Perfumer has a nose for simple style

Gemma Champ

• Last Updated: February 22. 2009 8:30AM UAE / February 22. 2009 4:30AM GMT

Francis Kurkdjian says creating perfumes is like “building a story”. Paulo Vecina / The National

I wanted to become a fashion designer because of my grandfathers: one was a tailor, the other one was a fur dealer, so I grew up with fashion on the backstage side, not the glitzy side. My grandfather was a private tailor and I was very intrigued as a child. It was just splendid. You can come from nowhere – from a piece of fabric in your hand to making a suit or a coat. I think it’s extraordinary and I do believe that mankind, with the power of the head and the hands, can do things marvellously.

I know how to sew well; my grandfather taught me that. But I couldn’t be a fashion designer because I don’t know how to draw very well. When I had to decide I said, OK, if you can’t become a fashion designer, what is the closest job, the closest métier? I found out that perfume was the nearest accessory at the time – I’m talking about 25 years ago, before accessories became even more important than fashion itself. Now we go to H&M and Zara to buy clothes and the big fashion houses to buy accessories. Back then, it was a very different scene.

I grew up in Paris and I wrote two letters, one to Lancôme and one to Christian Dior. Lancôme was the first to answer, to let me know that there was a perfumery school near Paris.

When you are training, it’s as if perfume is a foreign language. You have to go back to the basics and learn the alphabet: your ABCs become jasmine, rose, mandarin, orange, cedarwood and all the chemicals behind those. To make a fragrance is like building a story – you have to put sentences one after another to make sense of your story. It’s very academic.

I’m not from a family of perfumers, and I don’t play gimmicks such as recognising scents – I would say my talent is in my head. Noses are able to envision things that people don’t smell yet. It’s like music: the composer has in his head sounds that don’t yet exist.

When Jean Paul Gaultier was commissioning the perfume, he had very few words: he doesn’t talk that much when he comes for fragrance. He told me that he didn’t want a fragrance that was autobiographical, like the ones he did previously. He wanted something with no references of the past, or of his own story, which is a big departure for him.

Even though there is a reference to the Eighties, it’s not about him. It’s about what he thinks a modern woman should wear. What do they want? How does he see them? Women now are superwomen, and today glamour doesn’t have to be serious – they go to Zara to buy jackets, then they mix it with an expensive Marc Jacobs bag. It’s not about one designer any more. For our mothers it was all about style, a total look, and you don’t have that strict head-to-toe outfit any more. Now you mix everything.

I wear jeans and a T-shirt, always the same brands – I love Intimissimi T-shirts. They’re indestructible. Sometimes to find simple things that last is very hard. Intimissimi normally sells women’s underwear, but now they have a very small men’s section. I wear the same pair of jeans, which are cheap Levi’s that I buy in New York. I don’t want to spend 300 euros on a pair of jeans, which I think is just insane. And I have a big thing for coats. There’s a great shop in Paris that has incredible stuff that is made in Italy. One item I bought is a reversible cashmere jacket that is to die for. The shop is called Avedis at 354 Rue St Honoré, near Place Vendôme, and I think I own five or six coats from there. I can be very picky, so when a suit is not perfect, I complain. Things fall apart, and for the price you pay, they should not.

I am big on shoes. Shoes and jackets for me are very important. I think they’re easy to put with jeans and T-shirts, so I don’t have to think about it when I get up. I can spend a fortune on a T-shirt, but it’s going to be plain – no stripes, no designs, nothing. The problem with this job is that you’re always thinking about tomorrow. At some point you lose the reference of now and you always think what you did today is not good enough, so my apartment has white walls and I get rid of things very quickly.