A Day in the Creation Center of the World: Givaudan, Part I

After a successful interview with the beautiful Sonia Constant and an exchange of emails with the Givaudan press office, I was able to negotiate my appointment, interviews and excursions to the center of perfume creation.by: Serguey Borisov

This was not my first visit to the Parisian Givaudan office on avenue Kleber, 46. I went there before, but not so solemnly. This is the address of the Fine Fragrances department. The word “fine” has no relation to the prices or quality of the fragrances and simply means that this is the birthplace for alcohol-based fragrances. Later that same day, I visited the Department of Consumer Goods in Argenteuil, near Paris—but that will be a topic for another article. 

Givaudan starts with the lobby of the company. It is the nicest-smelling lobby I've encountered in my life—I remember from my different visits the smells of bitter green and petitgrain, a light accord of white flowers and some masculine sport cologne. I still don't understand the principle of their fragrance selection. The TV on the wall shows perfume commercials, booklets on the table write about socially responsible cooperation with vanilla, vetiver, and ylang-ylang producers from the faraway corners of the planet. There's a perfume game next to Reception for visitors who have a minute to wait for their meeting. A lab bottle without a name or brand: sniff and guess! Then you can compare your opinion with the correct name [it is covered but can be revealed]. Naturally, the perfumes are selected from Givaudan creations and are changed with some unknown (weekly?) frequency.

Perfume game: a lab bottle without a name or brand. Sniff and guess the perfume name and perfume brand! Check out your perfume memory and erudition!

The perfume Paradise tour was made for me by Sophie Cauchi, Communications Manager, Fine Fragrances Givaudan. She's a prim and slender woman, spreading orange blossom and neroli perfume sillage (she answers my question, “this is my personal fragrance gift from our perfumer!”), and right after greetings she leads me down to the basement, where the fragrance variants are born from individual perfume ingredients.

To get somewhere else in Givaudan, you need to go through the corridor I've called the “Corridor of Glory” between the walls that have within themselves some famous bottles under bright light. The bottles on display are all the most well-known and famous victories of Givaudan perfumers. You can see how many well-known perfume brands trust Givaudan perfumers and earn from their professionalism: Calvin Klein,Prada, Diptyque, Thierry Mugler, Tom Ford, Lanvin, Narciso Rodriguez, etc. Sorry, there are too many brands to mention every one, as about 1/3 of all the world's perfumes were created here.

Best fragrances by Givaudan

Sophie Cauchi: This is my favorite floor of the building. Because here happens all the magic of fragrance creation: ethereal ideas written in numbers and letters become real perfumed liquids. Seventeen perfumers' assistants work here, and their work is very important for our company. Because all the perfume ideas invented by the perfumer depend on the accuracy of the assistant's work, how well the ideas will be implemented into perfumes. However, they make only about 30% of the whole compounding work—the remaining 70% of the work is done by automatic machines, computer-controlled robots. And it is something that does not make any mistakes. Look there, in the corner of the working room.

Sergey Borisov: And why doesn't the computer do all the work? Why do you still need human assistants?

Sophie Cauchi: Because the robot can work only with liquid materials, not powdery or viscous. And many perfume ingredients in their pure form and under normal conditions are not liquids but, for example, powders or solid viscous and even resins. For example, here’s a pure benzoin from Laos, see what it is? Almost solid brown resin! To use it, it is first necessary to use some scoop to take a piece out of it and then dissolve. There is some heating work and you need to choose the correct solvent. That is what the assistants helping the perfumers do.

In the photo above there is a robot, operating in a glass-walled room. There is a rack that contains perfume supplies for the robot; these are aluminum containers with aromatic substances. There's a tube leading to the conveyor from every container. The containers are of different sizes, and it's possible to judge the popularity of the ingredients in perfumery by their volume. For example, Hedione is housed in a 20 kilo bucket-sized container. A Cepionate container—that`s a modern Hedione-like substance—has the same volume. And there was container of even greater capacity, about 25-30 kilograms, but I was unable to see the name.


 

Manually prepared pre-perfume bottles on the assistant's desktop, before sending them to the conveyor robot into the glass-walled room where people are not allowed. You could see bar codes which make the bottles robot-operated.

Sergey Borisov: Is a perfumer's assistant a personal assistant? Or does one perfumer assistant work with several perfumers?

Sophie Cauchi: Yes, assistants are attached to a perfumer and it develops into a personal working relationships. So there are 17 assistants in Paris and we have 16 perfumers in Paris. But we also have offices in other cities, fifteen more in New York, three in Sao Paulo, and two in Singapore (we have just opened our new Perfumer School there). There's one possible exception: when some assistant goes on vacation, he/she is replaced by others who take on a part of his/her job. For example, Julie works with Antoine Maisondieu and this young man is the assistant of  Michel Girard, the co-author of Paco Rabanne 1 Million. Do you want to talk with them? 

