Original subtitles

It's not bad.

It's green.

Incredible

It's oily ...

It's good for the arms.

The smell is still strong because it's too fresh

Is seeing patchouli worth a three days trip ?

For me it is

I had never seen patchouli like this, here in Indonesia.

It's very important to see the product in its natural habitat

to see both the method they use and what the material looks like

I find it quite moving to witness this

This is where it all begins for perfume

Is this office representative of what is going on in your mind ?

It's a bit of a mess...

...But I do know where all the project trials are though

For me, a perfume is a land of sharing

Double kiss !

-What perfume are you wearing? -Ah...

It's a special one.

You don’t want to tell me.

I can't recognize it.

-It's smells very nice. -Yes.Thank you.

A perfumer is an artisan.

It requires creativity and intuition.

as well as a lot of expertise.

It’s a sort of...

fragile balance between these two aspects.

What are you working on now?

On the Dior Homme perfume.

How to balance...

a top note with a bottom note.

The top notes are the most futile ones.

They only last a few seconds or a few minutes depending on their volatility.

Then we have the middle notes.

It’s the warm and generous heart of the perfume... and it lasts a few hours

And then the bottom notes that last longer.

They are long-lasting notes. The ones you remember.

Depending on whether it is eau de toilette or eau de parfum,

you get to these bottom notes more or less rapidly and they drag you to the bottom...

All of this balance itself and creates a kind of symphony.

-What is the bottom note? -It’s elemi.

Elemi is similar to incense.

My aim is to bring them together.

I don’t know, I haven’t figured it out yet.

But that’s the idea.

So...to try something new

This is...

...a note we stopped using. People forgot about it.

-You're making it again? -Yes, I personally love it.

It smells very nice.

And the smells lasts a long time.

Did you create your first perfume for someone ?

When you start, you go through a training. At the time, it was still a training.

-So you work with other perfumers. -Of course.

And they have you do what they don't want to do themselves.

The first thing I did was a perfume

intended to whet the appetite

-of bovines. -Really?

-So they would eat the fodder. -That's crazy.

My first real perfume was Diva from Ungaro.

I made that perfume for my wife.

-For your wife. -Yes.

-It has to do with desire and femininity. -Always.

Perfume is about emotions. It starts with an emotion

-and it leads to seduction etc... -Of course.

So desire is of course the underlying theme.

-What drives all your perfumes. -Yes.

He often envisions perfumes based on the people he meets.

It's no secret that women inspire him a lot.

Brunettes, blondes... They're different when it comes to perfumes and perfumery.

But...

For him, it's about finding what people might like.

That's his challenge.

When he sees someone, he thinks, "What would suit them?

What would I do for him or her?"

The person comes first and then comes the inspiration.

-I'll go get my jacket. -Okay. Let's go this way.

-Sure, this way. -That way?

-Yes, this way. -It's better this way.

-Is it better that way? -It's nicer.

Okay, I'll just go get my jacket.

-It's starting. -Did you notice I had everything planted?

-Yes. -I had the conifers removed.

Yes.

-The gardener didn't want to. -Why not?

I don't know, I said, "No, plant the osmanthus,

it'll be nice when we walk past, it'll smell.

When we go out as well."

François and I are united by something very specific;

we must create the best perfumes for our two respective Houses.

What we share is our passion, our knowledge of the raw materials,

our olfactory education as well since we are both from Grasse.

Have you seen the pomegranates?

Let's see. Yes, they're ready.

They're beautiful.

Here in Grasse, people have extracted raw materials for four centuries.

They started mixing them and making perfumes

that were based on raw material they collected themselves

and materials that they imported and that would go through Venice, like ambergris.

Grasse is a small town of about 55,000 or 60,000 inhabitants

that enjoys the biggest amount of knowledge in the world

regarding raw materials for perfumes

as well as the arts and skills involved in making perfumes.

When you were born in Grasse, when you have lived in Grasse,

when you were raised in a family where...

...the sense of smell is as important as sight or hearing,

you don't have the same background as others,

you're not cut from the same cloth.

There's a little bit of nostalgia about being here since this is where I grew up.

I remember getting past here early in the morning

because back then there were nightclubs around Valbonne over there.

The road to get back to Grasse went through here.

And since it was during the summer holidays, in August,

the jasmine was blooming.

The smell of jasmine came from right here next to us.

These memories are embedded in me.

This is one of my favorite smells

because it has a mysterious and also magical side to it.

This is ambergris. This one is black

because it is relatively recent.

It's about 20 years old.

This one is grayer.

It's a bit older. The name ambergris comes from its color.

