Interview with Mr. Fraysse Nose

Five Key Dates:

1950 – Born in Paris
1982 – Creates 5,000 bottles of “Ganja,” an order from Rita Marley, Bob Marley’s  
wife. The perfume, which has a scent similar to marijuana, was never marketed
1987 – Creates Fragarôme with Patrick Alès
2000 – Joins Caron, purchased with Patrick Alès.  Fragarôme disappears
2000 – Creates “L’anarchiste”

Richard Fraysse, how does one become a ‘Nose’ or master perfumer?

R.F. – Since the 1970s, the Institut supérieur international du parfum, de la cosmétique et de l’aromatique alimentaire (Isipca), trains master perfumers. One must have previously studied chemistry for two years before entering the program. Then the training goes from two to three years. Students learn to recognize perfume’s raw materials, natural as well as synthetic products.

Before the 1970s, one was either a native of Grasse, the capital of perfume making or learned on the job, with the better ones receiving more advanced training.

For my part, I come from a family of master perfumers going back three generations.  My father worked at Lanvin.  With him, I used to play at recognizing scents. Before him, my grandfather had created the Fraysse Laboratory in Geneva, specializing in olfactory research. He was one of the pioneers of luxury perfumes with Guerlain. Years later, I joined Guerlain myself, and in 1987, I created my own company, Fragarôme, with Patrick Alès.  I trained specialists in olfactory constructions, which were not yet finished perfumes.

According to you, is a ‘nose’ or master perfumer an artist or a technician?

R. F. – A ‘nose’ or perfumer is both artist and technician, or an alchemist. In the beginning, a perfume is born from a desire, from an intuition or then again, from a recollection or from something else. For example, a pretty girl walking down the street may inspire you. You say to yourself: “Hey, I could see her wearing a perfume like this or like that.” And from that point, you create. But at the same time, the smell of a basement or an attic might inspire you. Finally, at the foundation of a perfume, there’s always creativity, imagination. Next, on the other hand, one has to become a technician, because it’s all a matter of proportion. A young perfumer always has a tendency to put in too many products. That makes for results that are too strong. One has to learn to proportion correctly. There is the range of a perfumer, the technical side of creation.

How does one create a perfume?

R. F. – There are two ways. The first consists in responding to an order from a customer, very rich, who says: “I want that.” But at Caron, we rarely work like that.

Most of the time, management or marketing comes up to me and says something like, “The Caron range is missing something in green florals or fruit.”  It’s up to me to find that something.

How do you, precisely?

R. F. – I start by mixing ten to fifteen products, which will give me the “heart” of the perfume, its bone structure and basic fragrance. Then I add touches of scents and I go bit by bit. I say to myself, “Now I have the floral, but I’m missing the green,” so I look for it, I try out things until I find the right combination. Afterwards, one must know when to say that the perfume is finished, stop looking for more. That’s always the difficult stage.

Do all perfumers work like this?

R. F. – No. Personally, I’m lucky to work at Caron, which works like a luxury artisan’s atelier and leaves me the time to create; I enjoy an open field to creativity without counting the ultimate cost. Dior and Chanel work the same way, equally providing the ‘nose’ a true ‘organ,’ that is, a laboratory containing several hundreds of essences.

Ugo Boss and Calvin Klein work the opposite way. They start from a total baseline cost, which even includes the production of the bottle. In the end, the creator finds himself obliged to create a perfume for a maximum cost of 20E, for example. He often has to work with synthetic products that are a lot less expensive. Having said this, I’m often pleasantly surprised by the results they achieve.

Can you use all the products you want to?

R. F. – The only limits that perfume creators have come from Brussels. Europe forbids or limits the use of certain products because they may be toxic or carcinogenic in certain proportions. Certain products are completely forbidden because they mark the skin in the sun. These are the only limits I’m aware of.

Do you travel a lot to find the products you need?

R. F. – Sometimes, yes, but most of the time, it is the raw material agents who travel.  These agents work for Caron, Dior or Givenchy and they’ve invested in production and cultivation; for example, bergamot in Calabria, vanilla in Madagascar, etc. They go all over the world, to Argentina, the Ivory Coast, and make sure they bring us back what we’re looking for and of the quality we desire. So the agents know that I prefer my lemon a bit green, whereas other ‘noses’ prefer their scents to be very ripe.

For the creation of perfumes, doesn’t technology come in to play?

R. F. – Yes, there is software for it. For example, you enter the production cost and the program tells you what range of products you can use without going over budget. The other way, I enter “green floral” in another program and this one tells me which products to use. Afterwards you simply have to calculate the cost of production. But personally, I don’t use them. Imagine, I still weigh the ingredients myself! So, to use technology…

Tell us about three famous Caron perfumes:  Montaigne, Fleur de rocaille and L’Anarchiste.

R. F. – The first of the three to see the light of day was Fleur de rocaille, around 1947-48. A truly floral perfume!  Before the Second World War, perfumers used a lot of rose and jasmine. For Fleur de rocaille, a musk base was added.

Montaigne dates from 1984. Its name is directly linked to the first Caron store which opened on Avenue Montaigne in 1980. It’s about the first real Caron boutique at the time that the brand was evolving towards luxury and becoming highly elitist. These mythic perfumes were showcased in sumptuous Baccarat crystal fountains. This perfume, Montaigne, was never sold through brand distribution houses such as Séphora or Marionnaud today.

Finally, L’Anarchiste is the most recent. It dates from 2000 and is one of my personal creations, shortly after I joined Caron. This perfume wasn’t to resemble any others; it was to be an innovative and fresh product. To make it, I mixed mint and orange-blossom flowers. In the end, this perfume is tangy, woody, spicy and fresh. It’s not for everywhere or everyone. At its release, it was very shocking, but that didn’t matter to Caron.