Francis Kurkdjian: “a great perfume, it smells beautiful!” »

" Sylvie and Odile came to find me to talk to me about their project on their property... It's a project that took a long time to set up like any entrepreneurial project, it's not just the creation of the products, there's also the whole ecosystem that needs to be invented…

I recommended several perfumers to Sylvie and Odile. I sincerely thought that they could work on the project and then finally I think that what made me change my mind was a walk that I took between the Royal Palace and my office; It must have been an afternoon in June, and suddenly I found that the smell in the air at the Royal Palace was divine, delicious. Well, all of a sudden I said to myself “ actually, it doesn’t smell like what I thought it smelled like, linden ”!  I think it was also the same linden trees as the property, so the silver linden tree which has a facet that other linden trees don't have, I'm not a great botanist but I can tell the difference and so I I called Sylvie. I told him “ listen, I think I have what it takes to make your project, I have what it takes to make this linden note contemporary and, above all, fit into a fairly wide range ” since it’s not just an eau de toilette. , but there were also all the cosmetic derivatives.

To have a strong idea in perfumery,  especially on a flower,  you have to be able to schematize it, in 3 points... You have to find the angles a little: you have to find three, like that, it makes a triangle with a center of gravity which means that everything is balanced. So we had to find both the green freshness of the lime blossom, the little honeyed-orange blossom side (because it's  inherent to the linden tree, we can't miss it otherwise it doesn't "look linden tree")  and then this floral facet – because ultimately a linden tree is a flower –  and we had to find this very solar side, a little round.

Because even if the linden tree refers to a little Proustian side, the madeleine, ultimately, that's not what counts. We must find “an evocation of”… plus the area of ​​Meynardie… Plus lots of personal things…

Afterwards, what is interesting about this project, which I also really liked, is that the eau de toilette is like a “pretext” in the cosmetic range.  It is above all a story of linden with the benefits of linden - more than "I launch an eau de toilette and then I will make him his shower gel and a cream" - That was not at all the idea of ​​the sisters, and I liked it...

The idea that appealed to me was the fact that this eau de toilette had to be modest compared to other products.

She had to be there with a form of “modesty”,  Yes that's it…

It's not like in traditional fine perfumery, where we have eau de toilette, eau de parfum and everything "depends on" the eau de toilette/parfum, whereas here, the idea: we had to anticipate the fact that it was a smell that had to go straight away in a cosmetic cream, in a treatment, for the face, for the body, we had to play with the smell and that appealed to me a lot because precisely the lime tree has this olfactory elasticity.

It can be very voluptuous in a cream, a treatment that takes care of the body, the skin, the face..

You can also play on the fresh aspect when you want to have it in the morning in a shower gel - which I use because the texture is very beautiful - which smells good, which feels good.

Simple and beautiful smells…. a perfume, it should do just that...!

I often say, a great perfume “smells beautiful”.

That’s the deal, when you work on a note…the word “beautiful” is pretty. A nice smell, it's still very pretty!

Finally, what was nice was to decline the smell in relation to sensations, a dosage, the smoothness of the cream, the foam, which we will have in the shower.

I find it nice to be able to play with these codes!

And the linden tree lends itself very well to this! "