Michel Girard's assistant working 

Each assistant works in a glass cubicle. The workplace is equipped with electronic scales, a computer and a lot of shelves. There are laboratory flasks with perfume modifications on the shelves, according to the assistant's routine order. Boxes have code names that are understandable to the perfumer and assistant only—no brand names or perfume names or customer names will be seen here. But you can see a variety of descriptive names that are sometimes not quite correct—this is the Givaudan kitchen, not the front door.

Sergey Borisov: There is, perhaps, important work they are doing now. Let's not distract people from it. And what are the prospects for assistants? Could they become perfumers in their career path?

Sophie Cauchi: This is a difficult question. It is not a usual case that assistants become perfumers. This is very rare occasions, but it may occur with some assistants who show particular perfumer abilities and have finished our perfumer school with great success. But usually assistants are team players, helpers, that make a good team with perfumers, in which trust to an assistant has a very important role. It's a good job and the assistant is the right hand of a perfumer. They received their education in ISIPCA, as perfumers, but it lasts only two years, whereas perfumers have a longer and more specialized secondary education. But I'd say that becoming a perfumer through the assistant position is not the best way.

Sergey Borisov: And all the perfumers have assistants?

Sophie Cauchi: Hmmm, not all of them, by the way. The fresh perfumers, who have just finished school and were recruited by us do not have an assistant for the first year. They need to wait, and this year they weigh and mix all their own compositions. Every perfumer goes through this, and everyone recognizes that this is an interesting and useful experience for the novice perfumer. It helps to understand the behavior of all the ingredients in the work, and is especially helpful to understand how important and rigorous it is, and that it's work that requires maximum precision. And people start to appreciate the work of other employees. After that, you will not be asking an assistant to prepare a formula in five minutes—you already know that it takes time and attention. You begin to understand the technical difficulties—for example, some powdered ingredients (vanilla, coumarin, camphor), after a certain limit cannot dissolve any more, so some components need to be heated and other need to be dissolved; that some components can be added to the mixture at any time, while others, such as the volatile citrus oils can be added at the end of the process only, when all the possible temperature changes have happened. And this is very important.

Sergey Borisov: And where are all those substances which are not available to the robot?

Sophie Cauchi: They are in a special refrigerator. And assistants take them out when necessary, and weigh the right amount, before carrying them back into the fridge. Want to try something while it is open?

The refrigerator is built into the wall of the working room. I chose to try the Australian sandalwood oil—we have dipped paper blotters and went on. This spicy-woody lactonic scent accompanied me all day because the blotter remained in the breast pocket of my navy jacket.

Sophie Cauchi: Here is a library of perfumes Givaudan stored, their approved modifications, selected accords and brief wins, all created over the years inside the Givaudan company. This is a rack on the wall, with the perfumes of our perfumers. Each perfumer has a code of two or three letters, and these codes are understandable by both the robot and assistants. Here is the storage for perfumer's fragrances that are in the process of development, and those that have been approved by evaluators and customers.

Sergey Borisov: Those are bases or finished fragrances?

Sophie Cauchi: This is both. Here the word “base” has a different meaning. Here the base is the basic accord that perfumer chose to work out, so his/her assistant does not have to make the fragrance from the scratch every time, so they made a “base,” sort of a big accord to be developed and modified. And then on this basis, they begin to make variations on the different themes to find the right balance, adding new notes or making its constituent components stronger or weaker. Like, to add some freshness in the beginning, or to strengthen the rose or jasmine in the heart, or to work on stability and so on.

Sergey Borisov: Look, here is the name of perfumer Antoine Lie! But he does not work in Givaudan now, does he?

Sophie Cauchi: Yes, he works in another company now. But his formulas and all of his developments during his work at Givaudan still belong to the company. Therefore, we maintain here the perfumes and accords that remain after his departure. There is, of course, a limitation on the shelf life, about one year, so some years after the perfumer has left the company, all the scents from his locker are disposed of like other perfume waste. And the formulas remain Givaudan property forever.

Here you can see what's inside the perfume locker of Sonia Constant—only bottles with perfume liquids. I made my best effort to keep all the possible commercial secrets.

Rack with Sonia Constant's works

Next we visited the Fine Fragrances Applications laboratory. It is a very necessary laboratory for the modern perfumery market—because most eau de toilettes or perfumes need something extra to create “an extension line.” Hair mists, aftershaves, shower gels, shampoos, deo sprays or deo sticks, fragrant candles, soaps, body creams and body lotions, all together or in any chosen combo. Extensions for the collection of a perfume product can be quite large—they would need just a useful basis in the form of wax, cream, detergent or deo composition.

