 is probably the most powerful of all your senses. It can transport you through time, memory, space. I'm sure you've all experienced it. But when I say I'm a perfumer, people always have a totally different set of questions. They always ask, when did you first know you wanted to be a perfumer? How did you get here today? And what do you do at work all day? So I hope my personal journey and a few glimpse about how a fragrance is created will answer these questions for you. Becoming a perfumer is definitely a unique, fun, and exciting experience. But what you may not know is how challenging it can be to enter that small and closed world if you don't have any connections or pedigree, or if you don't live near grass, the capital of perfumery in the south of France, since the 1750s. It will make the journey just a little bit harder, even if you're French. I was born in Rennes, in Brittany, in Western North France. My first smell memories are nothing that exotic. Rain, grass, bread, butter, cream, salty ocean, maybe fish, pig, or chicken farmer along the road, far away from the fields of jasmine and tuberose and rows of grass. I was lucky enough to grow around a vast collection of roses in my parents' garden, mostly fragrant ebbs. At home, my only glimpse of luxury and fragrance were these two precious liquor bottles of Chanel 19 and Pommessure that my parents would use only on rare and grand occasions. I would always stop by perfume shops with my mother. But in 1986, I was 10 years old, on the north coast of Brittany, where we would go to the beach in Dinar, Yvon Michel started a really special fragrance shop. He would have all the new fragrances of the day, all the most exclusive ones, like Annie Goutel or Serge Ritens. And he would just have launched his first feminine fragrance of his own called Divine. I would stop by on my way to the beach, I would smell everything, I would ask questions, I would ask for samples. I would spend all my money buying the new launches and start discussing with the guy about fragrance and also that one day I'd like to be a perfumer. So around the age of 12, loving both studying art and science, I already knew I wanted to be either an architect or chemist specialized in art restoration or a perfumer. And having always been attracted to luxury, glamour, glitz, and fashion, I was drawn to perfumery, the most approachable entry to that world and pursued my dream of fragrance. So after hard studies in mathematics, chemistry, and physics, I finally entered the only perfumery program backed up by a university degree called Isipka in Versailles. I would study all about the ingredients from nature, from chemistry, learn about the history of fragrance, learn about perfumers, study their styles and start reconstituting fragrances and flowers like Jasmine, Ilan, learn how to make them come alive in the air. And it works pretty much like cooking, trying your new dish. You have to try different ingredients, different levels of spices, different sauces, different herbs, salt, sugar. It's basically the same. So let's play a little game. Let's smell the Blotter A. You can see the formula here. It's just a mix of bergamot from Italy and edna solvent. And you might recognize a smell from the Earl Grey tea flavor. And you can already consider that as an odd colony, the lightest, oldest, and brightest form of fragrance. Actually, the earliest perfume was just an infusion of rosemary leaves in wine alcohol. It was called L'eau de la reine de Hongry in 1370. Now smell Blotter B, where we added Jasmine Absolute from India. Do you know it takes 8 million single flowers to make a kilo of absolute? So it's really expensive. And here blended with bergamot, it brings much more brightness and lightness to the flower. Then Blotter C, and you can see the addition of a chemical green note called C3XNO. And by comparison, you can see the addition of this fresh cut grass smell to the fragrance. And you have a floral green fragrance. Then we add a peachy fruity note called Andecalactone gamma. And there the fragrance changes again with much more body fruitiness and boldness to the fragrance. Then Blotter E, we added some patchouli. Patchouli is a really interesting ingredient because it was brought back from India when the Europeans were importing the Kashmir shawls. The patchouli leaves were used to protect Kashmir from the weather and the insects. And during the way, it would dry and ferment and give that distinctive woody, earthy smell. Finally, we added Vanillin. Vanillin is a molecule responsible of the vanilla beans. And here it adds much more warmth to the fragrance and we get what we call a non-ambulry oriental fragrance. So you can see that only with six ingredients, you have already a spectrum of fragrances from the brightest to the warmest. Perfumers have 500 natural molecules of ingredients to work with and more than 1,000 chemicals to work with. So we have a lot of possibilities. All these possibilities, where do we start? And perfumers, as everyone can be inspired by anything. The beautiful, the ugly, anything in art, fashion, music, architecture, looking at something beautiful makes you want to create something beautiful in return. But for perfumers, my colors, my fabrics, or my music notes are the ingredients. They are no better inspiration. And the funny thing about inspiration is that it can vary from one day to another. I've never been to India before, so I would have thought, let's blend jasmine, sandalwood, and spices. But another day, I could have blended rose, patchouli, and basams. And since I've been here, since I've landed in Delhi, I could add the wonderful feeling of the misty insensis suffering in the air that I experienced when I arrived. So let's take an example of a fragrance in the market now. And I will take the example of Marc Jacobs bang. Marc Jacobs was really specific about what he wanted for his next masculine fragrance. He wanted a strong pepper in your face, an explosion of pepper for his next masculine fragrance. That brief was given to four fragrance houses. And in all these fragrance houses, at least three or four perfumers competing against each other. So you can imagine a few perfumes and perfumers competing for that project. First problem, pepper is what we call a top note. It's really volatile and doesn't stay long on skin. Also, pepper contains methyl eugenol, this molecule here that is contained in most of the natural essences. But some people might be allergic to it. So we are limited in the quantity we can use. And also, even if pepper is a really popular flavor and taste, consumer testing tells us that people don't want to put pepper on skin. They find it too harsh and aggressive. So we had some challenges. But the good thing was Givodon had this proprietary unique patented ingredient called pepperwood that would help the pepper smell last longer. It would be a secret weapon that the competition does not have. And also, Marc Jacobs himself liked the original idea that I had made, that you can smell on Blotter One. I would just have to make it bolder, stronger, safe, commercial. And I would just have to beat the competition during the way. So you can imagine a lot of different trials and errors. As you can see on this animation, every single column is a different modification of the fragrance. I would try different spices, different woods, different masks, anything you can think of. And we would ask what the consumer thought about it. We would revise and remodify again. So finally, after 336 trials and more than 10 months of development, the final fragrance is chosen and approved by everyone and Marc Jacobs himself. And you can smell it on Blotter Two. That's bang. As you can see, the last formula is pretty close to the original idea. It will have just enriched the fragrance with vetiver, white moss, benzoin, and patchouli. So everybody is happy to have achieved a strong and unique pepper fragrance that most accepted by most people. And we just hope that bang will have a long life on the market and will make a mark on the market. So you can see it takes a lot of work, some science and some art from the original idea to the bottle. To conclude, I would quote T.S. Eliot, who once said, we shall not cease for exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and other place for the first time. Exploring is what keeps me going. And I'm sure a lot of you is what keeps you going. I hope I will engage you to smell more, feel more, explore more. And also, I will hope that I will inspire you to follow your dreams, like me following a little kid following my dream of fragrance. Like every day going to work, I still feel like I'm 12 years old and playing with smells. Thank you very much.