THE PERFUMER

Dominique Ropion is a daring perfectionist, a true inventor. The risks he takes are invariably accompanied by a relentless pursuit of exact olfactory balance and flawless composition. His perfumes are like great architectural feats: in the same way that a bridge, whose seemingly miraculous suspension of weight is in fact a harnessing of counteracting forces, Dominique often balances excessive doses of powerful ingredients with meticulously-measured, subtler accords, until the composition holds up on its own. A good perfume, he likes to say, must always appear obvious.

His training began at Roure Bertrand Dupont in Grasse, continued in Paris and culminated in a partnership with JeanLouis Sieuzac, whose astounding, encyclopedic knowledge of perfumery brought him fame as one of perfumery's greatest technicians. Frédéric Malle has worked with Dominique for over 25 years and seen him through many extended periods of rigorous experimentation. Together, they defy perfumery conventions to create modern masterpieces.

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THE PERFUMER

As a disciple and close friend of the legendary Edmond Roudnitska (creator of "Le Parfum de Thérèse"), Jean-Claude Ellena began his career with a minimalistic approach to perfumery. Since then, he has developed this approach into his own distinctive style, which is continually informed by his elegant and quiet way of being, and has been compared by his contemporaries to watercolor sketches and chamber music. Jean-Claude says that a perfume must be like "a soft caress; nothing must shock, nothing must shout." Roudnitska's minimalism never left him, however, and his compositions remain focused around a single ingredient, avoiding repetition.

Jean-Claude Ellena was born in Grasse into a family of perfumers. His training began at age 17, in the most prestigious laboratories - in Grasse, Paris, New York and Geneva - where he always saw himself as self-taught. Jean-Claude met Frédéric Malle at Roure when he was working on Bulgari's “Eau au Thé Vert". He composed one perfume a year for Editions de Parfums before joining Hermès. He is now back as a full-fledged author at Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle.

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Anne Flipo is a translator of memories. She grew up in the Northeast of France surrounded by verdant gardens, and from a young age, had an unusual sensitivity to the natural world and the season's changes: to weather, to seasons, to life cycles. In perfume, Flipo discovered a way to reconstruct her childhood memories through technical expertise. By allying her passionate love of nature with meticulous craftsmanship, she was able to share this olfactory dream world with others - and in the process, became one of the most highly respected "master perfumers" in the profession. At the vanguard of a new generation of contemporary craftspeople, Flipo has composed numerous successful scents both feminine and masculine. She has never made a secret of her addiction to floral and green palettes, making her a natural choice to compose Synthetic Jungle, her first work for Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle.

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As Edmond Roudnitska's only student, Pierre Bourdon was informed early on by the philosophy that perfumes should be created as works of art. With this in mind, Pierre went on to revolutionize perfume trends in the 1980's with his men's perfume “Cool Water” for Davidoff. That was when he met Frédéric Malle. Having realized that they shared the same vision of perfume making, the two became like family to one another. It was obvious to Frédéric, when he created Editions de Parfums, that Pierre should compose its first perfume, Iris Poudre.

Pierre and Frédéric had grown up under the same spell of Dior Parfums, where their parents both had established careers. After graduating from the Paris Institute of Political Studies, the childhood spell caught up with Pierre and, like Frédéric, he enrolled at Roure Bertrand Dupont in Grasse.

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Olivia Giacobetti has an uncanny ability to create an atmosphere. Having completed her training at Robertet, she founded her own perfume laboratory, Iska, and dedicated her career to doing precisely that.

She is the brains and the nose behind the fig accords that have been present in home scents for years. The perfumes that move her most are "echoes of everyday life and nature: fleeting emotions, moods, details, attitudes... the many small fragments of life that bear new images." Her compositions capture the authenticity of a single moment. They are, in other words, odes to transience.

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Maurice Roucel joined Chanel's laboratory as a chemist in 1973, and since then has been a self-taught perfumer. Although his legendary olfactory style is now characterized for the most part by opulent sensuality – sprung from his preference for musk, white flowers and amber – the precise methodology of his original profession has remained.

Maurice's strong personality allows him to bypass trends, as was the case in 2001 with Musc Ravageur. The perfume shocked the whole perfume industry, only to be recognized today as the Sistine Chapel of the Amber Oriental tradition.

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THE PERFUMER

Bruno Jovanovic is a renowned star perfumer at Firmenich. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who create at the mercy of fragrance distribution, Bruno Jovanovic has developed a technique highly influenced by perfume classics. Similarly, his ideas for perfumes, which often appear as pictures or impressions of daily life in his mind, are ones of classic elegance; but his method, which seeks to modernize these images, is distinctly innovative.

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Carlos Benaïm is considered to be America's greatest perfumer. As the author of the legendary perfume Polo Ralph Lauren and of many other beloved classics, he owes his success to a great intellectual curiosity that has always pushed him to embrace a world beyond the boundaries of perfume making. At Frédéric Malle's request, Carlos created home fragrances for the first time; some of the best the industry has ever seen.

