2023-10-19 12:55:03
A watercolor by Jean-Claude Ellena (right) representing his workshop-laboratory in Cabris, in the Alpes-Maritimes. Brigitte Lacombe / Jean-Claude Ellena
With “The Odor of Days”, Le Grassois, who has created one of the most beautiful fragrances of recent decades, retraces the steps of his childhood, his learning, his successes and his convictions.
« For children of my age, born following the war, Grasse had smells of cistus, lichen, immortelle, lavender, pyrethrum, verbena, rose, lemongrass hay… to which were added at night falling, orange blossom, jasmine and tuberose. When you arrived from Draguignan, Nice or Cannes, long before seeing the lights, the scent of the city, carried by the breeze and the humidity of the evening, hit your nose to make you dizzy. », recalls Jean-Claude Ellena. It is an understatement to say that his collection The Smell of Days. A perfumer’s life, just published, illustrated by his watercolors, also plunges us into a whirlwind of smells. Those of childhood first, with its seaside picnics, its men’s hairdressers from the 1950s, its first train journeys (fire, iron, steam from the locomotive) then those of its first steps in perfumery, sometimes rough and brutal in distillers and extractors. Until the first successes…
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