This one is white.

It's one of the most sought-after notes.

Those three all have a different price.

But for perfumery, I prefer the gray one or even the black one.

The black one is more wild.

What is it exactly?

It's a sort of concretion.

It comes from sperm whales.

They eat a lot of cuttlefish.

Cuttlefish have a bone, but also a very pointy and sharp beak.

After a while, the beak ulcerate their stomach,

so they secrete a substance that wraps around the beaks

and they eject it.

It's lighter than water, so it floats.

Because of the effects of the sun, the air and the sea,

it changes little by little.

Can you mentally create a perfume without having any material?

A complete perfume? Yes, more or less.

In the same way as when we read a formula, the recipe,

we manage to imagine more or less what it will smell like.

The problem is this "more or less" part.

So between the idea you have of the perfume,

and the formula you write down or read in order to make a perfume,

there is a difference that we notice when we go through the trials.

Which is precisely why we do these trials.

This is a formula, the recipe in a way.

There must be as much information as possible on each line

about each material in the formula.

The number of materials in a perfume varies a lot.

It depends on the perfume and on the perfumer.

Generally speaking,

I would say there are between 15-- At least for me,

between 15 and 50 products.

The only thing that all Noses have in common

even the young apprentices I have met in schools, Brazilians, Japanese, Chinese,

is the passion for recording smells.

It's being passionate enough about the idea of recording smells

that you're willing to go through the torture that is a perfumer's training.

I think the only comparable field in terms of difficulty when it comes to learning

is maybe ballet.

Every day, every single day, you have to refresh your own memory,

You memorize the smells and combinations of smells all over again.

And that is still not enough to guarantee

that what you will make, your recipe, will be exactly what you envisioned.

Just like a ballerina can dance on pointe 425 times in the morning

and still fail on the 426th time because she messes the spin.

The worst for us is to think you know.

It's very important to keep up to date.

It's getting back to the baseline. I'm constantly practicing.

Yes. Every day.

It's musky.

We can say they're all musky indeed.

Of course the musk ketone isn't at ten percent but at one.

It's not soluble.

And the vulcanolide is at 11.

Can you smell how strong it is?

I'm surprised by the Galax's start.

The Vulcanolide has touches of pear to it.

-Vulcanolide is indeed-- -It's exceptional.

-It smells of undergrowth. -It's very earthy.

Yes.

The undergrowth above Grasse,

-in October, during mushrooms season. -Yes.

-The first flowers of the morning. -They're nice.

With François, it was the meeting of a lifetime for me on a human level.

I was lucky enough to take part in a conference in 2006,

the World Perfumery Congress which was held in Cannes that year.

After the conference, a man came to talk to me and we had coffee together.

Humbly, he told me, "I make perfumes

and I am looking for exceptional raw materials.

I want to bring back exceptional materials to the heart of my creation

and I would like to start with flowers from Grasse

and I would like to embark on this journey with you."

I thought, "Okay, he makes perfumes."

And then he showed me his card:

"François Demachy, perfume creator for Dior"

I knew his name but I had no idea it was him.

I just thought...

"Wow!"

They have a strong smell.

It's strong.

We spoke the same language...

...I would talk to him about the flowers, the harvest, organic production,

about things from my everyday life, things that I get up for in the morning.

So he understood right away, because he is from Grasse too and he has

tremendous respect for the raw material.

He said, "When you're working, you need financial security.

so that all your energy is put at the service of the raw material and beauty."

And that's it.

Have you ever sensed a small touch of bubblegum?

-Yes, but not this time. -Sometimes.

They need more sun.

-Exactly. -Yes. Alcohol, basil and all that.

These are lactones.

Perfumes are a language everyone understands

but few people can speak.

How did I become a grower? It's the story of two people.

It's not only my story, it's Rémi and Armelle's story.

We both wanted to do something together at some point

related to the ground

because we both come from families of farmers.

We experienced it when we were young.

Rémy more than me since he worked at his grandparent's farm.

For me, it was just when I was on holidays.

So we embarked on this journey.

At the time, Rémy kept working

as we needed to put food on the table for the family.

I started going forward with the administrative procedures

and I learned the job with Carole.

I spent a lot of time at her place

digging, tying things together, cutting, harvesting...

It was a long-term endeavor.

Between the time we first had the idea and the day we planted our first rose bush,

a lot of time went by. Four years went by.

I would still help Carole from time to time, she would train me at her place.

One day she told, "Next week François Demachy is coming,

it would be good for you to be here, I will introduce you."

So I met him at Carole's.

I briefly explained my project,

and after our conversation, François said, "I'll come and have a look.

