Hermès’s former in-house perfumer talks about his love of French writer Jean Giono, who he says “gave me new ways to think about life”
This article is taken from the Autumn/Winter 2023 issue of AnOther Magazine:
“I started to read Jean Giono quite late – I was 30 or 35. I made a perfume called Cuir d’Ange, for Hermès, after I read the phrase in his 1932 novel Jean le Bleu. He wrote about a cordonnier, a shoemaker, who made boots from cuir d’ange – angel’s leather. I thought, ‘Oooh, this is a mess already.’ Because between the angel and the leather there’s something very interesting. Leather is not soft – it is usually very strong in perfume – but the angel is soft. I wondered, ‘How can I make a soft leather in a perfume?’ Giono uses small details and I do the same in perfume. My formulas can be mysterious. They have big, big elements that stretch out – maybe six or seven ingredients. And after that, little, little touches. I work on the details for a long time – and this is the influence of Jean Giono. If you analyse my formulas with chromatography, you can’t find the details, they’re so tiny. Giono also loved the human being – he was very conscious about humanity, but he knew we’re not so good. Unlike Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who said that when a man is born he is a good man – I don’t agree with that. Giono also taught me that you have to find happiness in yourself, in your own feelings. You cannot ask to be happy. He became a second father to me – he gave me new ways to think about life.”
Now an administrator for the Association of Friends of Jean Giono, Jean-Claude Ellena has also managed to befriend the author’s daughter – such is his passion for the Provençal author’s work. But as well as being an advocate for literature, Ellena is a chemist, an economist, a composer and a poet – and all in the name of perfume. Before his 15-year tenure as Hermès’s revered in-house perfumer and his creation of some of the most inimitable scents on the market, including the instant hit Terre d’Hermès, Bulgari’s ubiquitous Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert and Sisley’s sparkling green Eau de Campagne, he trained in Grasse, the home of perfumery on the French Riviera and where Ellena was born in 1947. In command of the full symphony of perfumery, he goes so far as to produce entirely new ingredients for his creations. The latest example is an infusion of iris he commissioned for his new fragrance, Heaven Can Wait, part of Frédéric Malle’s Editions de Parfums. This iris – a “delicious, soft but dry caresse olfactive” – is combined with the “hot” spices cinnamon and clove to clean, intimate, skin-like effect. “I like perfume that’s soft and nostalgic – that when you’re close to the person you say, ‘What do you smell of ?’” Elena says. “It’s a good thing to bring people together.”
Producer: Philippa Schoeman at Artistry
This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2023 issue of AnOther Magazine, which is on sale now. Order here.