Jean-Claude Ellena Quotes

Perfume is a story in odors, sometimes a poetry of memory

Smell is a word, perfume is literature.

Beautiful and minimalist, the traditional Japanese art of ikebana - arranging bouquets of cut flowers and leaves using very few elements - ideally corresponded to a form of expression I could transpose in a perfume. The smell of a rose early in the morning, damp, sprinkled with dew, delicate and light.

As a person, I take pleasure in receiving and sharing. As a perfumer, I like showing and convincing.... I'm quite simply following the trajectory of an artist, someone who seeks and, sometimes, finds.

The future does not really lie in discovering new fragrant raw materials.... In order to endure, haute perfumery is therefore condemned to inventing new olfactory promises...to finding a new form of expression.

My visitors say they noticed perfumes from different companies in my fridge, and ask what I need these for. I explain that they are mainly there as historical benchmarks of quality, below which I must not and would not want to fall.

Oddly, though, lists are reassuring. We become aware of this if we scrupulously follow a recipe, which is essentially a list of ingredients and actions; but if we give this 'list' too much importance, we leave no room for the imagination.