Did you dream of integrating a house?

I knew it would happen to me, without knowing which one. I heard about a Vuitton fragrance project for twenty years and I had been a customer of the house forever. The first time I was 16 years old. I was already a perfumer, I went by bus to Cannes, in the shop near the Carlton whose window made me dream, and where I was welcomed as a big person. I spent 1,285 francs, my month's salary, for a bag I gave my mother at Christmas. I walked out of the proud shop like Artaban. I realized that I loved luxury and my mother had a bag every year.

Have you been anxious to sign?

I felt enormous pressure, which flew on January 2, 2012, the day of my arrival. The stage fright has turned into positive energy. I was greeted wonderfully well, I was given time to discover the house, free from any material contingency, provided the ingredients without limit of price. There have not even been consumer tests. I do this job for me to love and there is a real respect for the creators, Nicolas Ghesquière or myself.

How can we not let it filter?

I have a culture of secrecy. I replied: "Your impatience is my luxury. I was going at my own pace, slower than those of fashion and design. Before choosing the perfumes of this collection, I made seventy or eighty. Some that I have thrown into oblivion, others who have not said their last word.

Were you afraid of not getting there?

There were moments of doubt. It is there that one must persevere, to question oneself every day without wavering on his achievements, until it goes beyond you. I tried to build a collection, to work different things in a common spirit. My wife carried all my tests, it was she who taught me what they were. Every time I finished a perfume, I had two or three days of baby blues and I left alone, often in the mountains. In a perfume, I put all my heart and know that it will no longer belong to me is a tear. I can not rejoice.

Why start with a collection?

This makes it possible to aim broad. Express the delicacy of a romantic flower or the suavity of a very carnal vanilla that makes you want to crunch the skin. Also evoke personal memories, like this field invaded by both tuberose and jasmine. Beginning with feminine was obvious. Vuitton perfumes from the late 20s - Time of Absence or Je Tu Il - were destined for the elegant ones. I was glad that there was nothing left in it, I was not influenced, I did not forbid anything. I've been serious, as they say.

What is the advantage of being the only perfumer of a house?

I have more time to live the materials to put them in the library of my brain. It contains at least five thousand odors that I maintain daily, like a sportsman. They are all associated with an image: moment, person or landscape. Everyday, my assistant makes me feel blind five raw materials and five other perfumes of the market. This memory only serves to embody the ideas I have. A perfume without idea does not work. Everything starts with the desire for a woodsy rose, a spicy amber ... Did you know that the nose is the only organ that has neurons? The first signs of Alzheimer's disease are found to be more and more pronounced anosmia.

"Every time I finished a perfume, I had two or three days of baby blues and I was going alone in the mountains."

Photo Credit: Louis Vuitton Malletier / Press

What is innovative in this perfumery?

An exclusive leather note. I brought back to Grasse all the natural vegetable leather scraps from our tanneries and our workshops. After maceration in alcohol and then extraction, always with alcohol, a black paste such as ebony is obtained which is then decolorized by filtering. This note is at the heart of some of the collection's perfumes. There is also a supercritical CO 2 extraction technique, invented with Firmenich. Until now, the flowers had to be boiled at 100 ° C, to "exhaust" them as they say in Grasse. There, we do not exceed 30 ° C and we retain all their fragility and beauty. As if fresh flowers, rose or jasmine were brought in the bottles. It's a world first and it's wonderful.

Do you have any rituals to create?

I try to create with the freshness of youth. Living in Cabris, in Provence, preserves me. I get up every morning at 5 o'clock in front of an exceptional panorama from where I can see to Corsica. Everyone is asleep, I bathe with custom bubble baths to feel a material or a perfume trial in progress. And everything is set up. It seems nice ... I do not believe in painful creation: even if it is difficult, it must remain an act of love. A perfume lives only through the woman who carries it. I am Aquarius ascendant Aquarius, often too emotional, but we have nothing to lose to be true.

Being a perfumer was a vocation?

At 5 years old, my father handed me a rose of May, I found it wonderful. He communicated to me the love of natural materials and their enlightenment. My daughter Camille, 16, has the same impetus. It's moving. "I do not believe in painful creation: even if it is difficult, it must remain an act of love."

Do you have a favorite smell?

Like the Japanese, I am the seasons. I always marvel at the smells of nature, especially the flowers that survived its chaos. The mimosa in January then the flower of violets, orange blossom, rose of May, narcissus and daffodil and finally the king jasmine, which flowers in early August for three months. Nothing is ever fixed, a life would not suffice to rediscover a flower.

How to translate your new perfumery?

It goes in the direction of tomorrow's perfumery, more emotional and far from the figurative caricature of yesterday. It is a fragrance of feeling, which makes it possible to be truer. We have to be generous, there is life, the terroir. I am in the enjoyment of creating.