Tell us about your journey to becoming a perfumer?

Olivier has a deep, romantic personality and at the same time is drawn to the most complex mental acrobatics, fascinated by the thorniest questions raised by art. Olivier glides effortlessly through the meanders of thought in order to extract joy, the happiness that he wants to give to other people. The idea of wishing for something so simple, beautiful, and altruistic makes him blush. It highlights his naïveté, but wanting goodness, honesty, and beauty is nothing to blush about. Olivier may blush, but he remains committed to his goal.

To begin with, Olivier wanted to be a football player, to become a great striker, scoring goals for his team, generating excitement in the stadium, carrying supporters toward victory, offering them a moment of pleasure, of communal joy, of happiness and a chance to forget their problems. He was mad about football and wanted to make a career out of it. At the age of 17, Olivier resumes his dream and focused on what he could realistically achieve. He wasn’t sad – he knew it was a process. He had been brought up like that in a loving and supportive family in which the children were encouraged to dream big and to keep improving. So Olivier went from football to an unknown future with the same desire to bring happiness to the world. Chance would help define his quest. Chance was the film “Prete-moi ta main”: in this film, Alain Chabat is a Perfumer. He creates perfumes and reveals a funny, exciting process one that seems to come from another planet. “I had always been very sensitive to smells, but I didn’t know there was a profession centred on them.” This film was a revelation. He decided to do everything he could to become a perfumer. Here he is becoming a perfumer with inspiration of all the joy in this world arises from wishing others to be happy. His ambition is to bring joy. “It’s a bit cliché, a bit Miss World, but it’s true. I want to make anyone touched by the perfume I have created happy.”

Later, he was dazzled by the stories of his mentor’s life in IFF. He inspired him to dream of a place where creation, innovation and getting off the beaten track were encouraged, and that is what he experiences today.

Main Creation

• Oxus by Frederic M.,
• Posh Men Legacy,
• Museum of Ice Cream (Singapore)

Did the aim of creating a mood boosting fragrance plus “food” inspiration poses any challenges?

Every creation is a challenge, that I’m always delighted to accept!

Creating fragrances with some “ food “ inspiration or association is something that I particularly enjoy for many reasons, but mostly because it pushes even further the boundaries of creativity by opening the door to a whole new universe of combination & association.

It’s a phenomenon we come across more and more in Fine Fragrance, but also in other category.

The most challenging part of this exercise is to capture the most attractive & addictive aspect of any “food inspiration” and then to project it and express it into another dimension :  Fine Fragrance.

How did you create the fragrance with gender inclusivity?

In my humble opinion, there’s only one rule to wear a Perfume : it’s to LOVE the Perfume. The rest doesn’t matter. The “rule” saying that woody fragrances are for men and floral fragrances for women is a pure invention, based on our society’s codes and moral values. In my creations, I always combine raw materials that are traditionally associated to Men with raw materials that are traditionally associated to Women, in order to always leave to the customer a part of personal interpretation.