Happiness pink, passion red, anti-blues blue… Do smells have a color?

Since Baudelaire's

, we know that sounds, smells and colors respond to each other.

This is called synesthesia, and the antennae of perfumers are particularly sensitive to it.

There are colourist noses, other musicians, but all of them have had fun playing the game of associations.

Among all the senses that smells ignite, color plays an essential role.

“For most people, colorless equals odorless,” emphasizes Céline Barel, perfumer at IFF (International Flavors & Fragrances).

In video

But, initially, the raw materials do not always look good.

And the more natural they are, the more changeable and unsexy they are.

“We can of course hide them in an opaque bottle as often in the Middle East, which likes hot color ingredients, or tint the bottle, continues our expert, but it is expensive.

Today, we prefer to decolorize and recolor the juice according to the story that the marketing wants to tell.

The big laboratories even have very varied color charts worthy of the most illustrious decorators.

A palette of emotions

“Color has a real impact on the perception of smell,” insists Céline Manetta, doctor of psychology and senior manager of consumer science at IFF.

The company even has a dedicated department.

Using artificial intelligence, each new juice is tested for texture, emotion, color from a database of 42 shades.

Results vary by culture, but there are universal constants.

Pink, the most requested color at the moment, is often associated with happiness.

See the worldwide success of

by Lancôme.

When we make the blind smell

from Lancôme to people of different nationalities by asking them to draw something, the majority trace peach-colored round shapes: femininity, softness, motherhood.

There are also fads.

“In women's perfumes, pink and red sell best,” continues Céline Barel.

While men favor “nature and azure” juices, green hardly works for women, despite illustrious counter-examples, such as

by Sisley,

au thé vert by Bulgari,

and

by Hermès, all very gender fluid.»

Will greenmania be a game changer?

And can we imagine

by Thierry Mugler – the least ethereal and lightest praline-patchouli accord possible – without its intergalactic blue?

Neuroscience does not (yet) know everything.

black magic and red gold

Gold and black, symbols of luxury, power and mystery, always have a strong power of attraction for both sexes.

It is not Serge Lutens and his impressive fragrant “blacklist”, who will say the opposite.

“Color took hold of modern perfumery at the same time as synthesis, says Jean Jacques, the perfumer of the Caron house.

With chemistry, the latter left the figurative for abstraction and freed the imagination.

She needed the other senses to translate what she wanted to say.

by Caron,

by Chanel,

or

by Guerlain,

of Balmain… Color has taken over names, bottles, juices… But, in the minds of perfumers, do notes also have nuances?

Thierry Wasser, Guerlain master perfumer, likes to quote the American Ron Winnegrad, who composed and taught only by analogies of colors, and, in Paris, spent hours in front of

, by Monet.

He admits to being more inspired by music, but remembers having once seen a flash of mauve when smelling an absolute of mimosa.

He acknowledges that in the Guerlain

collection ,

is a tribute to Soulages, with its chiaroscuro orange blossom black tea.

With

,

and

, her accomplice Delphine Jelk openly refers to the nude tones of Brancusi, the glossy red of Jeff Koons and the absolute black of Anish Kapoor.

For me, red is clearly the color of success

Francis Kurkdjian

On the seduction palette, there is also red.

He doesn't do nuance.

He is fire, heat, passion, danger, strength, the forbidden, celebration, sex.

"For me, red is clearly the color of success," laughs Francis Kurkdjian, whose perfume

seduced the urbi et orbi nostrils.

It all started with his meeting with the Baccarat house, which wanted a perfume to celebrate its 250th anniversary.

Francis was fascinated by the ruby ​​color obtained through the gold red technique, when 24 carat gold fuses with crystal at a temperature of 540°C.

And what does the ruby ​​smell like?

A little blood orange and cooked strawberry, but a lot of amber jasmine spiced with a pinch of red gold, saffron.

In any case, black is clearly not his story.

“I always go for the side of light,” says Francis Kurkdjian, whose latest

captures the spirit of the times.

Full screen

Eau de Parfum Black Opium Illicit Green, Yves Saint Laurent.

Allegra Spettacolore Eau de Parfum, Bulgari.

Baccarat Rouge 540 perfume extract, Maison Francis Kurkdjian.

Directed by Julie Gillet.

Photos Laura See

The blue note

The blue note got me out of the blues.

Jean Jacques, perfumer of Maison Caron

It's a very particular jazz chord tinged with blues, but in perfumery how does the favorite color of the French translate?

First with a masterpiece, an olfactory poem powdered with iris, velvety with vanilla after a fresh flight of bergamot and anise: L'Heure Bleue by Guerlain.

The magic also comes from his name and his birth.

One late summer afternoon in 1911, Jacques Guerlain is walking along the Seine: “The sun has set, night has not yet fallen… It is suspended time when everything is silent”, he writes then.

And when he left for the front in 1915, he took with him handkerchiefs soaked in his wife's perfume, l'

.

In any case, this perfume has suspended time.

More than a century later, he treats himself to a blue Klein dress for Christmas, which is worth a fortune.

And it doesn't matter if, in the olfactory firmament, blue now has another star, Angel by Thierry Mugler.

