Flair Notes From Top to Bottom

by: Miguel Matos

Amélie Bourgeois and Anne-Sophie Behaghel are the perfumers from Studio Flair. They signed 23 niche perfumes launched this year and they are preparing an even bigger number for 2016; that puts them among the biggest hot shots in the “rare perfumes” industry. Their creations always bring novelty in ingredients and surprise in composition. Anne and Amélie are true forces of nature and above all, passionate artists. We met and sat for a cup of coffee at the bar during the last Pitti Fragranze and here is an excerpt from our chat.

Miguel: Even though you have had a lot of work lately, you are not bringing easy scents into the market. Is it easy to convince the brands with your compositions?

Anne-Sophie: It's difficult to make the brands follow us. The brands want to sell and have some commercial perfumes. But they think that the market is not ready for these kinds of fragrances, very edgy and different. However, I do think that the role of perfumers nowadays is to bring something new. The same way your role, as a blogger, is to bring to people these kinds of perfumes.

Frapin Nevermore

Miguel: It's not everyday you see that. You did it, for example, with Room 1015's Atramental or Frapin's Nevermore, Mendittorosa Sogno Reale... You work like crazy and you launched so many perfumes in the last year that I don't even know all of them. But every time I smell something from Flair I know that it will be new, fresh and different. I've started to recognize your style. How many perfumes from your atelier were launched into the market this year?

Anne-Sophie: 23.

Miguel: That's crazy. Do you follow a specific process when creating a fragrance?

Anne-Sophie: No. Each perfume has a different process.

Miguel: Do you have a philosophy of creation? How do you define your work? Imagine that I have a perfume house and I want to work with you. Explain to me your style. Why should I choose you?

Room 1015 Atramental

Anne-Sophie: We always smell a lot of materials and we want to create a special combination for you and you have to attach the raw materials to the reality of the owner of the brand. So we have to use the imaginary brain, more than the reasonable brain to adapt to reality. But when we work for Room 1015, for example, we have to create some new smells. We had to look at all the raw materials and combine one abstract material to everything.

Miguel: So you always try to find unusual ingredients, something that has not been used before. In Sogno Reale, it really smells different from eberything else.

Amélie: In Sogno Reale, that was the desire of Stefania. She told us about a dream she had about a sea urchin in the water with the smells of lemon and leather. In fact, she has inspired me to do it and when she was giving me the words, I was translating them into materials and smells.

Miguel:  Sogno Reale is very different and polarizing. Weren't you afraid of doing something so unusual?

Mendittorosa Sogno Reale

Amélie: I am not afraid of that. When you have a creator that pushes you into doing that, it's a very comfortable work. Stefania is always looking for things like that. Michael Partouche (Room 1015) is like that, too. They search for difference and originality. We can propose to them very unusual things; we can work on dosage and they trust us.

Miguel: Do you work for mainstream brands?

Anne-Sophie: No. Alexandre J is an exception. It is a big brand but they listen to us. It's more of a meeting of friends. It's not abstract perfumery but they are not against our way of working. We recently did Iris Violet and Argentic for them and we are happy with them.

Miguel: Is there any perfume project that you would like to propose to a brand but you find it too daring? Or there is no such a thing for you?

Amélie: We can't tell you everything! (laughs) But yes, for sure.

Miguel: You could do a line of perfumes called “Rejected Fragrances”. Moving on, do you have personal favourite raw materials?

Anne-Sophie: Synthetic woods, rose oxyde, aldehydes.

Amélie: Orris, fir balsam, vetiver and ambroxan.

Miguel: Do you work separately?

Anne-Sophie: It depends. At the beginning we often work separately but a lot of people like her head notes and my bottom notes. So we mix.

Miguel: How many perfumes can we expect from your studio in 2016?

Amélie:  Maybe 30.

Miguel: Are you workaholics?

Anne-Sophie: It's not work. It's passion.

Flair is not only Amélie and Anne-Sophie. The third element is Martine Denisot, who was at Pitti launching her personal new perfume brand called Pour Toujours. This is another Flair creation. I met Martine after and she showed me her beautiful, sometimes funny, sometimes comfortable or daring creations. I leave the brand for later, but here is something she wrote that I wanted to reproduce here:

“I come from a literary background and have worked in communication and travel. My predilection for olfactory raw materials emerged very young, when I was seen to 'sniff' my beautiful grandmother’s ivory kidskin glove – an unforgettable memory! Years later, I was lucky enough to spend a sabbatical year in a major Paris fragrance laboratory. I literally got drunk on the finest raw materials. I breathed them in, I dissected and devoured them, blended, mixed and memorised them. Off came the lid and… wow! The orangey note of methyl anthranylate hit my nose – the memory of my grandmother’s glove came flooding back! It was when I met Amélie Bourgeois that I decided to come back to fragrance. Her vibrant, refined perfumer’s expertise simply resonates with my 'nose to the wind' curiosity. To FLAIR I bring my own particular take on the world, a way of combining olfaction and retro-olfaction, scents and 'flavours', the taste of perceivable beauty, the unusual and, more reassuringly, eternal and enduring nature…” - Martine Denisot

http://www.flair-paris.fr/