Aphorisms of a perfumer – Dominique Ropion - NEZ LITERATURE

“There is always a perfume or smells associated with an event, a place or an encounter, like an infallible and faithful memory aid, a formula not necessarily recognized but always available, if necessary. »
Dominique Ropion is often described as a discreet, gifted, facetious character, and a hard worker. He defines himself as a composer, an arithmetician of perfumes, driven by the idea that“the same formula tells different stories on each person’s skin”. Over the course of the chapters, he breaks down the smells that marked his childhood, those that he likes to come across at the bend of a street or through an encounter, or even those of flowers - rose, narcissus, tuberose -, for us reveal its olfactory and emotional secrets. Exploring the notions of addiction, animality and attraction, he attempts to “to seize any existence, and to embrace its intimacy, necessarily foreign”.
Through this unique testimony, he transmits to us a sensitive and unique approach to his profession.
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The author : Dominique Ropion with Marie-Bénédicte Gauthier
Born in 1955, Dominique Ropion is a master perfumer at the composition house International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), in Paris, since 2000. He is the author of great perfumery successes of the last thirty years: Ysatis and Amarige from Givenchy, Life is beautiful from Lancôme, Alien by Thierry Mugler, or, for Frédéric Malle, Portrait of a Lady and Carnal Flower.
Marie-Bénédicte Gauthier is a journalist and author of several books, including Mythical perfumes(ed. La Martinière, 2011).
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Preface by Frédéric Malle
Grandson of the founder of Christian Dior perfumes, Frédéric Malle founded his “Éditions de parfums” in 2000. Among the perfumers of the house are Dominique Ropion, Jean-Claude Ellena (The Writer of Odors, Nose literature, 2017), Michel Roudnitska and Sophia Grojsman.