Perfumers generally make their fragrances for alcohol-water bases, and all surface-active agents (surfactants) or detergents can change the properties of perfumes, and it is necessary to work not only on the price of perfume, but also on its effectiveness in every useful base (another meaning for the word “base”). Another story concerns the fact that the industry safety standards are different for toilet water and cosmetics such as deodorant or body lotion.

Here are some cosmetics (soap, moisturizing lotion) bases developed in the lab, as not all of the Givaudan customers have their own cosmetic base production. Among the recent achievements of the laboratory they are proud of: fragrant Christmas candles Sapin de Noel by Diptyque.



On the shelf at Fine Fragrances Applications lab, some examples of cosmetic bases and some creams in development.

After that we went up to the floor where Givaudan perfumers create their ideas. In the rooms with transparent walls and doors, by the tables hoarded with laboratory vials, perfumers are sitting. Almost in every perfumer room there is a shelf along the wall that displays their best creations and some windowsills are inhabited by flacons, too. 

Perfumers sniff blotters, work on a computer and can discuss further perfume development with assistants. All they need is in their heads, and the computer. For some time now perfumers havebeen able to work on fragrances anywhere where there is mobile communication—a special applet allows perfumers to create formulas, edit them and send them to assistants in any laboratory in the world by means of Givaudan-protected technology.

First we went to the young perfumer Quentin Bisch, known by his perfumes for Etat Libre d'Orange, Ex Nihilo, Victoria's Secret, Loewe, but he created many others, as could be seen by his shelf (well, not as many as on Sonia Constant's shelf, but still!). We immediately agreed that this will not be an interview, but a conversation about the news instead.  

Young perfumer Quentin Bisch already has quite a few briefs won and perfumes launched.

Quentin Bisch: One of my last perfumes launched is Fleur Narcotique by Ex Nihilo. That’s a new brand, in which the creators wanted the perfumers to express themselves, because we were very free in perfume creation. It's very interesting that they make perfumes that can be customized, or made personal. Like, each Ex Nihilo perfume can be personalized with three ingredients of the highest quality. You could highlight one of the existing olfactive facets of the perfume or make a new creative twist. We have selected raw materials of exceptional quality from around the world, specially for Ex Nihilo. It could be Rose de Mai from Grasse or Sandalwood of Australia, or Iris, or Bourbon Vanilla. So you can add some oil into a bottle and make your own fragrance. So I made Fleur Narcotique, and also I have tried it with three versions of empowered flower notes: more rosy, more jasminey, and more orange flower-y.

Sergey Borisov: So you made not one perfume, but instead you made four! But … well, no one can make the mixing process safe enough … if the customer will pour too much rose absolute into Fleur Narcotique he could just spoil both the perfume and impression!

Quentin Bisch: Absolutely! But the customer could choose between four ready versions! Also I have made together with Olivier Pescheux and Jacques Huclier newAzzaro Pour Homme Limited Edition 2015, and the classic fougère cologne was highlighted by very sparkling top notes, as we tried to work out the luminous side ofAzzaro Pour Homme. We extended the juiciness of the citrus note by ginger and made the aromatic side more contemporary playing around basil and mint.

Sergey Borisov [smelling new Azzaro]: I have heard somewhere, that you're a specialist on citrus accords … seems it has been proved now!

Quentin Bisch: It's funny you're talking about that, as I have never thought about any specialization. I thought I was better in orientals.

Perfumer Quentin Bisch in his working office.

There are groups of new perfume modifications in the creation process. Each group of lab bottles means a new perfume launch, soon. That was when Quentin took out some blotters and began to show them. He showed me his first fragrance, L'Essence by Reminiscence, he created it as an homage to Papier d'Armenie, when he was working at Robertet, with Michele Saramito. He showed a perfume on the subject of tobacco, with tonka beans and patchouli, which has already been demonstrated at the exhibition of perfumery materials in Paris as an example of the proper use of patchouli oil and its processing to improve the properties. He showed the same perfume in a less roughly natural and more skillful modification that has been approved for further development by an unnamed niche brand. Recently (June 10-11, 2015) Givaudan has been participating in the 12th exhibition of perfumery materials Salon International des Matières Premières pour la Parfumerie with a program of ethical relationships with raw natural materials suppliers. Vanilla (Henri Fraise Fils et Cie, Madagascar), patchouli (Sulawesi and Borneo), vetiver (Agrisupply, Haiti) and ylang-ylang (AGK, Moheli) were taken as new examples. These were new steps for the development of the program previously started with the cultivation of sandalwood in Australia, benzoin in Laos, and tonka beans in Venezuela. The main purpose for the program is to support the producers of natural materials and ensure the future of perfumes, while preserving the environment and respecting local populations.

