From the Fragrance Frontlines: It's Not Quite Paris Without a Gerard Depardieu Sighting

by Sarah Cristobal (Subscribe to Sarah Cristobal's posts)
Posted May 21st 2009 at 5:45PM

Senior Fashion Editor Sarah Cristobal is on assignment this week in France to discover what goes into creating the world's top fragrances. Read her daily blogs as she travels to perfumeries in Paris and Grasse, and dutifully observes the ooh la la of French culture.

Mmm...chocolate. AXE Dark Temptations Shower Gel and Deodorant. Photo courtesy of AXE.

Our full day at IFF consisted of sniff tests in smelling booths, learning about the technical origins of Axe's chocolate-inspired fragrance Dark Temptation (ahem! ice-cream-party!) and touring the labs where the scent was created. Afterward we changed and made our way to dinner at La Fontaine Gaillon. In our sequestered upstairs dining room, champagne and wine flowed freely, a scrumptious dinner of fresh white asparagus, pan seared John Dory, and Thanksgiving-worthy buttered mashed potatoes were served. For dessert? Chocolate souffle and macaroons! (It makes no sense why French women are so perfectly skinny, but I digress.)

Just when we thought life couldn't get any more français, who do we run into but the restaurant's owner and accomplished actor Gerard Depardieu! He was finishing a meal with his family and we all took pleasure in learning that he dines there almost every evening. It took all my restraint not to yell, "I loved you in Green Card!" as he plunked down on his scooter and rode off into the night.

But the Depardieu spotting wasn't our only celebrity run-in of the evening...

A booty-shaking session transpired at Le Baron, and shimmying next to us on the dance floor was none other than Beth Ditto from The Gossip. Dressed in a long white T-shirt and heavy eye make-up, we looked around anxiously for cameos by her new BFF's Kate Moss and Karl Lagerfeld, but alas...

The next morning we were up early and at Givaudan, the oldest and largest producer of flavor and scents in the world. Like IFF, it can lay claim to some of the world's top fragrances starting with Elsa Schiaparelli's Shocking in 1937, all the way up to Calvin Klein's Secret Obsession. A chronological history of men's fragrances was presented (note: Aqua di Gio, which was created in 1996 has been the most successful cologne of the past ten years).

AXE Instinct. Photos courtesy of AXE

The perfumers revealed their overall formula for Axe's Instinct, which is based on the smell of four different types of leather. How masculine! The breakdown of notes include West Indian pimiento, pink pepper, cardamom, rawhide, tonka bean and about 60 others. Imagine, the same amount of work goes into a $5 can of body spray as it does for the significantly more expensive Guerlain, Chanel, and all the rest!

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Filed under: CELEBRITY STYLE, Fragrance, Beauty, Celebrity, News, Makeup
Tags: axe, beth ditto, gerard depardieu, making scents, MakingScents

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READER COMMENTS

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Ormonde Jayne Perfumery, 5-28-2009, 6:23AM

Dear Sarah

Apologies for using the comments section, but I couldn't find an email address for you. I would like to introduce you to Ormonde Jayne Perfumery and send you our new Sample Programme with all eleven fragrances.

Ormonde Jayne is a niche perfume house in Old Bond Street, London created and owned by perfumer Linda Pilkington who has sourced the world for rare and exquisite oils to make this award winning range of Parfum, Scented Candles & the Bathing Colleciton. Oils used include Black Hemlock, Champaca, Sampaquita, Black Iris and Tolu and fans include Will Smith, Bryan Ferry, Goldie Hawn and Ashley Jensen.

The bathing range that Ormonde Jayne recently created will be to your taste too! It is entirely free of parabens, sulphates, petrochemical, GM ingredients, mineral oils and colourings.

Do please let us know if you would like any more information, or send us your address for the Sample Programme.

Best regards
Sarah Ehrlich
PR for Ormonde Jayne
Online boutique with worldwide shipping www.ormondejayne.com

If anyone creates a perfume collection a century from now, it will quite possibly
resemble Ormonde Jayne's. (Ormonde Man EDP Maximum 5 Stars)
Chandler Burr - Perfume Critic of The New York Times

Ormonde Jayne is the small but seductive shop in London's Royal Arcade
and you really should smell these candles. There's Osmanthus, an uplifting
mix of lime, pomelo, mint, galbanum & jasmine. Others feature Casablanca
Lily, Sampaquita, sambac, coriander. All of them not only transport you to
another world, at least emotionally, but they also come in the chic-est orange
box and are hand-made at the brand's candle studio in London.
Edwina Ings Chambers - Beauty & Luxury Editor of The Financial Times

My quest is over. I found it. A perfume that is happy to let you wear it and not
the other way around. Orris Noir is a perfume that is both comforting and sensual,
it's exotic but not overpowering and smells like a classic even though it's new.
What really makes me like Linda Pilkington (Ormonde Jayne's creator & perfumer) is that
she isn’t a perfume bore. She just likes to smell nice, and has enough confidence to create
perfumes that do that, but with a twist of something you won’t find in Duty Free. And although
her packaging is pretty, that is not what you are paying for: the money is going towards top-quality
ingredients. Her formulas (by which I mean the base oils that create the scent itself) cost between
£350-£400 a kilo. A commercial perfume would spend £70-£80 a kilo. Makes you think, no?
Sarah Vine - Beauty Editor of The Times of London