Interview with Bertrand Duchaufour

Bertrand Duchaufour started his perfumery career in Grasse in 1985. After a first job with Lautier-Florasynth, he went on to work for both Créations Aromatiques and Symrise. Independent since 2007, he is the in-house perfumer for L’Artisan Parfumeur, but he continues to work for other houses as well. An art lover, particularly of tribal art, Bertrand Duchaufour is also a traveler at heart. We caught up with him in his Paris office for the launch of the fragrance Traversée du Bosphore, inspired by a trip to Istanbul.

Bertrand Duchaufour, aside from yourself, who would you have liked to be?
An explorer. Because discovering things is what counts most for me.
Tell us about your first encounter with fragrance.
I was 17. I fell in love with a girl who wore Chanel’s N°19.
What about you, what was the first fragrance you wore?
I think it was Givenchy’s Gentleman (N.B. a woody-chypry scent from 1974).
You have a broad olfactory palette. Are there any ingredients you’re partial to?
Davana, patchouli, iris and angelica root. I’m also fond of using frankincense, pink pepper and tuberose.
What’s your favorite smell?
The smell of the earth.
What fragrance(s) by other designers do you wish you had designed?
Guerlain’s Mitsouko and Jacques Fath’s Iris Gris. Perhaps Molinard’s Habanita and Piguet’s Bandit, too.
What perfumer’s style do you admire?
I’ll name three: Annick Menardo, Jacques Guerlain and Edmond Roudniska.
What are your influences, as a designer?
My inspiration comes above all directly from nature.
Are there any artists whose work fascinates you?
Francis Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, for painters. And in terms of composers: Chopin and Schubert.
In addition to nature, your fragrances are often inspired by travel. Traversée du Bosphore (Bosphorus Crossing), which you designed for L’Artisan Parfumeur, is a case in point. Are there any travel destinations that you are get particularly excited about?
Yes, Yemen. There’s also the Dogon country, near Bandiagara, Mali. And the Himalayas… there will always be the Himalayas.*
Is every voyage a source of inspiration for future creations? Do you take notes, like olfactory travel souvenirs, that you go back to later?
I do indeed do that often… but not systematically. I always have a little notebook with notes about perfume formulas jotted down. They might be related to what I’ve seen… or not at all! They can be very conceptual, too, an immediate reaction to whatever ideas pop into my head.

You have often composed for niche brands, from L’Artisan Parfumeur to Comme des Garçons via Penhaligon’s. And your work is much-loved by fans of rare fragrances. Are you partial to that kind of company or did it just happen to work out that way, due to chance encounters and whatnot?
It is a question of chance encounters, connections that can be made or undone over the path of a career. My encounters have been so random that I don’t even think about which companies I could or would like to work with. My work always seems to come from bumping into someone unexpectedly – whether a new acquaintance or a long-lost one – chance encounters that turn out to be very fruitful.
What olfactory trends do you think will be emerging soon?
I haven’t the slightest idea. Oh yes, I do have one… but I’m obviously not going to tell you what it is!
Bertrand Duchaufour, what is your own private luxury?
That’s a lovely question. I try to take my time. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is more precious.

(*) Bertrand Duchaufour has already referred to the Himalayas with Dzongkha (L’Artisan Parfumeur), a unisex scent he designed after a trip to Bhutan, a small country between India and China.