Quentin Bisch: ”What I really love working in Givaudan that I'm getting a variety of tasks every day, I jump from one aromatic universe to another and sometimes there`s nothing common between them! This is the challenge for my creativity, to create perfumes in different perfume families, working in different perfume styles, in different directions. It is very interesting! Now I am working in the best place in the world. But I can`t be sure that sometime I won't become an in-house perfumer, while I am totally happy here and now.”

Ten steps down the corridor, and I am in the next room—and here`s smiling Olivier Pescheux. Here we stayed for some longer discussion. It turns out that Olivier became a perfumer in a complicated way. In 1990, he chose alternative military service—the work in a French company abroad. It was a branch of Grasse perfume company Payan Bertrand in Thailand, where he worked 15 months, in charge of product quality. When he returned to France, mergers and acquisitions rattled and new young perfumers were not in demand. So he spent a year and a half in Annick Goutal (as a substitute for a perfumer on maternity leave) and  four years in the Japanese company KAO. Actually, he is known for the galaxy of Diptyque perfumes, and co-authorship of Paco Rabanne 1 Million and Christian Dior Higher for most of us.

Sergey Borisov: You are partnered with Diptyque for a very long time and made each of their new fragrances. Is that due to some special connection?

Olivier Pescheux: I am familiar with Myriam Badault, which is responsible for the olfactory DNA of the brand, from the time of our joint work in Annick Goutal in 1991-1992. After that, she worked at Jean Patou and Rochas, when there was a full-time perfumer (Jean Kerleo), and now here we are again cooperating. But I do not do all the Diptyque perfumes—a good half for Myriam were made by Fabrice Pellegrin. But I do not consider this as sort of a personal competition between perfumers or between perfume companies. In general, the profession of perfumer is a work at the table by 90%, because from the hundred of projects in which I participate, only about 10-15 perfumes are taken.

Perfumer Olivier Pescheux: "90% of a perfumer's work goes into table. Nobody`s able to win all the briefs on the planet."

Sergei Borisov: I was told that you have been working at Givaudan since 1998. What do you think about perfume trends we have had lately—orientals, ambers and Oud? What do you think will happen in the near future?

Olivier Pescheux: It is difficult to say with certainty. We cannot say that everything is already over for orientals, as Ex Nihilo just released my oud fragrance, Oud Vendôme. Or, for example, Lancôme La Vie Est Belle wins confidently on the market, for three years—but this fruity-floral gourmand fragrance follows in the footsteps ofChanel Coco Mademoiselle, which has been known for 15 years and does not think of giving up. It seems to me that, despite the fact that it is now necessary to wait for the green and fresh white flower perfumes—the future belongs to them—you cannot take the oud, ambers and orientals out of market. Oud will remain in future perfumes, albeit not in such rough and bright compositions. One example: remember popular perfumes of the 90s? Acqua di Gio pour Homme, Kenzo Pour Homme, Escape For Men—all those bright fresh aquatics? It's a fact we still have to add this freshness and other fresh materials to most perfumes! We add them even into oriental perfumes. Because people have become accustomed to them, they like them, they want an easily recognizable and understandable perfume with familiar notes.

Sergey Borisov: I just came from Grasse, from the gathering of the May roses. It was such a fantastic experience! Do you get the chance to work with it often?

Olivier Pescheux: Yes, recently I had the wonderful opportunity to work with it. I worked on a brief from the UAE, in which I had no restrictions about precious raw materials. Whatever the price will be. So I used a percent (1%) of May rose absolute from Grasse in the perfume—and it was the first time I could use it in such quantities. It's very expensive absolute, and besides that I have added Bulgarian and Turkish rose oils in the composition. Usually, we have to use much less rose in the compositions, from 0.05% to 0.2% ...

Then we talked a little about traditional Russian smells, looking for something that could suddenly spark for a new Diptyque project, and I said goodbye to Olivier. On the way to lunch, we came over to Sonia Constant to greet her and to give appreciation in person.

Impressive shelf of perfumes created by perfumer Sonia Constant.

We saw some fragrances made within the framework of Givaudan perfumers' competition to create perfumes for young dress designers' collections in another corridor (every perfume was ready to fill beautiful bottles and be launched to the market tomorrow!).

  

It was half an hour before we were to get to the building where not a single blogger has appeared before: the Givaudan Consumer Goods possession in Argenteuil. Into the kingdom of washing powders, shampoos, air fresheners, soaps, creams and lotions. But this is the subject of the next article.

Art installation inside the Givaudan Fine Fragrances office

Huge thanks to Givaudan perfumer Anna Juquois-Vidineeva, Communications Manager Sophie Cauchi (Fine Fragrances) and Martina Uzan (Consumer Goods) for organizing this great day in the French offices of Givaudan SAS. Grand Merci to every Givaudan perfumer, assistant and employee that made my day so perfect and so fine-smelling!