FRAGRANCE NOTES ISSUE 1 2018

NOTABLE NOSES

The Nose: Carlos Benaïm Title: Vice President of International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF) Accolades: • Lifetime Achievement Award, American Society of Perfumers, 2004 • Perfumer of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award, Fragrance Foundation, 2014 • Named Master Perfumer by International Flavors and Fragrances, 2013 The shortest and longest amount of time it’s taken him to produce a perfume: A matter of months... to 7 years Hobbies: Painting and drawing Farah Ahmed, President & CEO, IFRANA: We believe that fragrance enhances lives, not only for consumers but also for those who work in the industry, in the natural sourcing and farming communities, and all around the world. At IFRANA, we see it as our job to protect and promote those groups. What does that statement mean to you? Carlos Benaïm: From my perspective, fragrance has many ways of enhancing our lives. One way is through connection to memories. If I go very personal, in my case, I was brought up in Morocco with all the wonderful smells and tastes of the country. I lived in that culture and grew up in it until I was 22. That time was very influential in my career, especially as I’ve tried to convey that culture through my fragrances, through my work, through my art, and my creations. Many of the things I always talk about I can note from my childhood—the orange flower, the foods from Morocco—they’ve made their way into my fragrances, especially those for women. Fragrance also helps to enrich your experiences, making you very attuned to things around you. Whereas most people just walk to a monument, point, and look at it, in my case, I’m looking constantly, I’m smelling and touching the fragrances along the way. For me, that colors the whole experience and makes it multidimensional. We feel much more when we use all of our senses. When we are not just using our sight, but also our sense of smell, our brains, our memories, and all the connections that we have through the world at large. Ahmed: Is there a time in your life or a specific memory that you keep going back to, a certain source of information, that is more consistent than other memories when you approach your art? Benaïm: There are many memories like that in my life that have

been very influential. Some have made their way into perfume and some haven’t... You start thinking about people that you loved, grandparents and parents, and the kind of fragrance is very warm and memorable. A simple example, my grandfather used snuff tobacco. He carried it in a little golden case, and would put the tobacco with a violet scent on the back of his hand every day and snuff. I tried to recreate the experience, but I could never recreate the exact scent because the type of tobacco he used grows in Morocco and it’s not easy to find. Those are impressions that are extremely powerful and stay with you throughout life. Sometimes you even try to put them in the perfume—sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s very influential, the travel, the personal connections, the personal life. You accumulate many experiences like that in life; I think everybody does. Ahmed: Touching back on your childhood in Morocco and the different scents and spices that have influenced your work, can you speak to how fragrance can help to grow understanding and appreciation for other cultures around the globe? Benaïm: I use materials from all around the world. For instance, tuberose and jasmine from India and rose from Turkey. We bring those cultures to the public, not only through our communication and our imagination, but also through their special ingredients. Ahmed: For many musical artists, oftentimes their music will reflect how they’re feeling at a given time or how they’ve evolved—some albums are a little bit darker, while others are happier and more upbeat. Have your fragrances evolved with you, either professionally or personally, over time? Benaïm: There has definitely been a major evolution. When you start working at the very beginning, they just put all these ideas in your head and you don’t know how to do them, and you just start setting up ingredients and doing things in various containers. It’s very complicated because you don’t understand yet the simplicity of things. Then, as you go along, you become much more structured. The sophistication is part of the process. You begin to approach the work trying to understand what is important and what is not, focusing on important ingredients and always trying to research and find ideas. My solution is keeping things simple and trying to understand our research while enhancing my work. Ahmed: Writers sometimes experience writer’s block, where they have to take a break because the words just stop coming to them, though the words eventually come back, and they recalibrate and move forward. Does that happen with perfumers as well?

Benaïm: Yes. Sometimes you get in a rut and you have worked

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