I'm interested, I'll come have a look."

You need to know what we had planted back then.

We had planted 700 rose bushes about 20 centimeters high.

Seven hundred rose bushes is nothing at all.

It's like a garden.

It's nothing for a grower, you don't get anywhere with that.

François came around after a little while.

Of course I was expecting his arrival feverishly.

He was supposed to arrive early in the afternoon

and he arrived late in the afternoon.

Early in the afternoon, the weather was rather good.

When he arrived, it was raining cats and dogs.

The view was so blocked we couldn't even see the other end of the field.

All I had to show him was my little square of rose bushes in the middle.

I suddenly realized what was happening.

I thought, "Oh, my God! You had him come here, you have nothing to show him,

the weather is crap, he won't even realize how beautiful the site is."

We hadn't done much to it yet, but the site was beautiful.

And...

François is discreet and reserved,

so he didn't say, "Wow, this is amazing! Let's work together, it'll be great!"

He didn't say much and when he left and I closed the door behind him,

I told Rémy, "It's over, we can start planting onions

and have a couple of sheep, but it's over for the roses."

It was actually not over at all, he called back after a while

and he said, "I'm interested in your project,

I'd like to talk more about it."

-Happy Birthday! -Happy Birthday! Thanks a lot.

Perfumery comes from distillation.

Men have always tried to capture scents

in a physical form.

And so they started using distillation to capture the quintessence of the smell.

And in the 1920s and 1930s, they started using extraction,

meaning they would use the plant with a solvent

in order to extract everything they could; its smell and other elements.

This factory's facility in Grasse, is the historical part.

We work in a traditional way.

This is the part where we transfer to perfumers

the knowledge we have garnered over decades.

We do it the way we used to, we do the same things we did 50 years ago,

so that perfumers can find the same smell they remember, which hasn't changed.

-Do you know Mr. Demachy? -Of course.

He has a good knowledge of perfumery, about the products and the smells.

He knows all that very well, he's from Grasse.

He knows the raw materials and what they can be used for.

I worked a lot on making products for him.

They were very particular products.

He gives us an idea of what he wants, and if he like the scent he will use it.

For me, it was meant to be. I was born here, in the region.

Very early I was familiar with orange trees, jasmine, roses, etc.

When you get into this job, you can never leave it.

It's purely addictive.

September 1st marked the beginning of my 60th year with Robertet.

It's been quite a while.

You weren't born yet.

Oftentimes, perfumers ask me

how many rose petals their product requires.

So we tell them we need 700 kilos of flowers for one kilo of absolute.

There are 350 flowers in a kilo of flowers,

So you multiply the number of roses by 38, the number of petals per rose,

and you have the total number of petals.

Here, we are in the middle of the know-how.

If I want to develop or modify a particular scent,

I can go to the factory, it's very close. I can get there in ten minutes.

I can talk to the professionals,

smell the trials and even do the trials with them.

It's an undeniable advantage.

And the whole part with the zest that you see inside.

It smells very nice.

Let's see if I can do it.

When you see a bitter orange, you see the difference immediately.

The bitter orange tree doesn't have the graft.

-The trunk-- -It's very cylindrical.

It's cylindrical and it has a few thorns.

-Yes. -That's its wild part.

-So it's only feminine? -Feminine.

But the skin is different, look at the zest.

Look at the difference between the two zests.

-Yes. -It's easy to see.

-Here you go. -Fantastico.

-It has ribs too. -The Fantastico also has ribs.

It's smaller.

-Always. -Always.

Okay.

This one is feminine. These are the three.

-The best one. -The best one is the Fantastico.

It's like a murderer who comes back to the scene of the crime.

It's important to be on the site

so you can both smell and feel.

Because it's an atmosphere.

The atmosphere is part of the product.

And coming to Italy is almost like being home.

We all have an Italian side to us.

The food is excellent, the girls are pretty,

everything is nice. It's all about the colors.

We may have to pick them up?

Yes.

If it warms up, there’re going to be some anyway.

Like an actual harvest, yes.

Yes, this time of the year is reward time.

We have worked all year: we pruned, cared, weeded, and hoed them,

and then it’s harvest time, and that’s the reward.

Magic.

It’s a special time, and it’s luxury farming!

We work in the midst of aromas and colours.

It’s a kind of woman’s thing.

-Well, it’s increasingly a woman’s thing. -Yes.

-And how do you treat the land? -With a lot of respect.

Not really organic but trying to go back to how farming once was using

observation, common sense, and trying to

-deal with each thing in its own time. -There...

You wouldn’t know, huh? Yes, I know. You need to come back and see it!

