Francis Kurkdjian

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Callous as it may sound, for a true artist, the medium through which he conveys his message is pretty much irrelevant. Perfumer Francis Kurkdjan is a case in point.
Born into a family of musicians and composers on his paternal side and creative hobbyists on his maternal side, Kurkdjan’s original career aspiration was to become a ballet dancer. Having been rejected by the Paris Opera ballet in his early teens, by the age of 14 he had already switched his sights on the idea of perfumery – an ambition that proved far more successful.
You may not recognize his name (yet) but you would probably be able to sniff out his work at 30 paces. The fecund womanly trails of the musky Narciso Rodriquez for Her, the magnolia-strewn fruity floral Lanvin Rumeur are all down to his finely honed nose.
After studying science at university, Kurkdjan spent two years at the prestigious ISIPCA perfumery school in the suburbs of Paris, distinguishing himself as wheat from the chaff when he became one of just 16 (out of an initial 300 candidates) to graduate in his year. He was immediately snapped up by Quest and employed to work under the established perfumer Chantelle Ross who was then working with Jean Paul Gautier and Issey Miyake. Kurkdjan’s first solo project, in 1995, was to dream up a male scent for Jean Paul Gaultier – the resulting Le Male was a testosterone-fuelled take on a traditional citrussy cologne that has sold close to 60 million bottles since its launch.
Did he feel like he had finally made it? “Not really because at the time for me Jean Paul Gautier wasn’t really what fashion and fragrances was about. For me he was not a serious designer. He was doing cone shaped bras for Madonna, not yet serious couture, which for me is true fashion.”
It is this integrity that epitomises Kurkdjian’s work. For him, the commercial success is always secondary to his message which is why perfumery isn’t too great a leap from the type of career he envisaged in dance. “What I’m interested in is telling a story. I liked being a ballet dancer because you could have different lives. One night you would be Prince Charming, the next you would be Ivan the Terrible. I love that kind of metamorphosis,” explains Kurjdjan. “My work is to use scent to create stories.”
Indeed the 7 blends under the Maison Francis Kurkdjan umbrella which launched in 2009 are wildly evocative, from the freshly-made-bed cleanliness of Aqua Universalis to Lumière Noir, a delicate balance of contradictions – dark and light; rose and patchouli – that conjures illicit meetings under the particular, enchanting illumination of a Parisian sky. Perhaps the most personal fragrance is the orange flower and cedarwood-rich APOM (an anagram for ‘A Piece Of Me’). It tells the story of Kurkdjan’s Iranian grandmother’s life after leaving her homeland and moving to France via Turkey. “She lived on the Marmera and she always told me how beautiful it was and how they would go out after dark. She wasn’t allowed to go out alone and always had to wear a scarf but there was something very warm and enchanting about it,” he explains.  
The desire to be a raconteur even trumps the ingredients in the priority list when a new blend is in the mixing tube. “What is important to me is not necessarily what ingredients I use, it is the feeling that is produced at the end.” In fact, Kurkdjan often has consciously avoids the notes he most favours so his story-telling isn’t biased. “I try to use what I need rather than what I like,” he stresses. “It is the same way we think about words. There may be words that sound nice to your ear but they may not be the ones you need to produce a sentence. I am led by my head, not by what I smell.”
It is a good policy, considering the canny inventions his imaginative mind has sparked. Not content with producing exquisite perfumes (including two new Absolues that have just been added to the range), the aim of La Maison Francis Kurkdjan (the ‘Maison’ in the name not only refers to the couture-like quality of the brand but to everything associated with home) is to create a family of luxury scented items. “To me luxury is about creating little moments of joy in everyday life,” he stresses. The range helps him do that: there’s the laundry liquid with matching fabric softener which means that the Aqua Universalis scent can be worn on clothing rather than on skin, perfumed leather wrist straps, incense papers and even scented blowing bubbles (Les Bulles d’Agathe) inspired by Kurkdjian’s time in New York.
“I was downtown in Broadway and a guy was selling huge bubbles guns. I figured that the base liquid was more or less the same as the one we use when making scented shower gel,” he explains.  After transporting the idea to France for an evening of alfresco music at Versailles, where they lent a touch of fairytale wonder to the palace gardens, filling the air with an iridescent curtain designed to “create a frontier” between the outside world and the magic of the evening’s entertainment, and provided hours of amusement for the children who were there, Kurkdjan struck on their educational powers. “I wanted to create something inexpensive and playful for kids in the range. Also, I think that it is as important to train the nose as it is to learn the colours.” Hence, the bubbles come in a pantone of shades with scents to match such as the green pear, pink strawberry and pale yellow melon.
It isn’t the first time Kurkdjian has been asked to create something unusual: his ingenuity is part of the reason clients come to him with their bespoke fragrance fantasies. In the past he has created scented leather whips for S&M fetishists, attempted a candle scented like snow on the behest of Donna Karan (“naturally it never made it to the market”), and he is now working on fragrances to scent the defiles at a number of shows such as modern couturier Alexandre Vauthier during Paris fashion week.
With the growing trend for sensorial branding (i.e. billboards scented like the product they are touting), it is likely there will be ever increasing ways for Kurkdjian to permeate our sensibilities with his scents.
Covert marketing aside, how would he advise us to choose the right scent? “It depends what you’re looking for – like with love. You have to ask do you want a one night stand or do you want a partner for life because they’re really not the same thing.”

La Maison Francis Kurkdjan is available from Space NK (www.spacenk.com), the boutique at 5 rue d’Algers in Paris and  www.franciskurkdjian.com