The Diary of a Nose: A Year in the life of a Parfumeur by Jean Claude Ellena

To say that Jean Claude Ellena is among the best-known perfumers working in the industry today is uncontested. To claim that he's also the furthermost prominent theoretician on perfumery as well (modeled somewhat after his mentor E.Roudnitska) is perhaps less universally recognized. To wit, Jean Claude has not stopped being forthcoming with his his beliefs and methods for authoring perfumes over the years. Like a "Cahiers du Cinéma" auteur, he chooses the word "author" to denote that perfume composition more than anything else is an intellectual work that requires thought behind every step and is uniquely personal to a creator who oversees everything about it.

This is the USA edition of the original French title "Journal d'un Parfumeur" (Sabine Wespieser Éditeur), printed by Rizzoli ExLibris, with publication date for the USA being 22 January 2013, and as I was sent an advance copy I was able to gauge the differences with the French original which kept me engaging company for months on end. The main difference is right there on the cover itself: the odd usage of the word "parfumeur," as in "A Year in the Life of a Parfumeur" (as well as "exclusive parfumeur for Hermès" underneath it) in what is otherwise a 100% English-speaking tome threw me off a bit. It sounds tortured and odd.

Those who will (inevitably) gather to the title in order to learn "cheat sheet" information on perfume composing or short-cuts to perfume chemistry will be disappointed. And they would entirely miss the point. Not because Jean Claude isn't forthcoming with his info. He is supremely generous, more than any other perfumer actually. (Indeed the booklet, much like the French original, goes into a separate chapter where the perfumer breaks down some of his preferred ways of constructing a few key perfume notes into specific ingredients, revealing some of his famous "illusion tricks" and prompting us to try for ourselves, immersing the blotters into the materials and holding them together under our nose to feel a third presence rise.) Rather it's because the breakdown of how perfumes are made isn't the actual focus of this book. Far from it. If that is what you sought, the previous Ellena-penned "Le Parfum" in the "Que sais-je" line of booklets in French is what you were after.

Instead, this "diary of a nose" is a delightfully engaging glimpse into how an artist goes on about his life while having his craft at the back of his mind at all times, visiting and revisiting beloved or not quite perfected personal drafts (such as "Nacrisse Bleu" or "Fleur de Procelaine") as he goes along. The entries are indeed in diary form: dates and places jotted down faithfully and short entries that tackle the highlight of the day in regards to scented matters. It gives us a glimpse into how Ellena ticks, but also serves as a means into dissecting the book quite differently than usual. I find myself reading a page, letting go, coming back again another day to read a new one in no particular order, to flip open to something at the beginning after I read the whole thing through, gaining more perspective with each repetition, cyclical patterns that bring the questions to an unresolved tension. This is the "gap" that the perfumer allows us to fill for ourselves in his authored work, both in print and in smell. I do realize however that like a film with an open ending this might be something to annoy people who have a love for clean-cut situations and definitive answers.

His prose is tender, unpretentious, ethereal like Giono's stories or Japanese ink calligraphy, and deeply personal. Because, beyond the "search for beauty," art is defined by the purposeful will to communicate something from creator to public, and that something can never be non-personal. The more impersonal and all-encompassing that message tries to be, the less artistic the end result becomes. And this is the gist (and gift!) of Ellena's diary...

Elena Vosnaki Elena Vosnaki is a historian and perfume writer from Greece and a Writer for Fragrantica. She is the founder and editor of Perfume Shrine, one of the most respected independent online publications on perfume containing fragrance reviews, industry interviews, essays on raw materials and perfume history, a winner in Fragrantica Blog Awards and a finalist in numerous blog awards contests. Her writing was recognized at the Fifi Awards for Editorial Excellence in 2009 and she contributes to publications around the world.