A luxury fragrance house is returning to the basics of perfumery, writes Aznim Ruhana Md Yusup
FOR most of us, a dinner party invitation means good food and wonderful company. You have a good time and then everybody goes home.
But for French-Lebanese businessman Marc Chaya, a dinner party 10 years ago changed his life.
By chance, he sat next to Francis Kurkdjian, and they got to talking about their lives. Mind you, this was a post-Jean Paul Gaultier haute couture show dinner party, so it was bound to be interesting. As it turned out, Kurkdjian was a perfumer. “He had created more than 40 bestsellers in the perfume industry. Everyday 300 million people are wearing his scent. And yet, no one really knows what a perfumer is,” says Chaya.
With time and great friendship, they opened Maison Francis Kurkdjian in Paris in 2009. The brand arrived in Kuala Lumpur two years ago. It now has two boutiques, including a recently opened outlet in Pavilion KL.
Chaya says they are building the business in the philosophy of early 20th Century fragrance houses, a time when you can only find perfumes at perfumers — producers or sellers of perfume who run the business independently.
“What changed that was when Coco Chanel met a perfumer named Ernest Beaux. She commissioned him to create a scent and that scent was No. 5. It became the business model of the industry whereby a perfumer worked for fashion houses instead of working in their own name,” he says.
“So perfumers disappeared and they worked for nearly 80 years based on a marketing brief. In the philosophy of early 20th Century and 19th Century, they would work freely as a fashion designer would.”
CREATIVE IDENTITY
So Maison Francis Kurkdjian was set up to allow the eponymous perfumer to express his vision and talent the way he wanted. A perfume starts with a name — a concept if you will — which becomes the framework for the perfumer’s creation.
“Perfumery is not about mixing oils and deciding afterwards that it smells good,” says Chaya. “Perfume is an art. It’s about having a vision in your mind and using only your nose to make sure that what you’re achieving is what you have in mind,” says Chaya.
He likens it to the way French sculptor Auguste Rodin looked at a block of marble and then removing all the excess bits to get to the shape he had in mind. It’s the same with perfumery, except that Kurkdjian uses essential oils, from which he has more than 860.
“Francis always says that he doesn’t like it when people say that he’s the nose. Do you call a pianist the finger? His work is in his brain. His creativity is mainly in his brain,” says Chaya.
So what scent does Chaya wear? His own, of course. “I used to be a one-perfume person, but ever since we started Maison Francis Kurkdjian, I enjoyed changing and wearing a different perfume based on what I’m doing,” he says.
“For example today, I’m wearing Aqua Universalis because the weather is warm and summery and I wanted to be fresh. Another day I can wear Amyris for men because I want to feel a bit more manly yet fresh. Sometimes I want to feel more sophisticated and darker, so I would go for Oud.”
This is in line with how Kurkdjian has created the Maison to be a wardrobe of fragrances — scents that you wear depending on the weather or what you’re doing or how you feel and where you are free to pick your perfumes like you would with clothes.
PREFERENCE
I ask Chaya if there is any real difference between fragrances for men and women or is it just a marketing tactic.
“In our collection, we have genderless perfume, that is to say unisex scent. For us, this means fresh scents, because freshness has no gender,” he says.
“However, most scent is divided between men and women because gender sensuality is very different. But all our men’s perfume can be worn by women. If you think of my shirt, you can wear my shirt and you would look very elegant in it.”
Pointing to my red chiffon blouse, he says: “But I can very hardly wear yours. I would feel ridiculous in it.”
There is also a notable cultural difference when it comes to consumers and scent. In the US, Chaya says the preference is for lighter scents, something fresh like citrus or bergamot. In the UK and Europe, people go for floral scents.
Malaysians are more used to stronger scents. In Dubai, the people love oud or agarwood, locally called gaharu. “There was a time when this oud scent was only found in the Middle East, but now it is a global trend,” says Chaya.
“This is what’s beautiful about culture, sometimes cultures come together and then you give birth to something that is new. When Francis created the Oud, he was inspired by Middle Eastern perfumery which used oud a lot, but he used it as part of a composition.
“So our Oud is very unique, a result of a direct intervention between French and Middle Eastern culture.”
Despite the brand’s high-end status, Chaya says its luxury doesn’t stem from the high prices of its perfumes, which starts from RM500 a bottle.
“We use the most beautiful and rarest essential oil in quantities that no mass brand can afford. Our luxury is in the craftsmanship, the quality of the essential oil.”