Jean-Claude Ellena Quotes

The future does not really lie in discovering new fragrant raw materials.... In order to endure, haute perfumery is therefore condemned to inventing new olfactory promises...to finding a new form of expression.

My visitors say they noticed perfumes from different companies in my fridge, and ask what I need these for. I explain that they are mainly there as historical benchmarks of quality, below which I must not and would not want to fall.

Beautiful and minimalist, the traditional Japanese art of ikebana - arranging bouquets of cut flowers and leaves using very few elements - ideally corresponded to a form of expression I could transpose in a perfume. The smell of a rose early in the morning, damp, sprinkled with dew, delicate and light.

Perfume is a story in odors, sometimes a poetry of memory

Oddly, though, lists are reassuring. We become aware of this if we scrupulously follow a recipe, which is essentially a list of ingredients and actions; but if we give this 'list' too much importance, we leave no room for the imagination.

Smell is a word, perfume is literature.

As a person, I take pleasure in receiving and sharing. As a perfumer, I like showing and convincing.... I'm quite simply following the trajectory of an artist, someone who seeks and, sometimes, finds.