THE SCENT OF THE NILE.(Francois Coty)

From 1930, a Profile of the perfumer Francois Coty

On a sunny afternoon last June, the French perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena arrived at the offices of Hermes, the luxury-goods maker, in Pantin, just north of Paris, to present his first essais--or olfactory sketches--for the company's next perfume. Ellena, who is fifty-seven years old, had recently been named Hermes's first in-house perfumer by Jean-Louis Dumas Hermes, the chairman of the company. Dumas Hermes wanted to fix a delicate problem: Hermes had an elegant perfume collection that included classic scents like Caleche and 24, Faubourg, yet they sold only modestly. Chanel, one of Hermes's chief rivals, made ten times as much money on perfume. (Led by its eighty-three-year-old warhorse, Chanel No. 5, the company's 2003 sales totalled $1.2 billion.) It might be possible for Hermes to make one of its older scents chic through advertising, but the family had chosen a more daring strategy: it would adopt Chanel's approach, and set up its own perfume laboratory. Ellena's mandate was to invent an intimately related family of scents that embodied the aesthetic of Hermes--a distinctly Parisian firm, founded as a saddlery concern on the Rue Bassedu-Rempart in 1837, that is known for its craftsmanship.

The scents sold by fashion houses such as Donna Karan and Christian Dior are not made by Donna Karan and Christian Dior. They are created by independent companies, such as Givaudan, in Switzerland, and Quest International, in the Netherlands. Estee Lauder has long been celebrated for her perfumes, but she did not create them--they were created by professional perfumers. (White Linen, for example, was created by Sophia Grosjman, a senior perfumer at International Flavors & Fragrances, a company based in New York.) Lauder was a discerning and involved client, but saying that she created her own scents is like saying that Pope Julius II painted the Sistine Chapel.

Hermes knew that Chanel's in-house approach had its disadvantages. The house's fragrance collection was limited by the creativity of one man--Jacques Polge, the company's perfumer. Chanel couldn't tap a brilliant new perfumer at, say, Firmenich, a Swiss company. Then again, a fashion house that outsources perfume creation may come up with individual top sellers, but it will find it difficult to amass a collection with a coherent identity. Chanel had a perfumer with a consistent aesthetic, institutional knowledge, a sense of tradition. The Hermes family had taken note when Polge, in 2001, created Coco Mademoiselle, another multimillion-dollar hit.

Soon after entering the Hermes offices, Ellena was directed to a room with a large conference table. Helene Dubrule, the company's international-marketing director for perfume, greeted him. Dubrule, who is thirty-nine years old, has an almost English crispness, and wears tailored clothes. Ellena was wearing his uniform: sports coat, button-down oxford, no tie, khakis. "Ellena" means "the Greek," and he looks the part, although his family is thoroughly French. He is not tall, but he has the confidence of a man who is conscious of being handsome.

Forty-five minutes later, Veronique Gautier, the president of the perfume division, walked in, dressed entirely in Hermes. After ordering tea and coffee from her assistants, Gautier, an elegant woman in her forties with dark hair, chatted briefly with Ellena, careful not to refer to the small glass spray vials that she knew he was carrying in his pocket. The presentation of an essai is a vulnerable moment for a perfumer. Ellena's submissions have been greeted with kisses and exclamations of joy. At other times, executives have hurled his creations back at him with fury: "This is shit! Get out, Monsieur Ellena! We have nothing left to say to you!"

Finally, Gautier said, in French, "Good. So what do you have?"