The Secrets of Perfume

Book Review

Dominique Ropion did it, Mathilde Laurent has done it twice, Jean-Claude Ellena still does it – not making perfume but writing books; and now Sylvaine Delacourte has done it too with her Memoirs of a Creator.

But, unlike the reflections of Laurent, the aphorisms of Ropion and the insights of Ellena, this is a simple tale of Delacourte’s life at Guerlain, where she started as make up advisor and finished as Creative Director under the boss Jean-Paul.

The book is called Perfume Secrets but if you were hoping for a grimoire of hidden knowledge you’ll be sorely disappointed. There is nothing here about the art and science of perfume creation, and -it seems- not a great deal by the author at all. Even if you had missed the (small) mention of co-author David Alliot, it soon becomes clear that another pen has done most of the work.

Alliot is a freelance editor, but even though he has nothing to do with perfume (he’s an expert on the author Céline) he’s clearly mugged up on the background and churned out a coffee table History of Perfume, interspersed with the real meat of the book, Delacourte’s stories and anecdotes.

Anyone with an ear for language can see how he tries to create a seamless whole, matching his professional prose to Sylvaine’s sales pitch — a job he carries out quite well. But the fact that he is little more than a mouthpiece for Delacourte’s ego becomes clear in chapter three, which is so densely peppered with I, me and my’s (83 times in 3¼ pages) it gets the book off to a boring start.

But, beside the narcissism and the potted history of perfume, what else is there on offer?

Unlike the pearls of wisdom offered by those who have thought actually about their practice, what you get here are some workman-like facts and perfume gossip; nothing you wouldn’t hear in the office canteen.

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So, what about those ‘secrets’?

-The nose works better when you’re hungry-

That’s logical — seeing as smell is linked to taste and both senses are likely to work better when the body wants to check the next edible thing it comes across … (just sniff that milk if you’re not sure).

-Overall, a woman’s sense of smell is slightly better than a man’s, but it varies with her cycle-

That would seem to be the case, but this is hardly a secret when there are numerous papers and articles on the internet dealing with the subject.

-Perfumers don’t often wear perfume, except when testing a creation-

Ellena has said he never wears perfume, which could seem to be an odd thing to the outsider. But then again, if you spend all day with perfume, wearing it for pleasure is like going on a busman’s holiday.

-The stopper of No.5 is shaped like Place Vendôme-

It’s there on Google Maps.

-In perfumery, as in other fields, the most important thing is the harmony and balance of the whole-

Is this really a secret?

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Delacourte is most incisive when she spills the beans on her co-workers — and not always anonymously. The most well known of them is -of course- Jean-Paul Guerlain, her ‘olfactory sparring partner’, who can be “charming but temperamental”. Too bad he’s in no state to speak for himself…

As well as this sort of thing, Delacourte tells a few funny anecdotes. The best one is this :

-When Guerlain were getting ready to release Mahora, no one dared tell Jean-Paul that -in some French accents- Mahora sounds like ‘mort aux rats’.

Oh, what’s your new perfume darling? Death to Rats!

No surprise this tropical feminine was a flop. And what’s more, it didn’t even sell when it was re-named Mayotte.

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Most of these ‘secrets’ are not really surprising in hindsight, they are the kind of thing a parfumista might already know – or could have guessed at. But -to be fair- the book is really aimed at those with a passing interest, not the devotee.

There is, however, one detail in the book that many wouldn’t know :

Delacourte says she was trained in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and hypnosis for a job working in the Sur Measure Service at Guerlain’s flagship store on the Champs Elysées. (One wonders whether this was before or after the débacle with Mahora.)

Ensconced in the upstairs salon, she would hypnotise her rich clients and then –Freud like– sift their childhood memories for anything glinting of a happy smell. After that she would apply herself to the nitty-gritty of the consultation; out come the mood boards and she works on the client’s preferences: do you like fruity notes? … what about flowers? Try smelling this…

There’s no rush, think about it and I’ll see you next week.

After a year of this –and 45 grand– the long suffering wife gets two litres of juice and a crystal bottle with her name on it.

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And just in case we didn’t know that Delacourte is a bona fidé Perfumer, at the back of the book is a list of pongs she has been involved with.

Because the parfumista websites don’t credit her on the Guerlains (she was the creative director after all, not the perfumer) it’s hard to know just how much input she may have had on any one release. I’ve smelled a few of the Guerlains she claims to have worked on, and don’t remember much about them, except a matronly air in one or two.

And then, after she left Guerlain, Delacourte started her own brand; of which there are four listed in the 2018 Guide – where they get a total of six stars between them.

Probably the most interesting thing about Delacourte’s oeuvre is she doesn’t seem to have made anything by herself – her memoirs included; two hundred pages of hack writing and no real secrets.

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Les secrets des parfums is published by belin-editeur.com at 18€

Sylvaine Delacourte