In their book

(Éd. Paja, 2008), Béatrice Boisserie and Coco Tassel asked the question of the blue note to different noses.

Jacques Polge, then Chanel perfumer, replied: “Rohmer or Guerlain.”

His son, Olivier, who has since succeeded him, said "Vanilla".

Camille Goutal, "The Moon".

Jean-Claude Ellena, “A feminine skin in a jazz club”.

Patricia de Nicolaï, “A fresh lavender”.

Today, Thierry Wasser sees more of an aquatic note in it.

For Jean Jacques, at Caron, blue is unquestionably ionone, the floral note of the iris, “my favorite color, which I impregnate my jacket, my scarf.

When I went through a difficult period, I created my perfume based on irone and ambroxan.

It's my olfactory antidepressant, which protects me from bad vibes and pulled me out of my sadness.

Sometimes the blue turns mauve, as in

, Christine Nagel's latest creation at Hermès.

The marriage of the hardest leather and the most fragile flower.

“At Hermès and its 75,000 shades of silk, everything always starts with color,” explains the designer.

I build each perfume like a painting of emotions.

In painting, when you combine blue and red, you get purple.

Me, when I associate two notes, I hope for an unknown one.

I'm looking for the third smell."

It also often gives odors to the works.

“Those of Bruegel breathe the poisonous sacred, myrrh, incense, violent peppers.

Eau de rhubarbe écarlate is a Sonia Delaunay.”

And orange, the house color?

"I am thinking of citrus fruits, but also of pumpkin, carrot seed, one of the most expensive in perfumery"

Full screen

Eau de parfum L'Eau de Liesse, Courrèges.

Directed by Julie Gillet.

Photos Laura See

When the gray smiles

He has a special status… Admittedly, he can evoke sadness, melancholy, worry, old age, but also wisdom, intelligence (gray matter).

In the Middle Ages, it was even a sign of hope and happiness.

Goethe saw it as the shade richest in nuances, and since a certain bestseller (

, by EL James), the grisettes 2022 marry it with soft eroticism.

It was also, with red and pink, the favorite color of Christian Dior, who, in 1947, had lined the walls of his fashion house, avenue Montaigne, in Paris.

Not a heavy iron grey, but a pearl grey, subtle and chic.

And then, for me, gray is Paris.

David Benedek, creator of the BDK brand

Full screen

Eau de toilette Violette Volynka, Hermès.

Eau de Parfum Gray Dior, Dior.

Eau de parfum Symphony, Les Extraits Edition d'Art Murano (limited edition), Louis Vuitton.

Directed by Julie Gillet.

Photos Laura See

For François Demachy, who signed

, now

, it takes the form of a very sophisticated floral, where jasmine, bergamot and wet undergrowth notes outline a pastel.

The very essence of elegance.

“As I have been painting since I was little, I have long associated perfumes, colors and textures”, confides David Benedek, creator of the BDK brand.

For me, the rose is not pink, but yellow;

cedar, off-white… And in my head, synthetic notes aren't colorless.

For

composed by Mathilde Bijaoui, we wanted to express the right balance between white and black, fresh spices, creamy white sandalwood and vanilla on one side, patchouli, smoked vetiver and black tea on the other.

And then, for me, gray is Paris.

I see it, I feel it gray, its roofs, its sky, a certain happy melancholy.

Finally, ambergris remains one of the most precious materials in perfumery.

Initially, this intestinal secretion of the sperm whale does not inspire glamour, but, rolled by the waves and dried in the sun, the gold of the seas brings delicacy, mystery, confusion to the compositions.

Today, natural ambergris, extremely rare and very expensive, is replaced by its synthetic derivatives such as ambrox, prized for its softness and fidelity.

white morality

It is not a solar perfume, but a lunar one.

Olivia de Rothschild, inspiration of Musc Oli de Caron

Not a color, white?

Oh yes !

replies Michel Pastoureau, the color historian, who publishes

at Éditions du Seuil.

And if all colors are ambivalent, white has less shadow than the others.

It is milk, chalk, lily, snow, moon… It is purity, sacred, nobility, innocence, peace, cleanliness, health and… modernity.

Read alsoImmaculate connection: how white became a color again

In perfumery, this translates a lot through what are called white musks, polycyclic musks that appeared in the 1990s and are essential in current perfumery.

Not only do they prolong the wake, but they give a clean skin effect, a milky, comfortable, morally clean side, which is so popular today.

Quite the opposite of animal musk, which smells of the beast and is now prohibited.

These cottony musks, Olivia de Rothschild, Ariane's daughter, who took over the Caron house in 2019, adore them.

At 19, the young student had already imagined the house's stackable bottles.

That is to say if she has flair.

The perfumer Jean Jacques offered him his doudou perfume, a very simple accord of very contemporary musky notes.

It has received so many compliments that it has become a real perfume, a synthetic diamond: 10% cashmeran, 10% javanol and 10% ambroxan, "the most human of synthetic molecules", according to Jean Jacques .

«

is the reflection of my little inner world, very sweet, but with character and energy, smiles Olivia.

A very enveloping fragrance, with which I feel good.

Every day he tells me a different story.

It is not a solar perfume, but a lunar one.

The fragrance of sleepless nights?