-Let's take a little bud. -A fertile one.

Hyper fertile, exactly.

-It's the right term. -Only this?

-Yes, this is the bud. -So you extract the bud.

Yes, this is what ends up growing.

-This is the bud. -Yes.

All the genetic information is in here.

-Okay. -And we insert the little bud.

-No way! -Yes.

It must be done for each bush.

There are currently about 20,000 rose bushes here,

so we've done this 20,000 times, plus all the other times.

-You don't do that every year, do you? -Fortunately, no.

-Just once and it's a centifolia for life. -So it's good for 15 years.

Exactly.

And...

a month later, in August,

around August 15th, our little bud will have grown

and we will have a new centifolia.

But the rootstock, the mother plant, is resistant.

We weaken the shrub rose

-so that it gets the necessary sap. -It's like surgery.

-And then it grows. -It's like going to the doctor's.

This is why we have this quality and this resistance.

It's essential.

It's a lot of handling.

Exactly.

And this is what it looks like.

You end up with this.

In a nearby high school in Antibes, they have started teaching all this again.

-Nobody knew how to do it anymore. -I can do it now.

Being able to do it is different from doing it thousands of times

on a big scale and successfully.

-That requires years of experience. -Really?

This is the problem with Carole, she makes everything look easy.

-Okay. -It has to be done.

François is like Charlie and his angels.

There's the blonde one, the one with the light brown hair and the brunette.

When I met François, I got to visit the creation lab.

It was a dream come true for me.

Being able to do this job

and for my work to be appreciated by someone...

Organic agriculture is a difficult job.

I barely have any machine, we don't use pesticides, it's all handmade.

And I can see when he comes to the field,

or at least I think and I hope that he enjoys

smelling the product of the ground directly from the tree or from the bush.

So I always enjoy his visits.

I have the feeling that he is happy and therefore that I have done a good job.

Here, it's for you.

It's a farmer's job, there is no doubt about it.

We work in the field and we wear boots most of the time.

We don't see flowers for very long during the year.

We see roses for four weeks and tuberoses for a little longer,

but in the end, the fields are green most of the time.

They don't blossom for long.

It's party time when they blossom, but that doesn't last.

It's a real farmer's job.

But at the same time, we work for an industry

that, for me, embodies what makes us humans.

We don't work to feed ourselves, we work to smell good.

It's a puzzling idea. It's very special.

And these two worlds coming together is something I appreciate a lot.

We've got our feet in the mud and our head I don't know where, maybe in the clouds.

Driving tractors is actually what you like most about your job, right?

Yes.

Can you imagine at school, 40 years ago, if I had said,

"I want to be a farmer, I want to live in the countryside"?

They would have said, "Yuk! That's horrible."

Whereas these days, they say, "That's good, but it will be difficult.

You must know the ground, the circle of life, the earth."

We look for our environment and when we find it, we are like a fish in water,

because we are in sync with what's beneath and above us, with the flow of time,

with the rhythm of the seasons, with the things we do regularly, cyclically.

It probably has to do with a sort of primary and reptilian balance.

Can you help me?

How much is there in this? Two kilos?

Just to give you an idea, the iris roots that we plant

are planted today.

This is 2018, we have to wait for three years after planting the roots

before we can unearth them to use them.

We have to clean them and trim them.

After that, there is only three tons left out of the four tons we dug up.

Once those three tons are cut and dried up,

there is one tone of iris left.

But we must wait another two and a half years for it to be properly dry.

Then we treat it, we grind it and we distill it.

And from that ton, we get about three kilos of butter

or 300 grams of irone.

So you start with a truck filled with four tons of fresh roots

and seven and a half years later, you end up with 300 grams of irone.

That's why products are very expensive.

You need to be passionate and curious.

A perfumer is someone who is curious.

When three people are walking in the wilderness,

if there is a perfumer, he is always at the back.

He stops everywhere to smell the products, to touch the plants, etc.

Creators are extremely curious.

You must be curious about everything. About everything and everyone.

It is an interpreter's job.

We stock up mental pictures at a certain time

and when we start creating the perfume,

all of that comes out.

We need all that.

Can we go in and have a drink? -Sure.

He has a passion for well-made products,

for beauty and skills, because you don't become an expert by chance.

I suggest we go through the Merlots first

-and then we can try the others we have. -Yes.

Because we must match them with the others.

The point of this tasting is to understand the parcel of land.

By tasting the wines regularly at different stages

we get a clearer picture little by little.

You're after the 19th.

I've tried this one. I didn't like it much.

I like the aromatic of the 17 and 17.1 a lot.

