Jean-Claude Ellena is a perfumer who never wears perfume, whose tools are pen, paper and memory, and who sees his work as “nose” for the French luxury house Hermes as that of a “scent writer”.
“In a perfect world, I wish perfumes were never worn at all,” smiled the 64-year-old master perfumer as he welcomed AFP to the Hermes workshop, in the pine-clad hills above the bay of Antibes on the Mediterranean coast.
Ellena sees his perfumes as “artworks” — fine art that has sent annual sales at Hermes’ perfume division soaring from 65 million euros when he joined in 2004, to 138 million euros last year.
Continue reading