conductor?
There is something of the aspect of the composer: you compose a perfume like you write a score. There is a common vocabulary since we talk about “note”, “chords” and “scale”. I also believe that there is something in the sensitivity which awakens the two professions which are immaterial and elusive. This is perhaps how I explain why the perfume seduced me after the music.
What inspires you when you create a perfume?
I don’t quite know how to explain it. I believe it is very linked to the perfume itself, but also obviously to the perfumes of the house. It was Picasso who said that the inspiration for painting was painting. I would say somewhere that the inspiration for perfume is perfume.
How much instinct is involved in creating a perfume?
I think that instinct prevails over everything else, because we really are in a field where aesthetics, sensitivity and style predominate. Furthermore, perfumer is a totally experimental profession that can only be learned through experience.
How long does it take to create a perfume, from the idea to the marketing of the finished product?
It takes at least two years. There is the time of creation then, from the moment a formula is finished, there is a time of recording, manufacturing and marketing which lasts a little over a year. Unlike fashion, there is this immediacy that we cannot have. The downside is that perfumes are intended to last longer.
You brought to life Gabrielle Chanel’s best friend, Misia, and her lover Boy Capel for Les Exclusifs de Chanel. How did you personify their scents?
It was very conceptual. Creation is nourished by everything around us. Misia is important symbolically, because she was very close to Gabrielle Chanel when the latter launched into perfume. From an olfactory point of view, I was thinking of the Russian ballets to which Misia introduced Gabrielle Chanel by introducing her to Diaghilev. So I thought about these scents of makeup and lipstick and their powdery notes to see how to transpose them into perfume.
Coco Mademoiselle was launched by your father in 2001. How do you rework an already iconic perfume to create variants like L’eau de parfum intense or L’eau Privée?
The idea is to stay away from the pitfall that many people fall into: “Perfume smells like this and so we’ll try to do something else. » I find that a reinterpretation is a form of confirmation. It is therefore necessary to find a complementary or already present facet in the existing odor and develop it.
Coco Mademoiselle has brought chypre perfumes back to the forefront thanks to the use of a new patchouli exclusive to Chanel. What is a Chanel exclusive?
Exclusivity occurs at the time of creation. We ask our partners, or sometimes we do it ourselves because we have a raw material factory, to capture something interesting in the plant that is not necessarily figurative. My father had the idea of asking patchouli producers that after distillation, they decompose the patchouli essence so that he could then recompose it only with the parts that pleased him. Thus, we managed to remove certain facets of the patchouli, which gave this particular smell and therefore exclusive to Chanel.
How do we preserve odors in the face of competition?
We cannot patent a natural product. To avoid any copying, the formula of our perfumes remains secret. The other technique is to work with almost exclusive sectors. If the formula were ever to circulate, people would not have the necessary raw material. For No. 5, for example, we use jasmine from Grasse and in Grasse, 90% of the surface area of jasmine fields is intended for Chanel. Furthermore, to maintain secrecy, we never tell producer A what interests us in producer B. This is how we protect the identity of our perfumes.
Coco Mademoiselle is the perfume that best represents the fashion imagery and DNA of the house of Chanel. How do you explain the unfailing success of this fragrance which is celebrating its 23rd anniversary?
There are 100 ways to explain this success. I’m going to say it with all the more arrogance because it was not me who created it, but Coco Mademoiselle, it is first of all an extraordinary perfume with perfect balance. I also believe that the house of Chanel has the art of knowing how to support a perfume, because behind a very beautiful creation, you have to be able to anchor it in a constantly renewed imagery without ever doubting the strength of the creation at the same time. origin.
How do you imagine the future of Chanel perfumes?
What I hope is that we manage to preserve our originality and our freedom for our existing and future perfumes. The great thing about the story of Coco Mademoiselle is that a beautiful creation finds its audience. That’s all we want.
By Margot Ruyter
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