And their characters too.

I like this one.

It's a little timbered.

It brings out its power.

Yes, and green pepper is very present in its bouquet of flavors.

-Yes, it's its aggressive side. -It has pyrazine a side to it.

Yes.

I first met François as we were working together with Cheval Blanc on a book

in which we shared our views, Cheval Blanc's and François Demachy's...

on senses, on olfaction, on the sense of smell.

I soon related to his job,

because the sense of smell is part of our daily decisions.

Beyond the emotion, which is 80% of what we feel...

You feel an emotion when you smell something and taste a wine.

The difference between anyone's emotion and the work of a professional

is that we must dissect, analyze, explain, rank

and make decisions based on emotions.

It can be impressive

when you enter the tasting room of a famous vintage

and you start giving your opinion on the wines.

François spontaneously said, "I like this. This one is a bit grassy."

You can tell he has expertise.

Is there one you like better than the others?

-This one. -The one on the left.

-Me too. -The other is still too alcoholic for me.

In order to remember a precise smell,

you must remember everything that comes with the smell.

The moment you smelled it, what was going on around you,

the people who were there,

the lighting, which is important, the sounds, etc.

The smell jasmine definitely reminds me of my grandma.

I was always in the field with her.

My grandma would put jasmine flowers in her corset,

so she always smelled of jasmine.

When I smell jasmine, it's like there is magic in the air

and she is still with me in a way.

When I trained my sense of smell for my first job,

the perfumers would make me smell a lot of raw materials.

They said, "You're pretty good." I thought, "Okay."

Then they made me smell a perfume and I thought, "This the perfume of my life."

I had never smelled anything like it. It was like magic, I loved it.

I went home and I told my mom,

"You don't know this, it's an old perfume you've never heard of."

My mom would wear Diorissimo and nothing else.

I said, "Smell this." She said, "What is it?"

I made her smell it and she said, "I know it, it's Jolie Madame."

I asked, "How do you know it?"

"It's the perfume I wore when I was pregnant with you."

I think the smells that have affected me the most

are horrible smells that bring back bad memories.

The most violent and painful one for me

is the smell of my preschool's bathroom.

I sometimes smell it in public places like hospitals

and as soon as I smell it, I am three again

and I feel excruciatingly sad, it's terrible.

I can picture my schoolteacher's green trouser.

That's it. It's horrible.

When you are faced with the memory or the reality of a smell

that you haven't smelled in 30 years,

you are immediately brought back 30 years in the past.

It's... instantaneous.

It's very accurate.

It's the inside you need to smell.

He associates pictures

and situations with perfumes.

He creates a photo library for himself

that he associates with smells.

It's available to him in his brain so that he can associate a picture with a smell.

-Can you use ginger for perfumes? -Yes, we use it.

We have two main products;

the essence, after distillation,

and a CO2 extraction which brings out the smell of fresh ginger like this.

For example, if you ask him about a perfume that inspires to travel,

he goes through his travels photo library and the smells associated with it

and he can come up with about 2,000 raw materials.

It's unbelievable.

This is great.

You can trust me.

In perfumery, the hardest thing is usually to decide

when the perfume is ready.

When is it done?

When is the song perfectly played?

"Okay, it's done, let's stop and save it."

I understand François completely when he thinks, "No, let's do it again.

Let's start again and adjust it."

And you can never just add something like a flower on a salad.

It doesn't work like that. Everything shifts, the whole formula.

Anytime you pull out a brick, the whole Jenga tower is affected.

It's endless and it can become and obsession.

We're all sensitive to smells,

because they bring us back to our culture,

it's an identity.

It even goes beyond that, it's what we are made of.

The human side is essential.

It's the most important part for perfumes.

What is more human than a smell?

Our joker is missing today.

There isn't much left. We're nearing the end.

It makes me sad.

Orange blossoms don't last very long.

When we see there aren't many buds left,

we know it's only a matter of days before the end.

We'll have to wait until next year again.

No, Georges!

To this day,

I still think it was pretty bold of him to bank on us,

because it wasn't our job, we were just starting.

And yet he agreed to work with us.

I think it's...

It's cool of course that a House, since he represents a brand,

that a House like his would make that bet and trust in people like us.

Perfume is about human relationship.

There is always a human connection.

To me, Perfume is in its essence...

...a human journey.

Inherently, flowers are sexual organs.

That always plays a part. We are mammals so...

It's not far from the topic of sex.

And that makes us dream, so that's how it is.

Does being a perfumer help with women?

Yes.

It might be one of the reasons I chose this job.

Maybe that's why.