He discovered perfumery as a child through his father, who was a pharmacist in Morocco and had a passion for essential oil extractions. “Every summer," Carlos is fond of saying, “my father and I would drive our Jeep through the countryside, in and out of picking and distillation spots, and I would feel his enthusiasm intensifying.” Carlos later acquired a deep knowledge of perfume composition under the tutelage of the renowned American perfumer Ernest Shiftan.

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Julien Rasquinet's life took a decisive turn when his father met nose extraordinaire Pierre Bourdon, by accident in an airport. Julien, who didn't know anything about perfumery beyond his own passion for it, called Pierre, who decided to take him instead of thousands of other candidates to be his last student, and bare his legacy, as Edmond Roudnitska had done with him. Call it perfumer's intuition.

Upon completing his training, Julien Rasquinet created his own fragrance house in Normandy and was working in Dubaï for IFF four years later. He has been creating beautifully innovative Middle Eastern perfumes ever since. Frédéric Malle, who had heard of Julien's great talent from his friend Pierre Bourdon, has been observing him since that time. He knew that he had found a new perfumer for Editions de Parfums, the minute he smelled what was to become The Moon.

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Michel Roudnitska spent his childhood exploring his parents' laboratory, where perfume became his mother tongue. He was initiated by his father, the illustrious Edmond Roudnitska, into the art of perfume composition. Later, he broadened his artistic horizons by becoming a photographer and a director. He joined his parent's lab Art & Parfum in 1997, where he creates perfumes with great aesthetic rigor. Michel Roudnitska, like his father before him, has always considered perfume making to be an art. His style is continually informed by his many travels around the world.

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Ralf Schwieger once took part in a perfume contest that Frédéric Malle had staged for young perfumers. Frédéric Malle sampled their perfumes one by one, blindfolded, until he reached Ralf's sketch of what was to become Lipstick Rose, and the young perfumer was chosen to join the "greats” among those at Editions de Parfums.

Having spent his childhood in Germany exploring forests and absorbing all of their unusual smells, Ralf Schwieger is prone to creating perfumes with unexpected personalities. He describes his attitude to perfume making as a game in two parts, the first is intellectual or conceptual, and the second is a lengthier one of sensory research. His perfumes, as a result, are both cerebral and intuitive.

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As a child, in Belarus, this perfume queen-to-be would run around the garden smelling roses and violets, leaving her toys untouched, dismissed. After studying chemistry at university, she emigrated to New York and joined the IFF laboratories, where she learned the art of perfumery under the guidance of Ernest Shiftan, one of the greatest American perfumers in history.

Sophia Grojsman was the first perfumer to inverse classical proportions of ingredients in perfumes, having discovered that an overdose of a certain ingredient could propel it to the top of the perfume's structure. She combined this revolutionary technique with classical perfume structures to create a truly unique aesthetic, one that was to forever shape the art of perfume making. She was also well-known for her endless fascination with rose, a flower she uses in most of her creations.

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Fanny Bal is a force of nature. As Dominique Ropion's apprentice, she has access to the finest raw materials in the industry and some of its best-kept secrets; and yet, she is constantly surprising her seniors, first at ISIPCA, then at IFF, with her own independent initiatives and rigorous experimentation, both testaments to her flourishing talent. She has shown everyone, including Frédéric Malle, that she is a young perfumer to be reckoned with. Dominique Ropion has said of his pupil that, “curious, tenacious and bold” in both her approach to perfume and as a person, Fanny Bal possesses "all the best qualities to become a great perfumer.”

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Edmond Roudnitska is remembered today as one of the most important perfumers in history: as a “perfume composer” and the inventor of modern perfumery. His encounter in the 1950s with Serge Heftler-Louiche, the founder of Parfums Christian Dior and Frédéric Malle's grandfather, was decisive. Together they created many legendary perfumes: Diorella, Eau Fraîche, Diorissimo... Later came the most famous of all, Eau Sauvage, whose launch coincided with the public's recognition of Edmond as the first “nose” of the perfume industry.

Edmond Roudnitska began his career as a chemist at Roure Bertrand Dupont, where he developed an encyclopedic knowledge of natural and synthetic raw materials. This breadth of knowledge enabled him to develop the distinctive minimalist style that was so ahead of its time, and that led to his legendary, secret masterpiece, Le Parfum de Thérèse. Only she, his wife, was allowed to wear it; but as a token of their shared family history, and as a sign of appreciation for his nascent Editions de Parfums, she entrusted the formula to Frédéric Malle after Edmond Roudnitska's death.

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Edouard Fléchier is one of the most creative perfumers of his generation. His hypersensitive nose made him a prodigy at Roure, where he was a student, and has been a key component to his inventiveness ever since. Yet, even as a star, he remains humble and uncompromisingly self-disciplined, never once missing his morning ritual of smelling raw materials and refreshing his knowledge of the fundamentals. Although his compositions are fiercely precise as a result, their unexpected modern twists never cease to astonish. They now include known masterpieces such as Poison, Montana and Michael Kors.

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