The Bespoke Perfumes of Paris

I've been thinking a lot about the nose recently after reading Avery Gilbert's "What the Nose Knows" which is a fascinating look at scent from a scientific point of view. He talks about how the nose gets accustomed to certain scents and basically stops smelling them (which explains how people can work in some pretty smelly places and not go completely nuts). All the more reason then to sample the endless amount of perfumes in the world. The International Herald Tribune recently had an interesting piece on bespoke fragrance in Paris. Bespoke fragrances have a variety of price points but to get the attention of a classically-trained nose you will have to pay couture prices. At the top of the line we find Cartier. At Cartier in Paris, Mathilde Laurent is the in-house "nose" creating "made-to-measure" scents. For custom designs Cartier sells a set of two Baccarat flasks of five fluid ounces, three small spray bottles and two refill bottles, enough for three to five years for $75,500.

Small perfume company, l'Artisan Parfumeur is planning to introduce in January a line of single-edition perfumes. Only one bottle of each will be made and sold through the Paris store. Bertrand Duchaufour is the nose behind the Mon Numéro line which will be sold in one-off bottles designed by Pascale Riberolles, an artist and master glass blower and sell for about $20,000.

But the person in the article I'd most like to sniff out just might be Francis Kurkdjian, who doesn't work out of a boutique but has a website and a mobile laboratory which he travels around the world with to meet clients. He has worked on fragrances for Kenzo, Armani, Yves St. Laurent and others and has the type of obsessively passionate devotion to scent that is a hallmark of the best noses. Kurkdjian's bespoke scents are conceived, blended and matured over 6 to 10 months, and priced at $10,000 for two 60-milliliter flasks which are hand-engraved with a name or personal message.