Perfuming Literature: Interview with Christophe Laudamiel

Christophe Laudamiel defies categorization.  He is one of the most sought-after perfumers working today, but he is also an inventor, chemist, artist, educator, and fearless pursuer of his own ideals.

I first became aware of his name in November 2006 when I read Chandler Burr's "Smellbound" article in the New York Times Magazine.  In it, he reported that the Patrick Süskind novel Das Parfum was to become a movie, and that a coffret of scents inspired by the book was being developed for Thierry Mugler by two perfumers who collectively call themselves "Les Christophs."  But it was the way Burr described Laudamiel's personality that resonated with me:

"A young Frenchman named Christophe Laudamiel was still in perfumery school when he first read Süskind’s book. What struck Laudamiel most was a description of ripe, juicy pale yellow plums and the girl who sells them to Grenouille, the first virgin he murders.  But what also struck him were his own similarities to Grenouille. Tall and painfully thin, the young Laudamiel wasn’t social. He didn’t always feel comfortable with people. He wore a red mohawk. In the novel, when Grenouille retreats to a cave in the middle of France to live the life of a hermit for seven years, Laudamiel understood. The day I become a perfumer, he said to himself, I will do something with this book."

I understood the solitude of awkwardness, of being an outsider, and most of all I understood the power of literature to transcend those difficulties and quietly inspire the pursuit of a life goal.  I was further excited to find that not all of the scents in this coffret smell like what most of us consider "perfume."  MSNBC writer Coeli Carr wrote that "the coffret contains fouler offerings, such as 'Atelier Grimal,' 'Paris 1738' and 'Human Existence,' which evoke the squalor and filth found in the sewer that was Paris nearly two centuries ago."  Just as a great writer would purposefully explore the uglier side of humanity, Christophe, in his own literary way, had been creating scents inspired by the book on his own for years and had not avoided the stench of "human existence." 

I would have continued to admire Christophe from afar as a sort of avant garde rock star of literary perfumery, but early this year I had the unexpected good fortune to find out that we have a mutual friend, writer and perfume consultant Michelle Krell Kydd, who introduced me to Christophe by email.   In my first letter to him, I introduced myself as "irrationally devoted to both perfume and literature," and asked him if he would be willing to answer a few questions about his approach to literature, art, and the art of literary perfumes. His first response began:

"I do like to promote a more literary approach to the language of perfumery, not only to describe scents but also to describe the creative process.  What was going on in the mind of the perfumers?  How did an ingredient end up where it is? ... I want to reach the level to what I see in music and in literature, although I am not a specialist in those areas; certain things fascinate me. So I'll be happy to participate to your effort.  Please send me your questions, any question is ok, I may just not answer them all!"

In fact, he did answer almost all of my questions, and generously responded to several rounds of follow-up inquries.  What follows here is a transcript of some of that correspondence on the subjects of perfume and literature.  (Note: Christophe was one of the first people to whom I "pitched" the idea of using Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" as an inspiration for a perfume.  His contribution to that project was published on March 23, 2008, as "Christophe Laudamiel: Perfume in a Poem," and the footnotes to that entry include his thoughts on "scent memories" from childhood, and his love of tulips, which are quoted again here.)