Quentin Bisch, the Givaudan master perfumer, has such a varied repertoire of greatest hits you’d think he could embody any character in a play, at any time.
But rather, the nose behind the bestselling scents from Amouage, Jean Paul Gaultier and Carolina Herrera started his studies backstage — literally — and his university training as a stage director has become central to his ethos as a perfumer.
“I studied a mix of philosophy, sociology, history of art, all of these activities. They were all theoretical studies to understand what was theater, what theater was bringing to humankind, and what humankind could bring to theater,” says Bisch. Now, working as a perfumer, “The fact that I studied so many fields at the same time, it was five years of discovering the world through captivating lenses. It sharpened my sensitivity, my aesthetic feelings and my exigence.”
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The two translate in more literal ways, too.
“When you are on stage, you have the stage to create or express something. What you put on the stage has real meaning, and you need to choose carefully what you put on stage, how you light it, if you have music, if you have a voice or costumes,” says Bisch. “Those change meanings all of a sudden. If you want to say something clear, and if you want to say something memorable, you need to be very conscious of the fact that every choice has a real impact.”
Bisch operates with a heavy dose of precision, and it’s paid off. Recent launches from him include Carolina Herrera’s La Bomba and Destin by Balmain, while other favorites include Herrera’s Good Girl and Parfums de Marly’s Delina, and ensuing flankers.
That being said, he never knows for sure if he’ll have a hit on his hands. ”You never know in advance if you’re going to create something that could be a hit. You have an intuition that it could speak to people, because if it starts speaking to you, that’s a good starting point. And if it starts speaking to people around you, that’s even better,” he says. “Sometimes, you have a good note, and that makes a good perfume. But you never know how the mix will end, if it will end up being coherent and highlighted in a good way, and if it will have a good name with the good bottle and a good concept.”
Amouage’s Guidance, for instance, started with a blank brief from Renaud Salmon, the fragrance house’s chief creative officer.
“When I proposed what became Guidance to Renaud Salmon for Amouage, he told me, ‘Quentin, you are completely free, so please be free and propose to me what you want.’ I had the intuition that one note was interesting because it had something different, and it would bring something new. That was a time that the intuition was good, but you never know in advance.”
Salmon, however, has seen Bisch produce hit after hit for the fragrance house.
“I genuinely believe Quentin revolutionized modern perfumery writing over the past decade. Very few perfumers manage to create fragrances that are at once emotionally immediate, technically sophisticated and culturally impactful. His creations often feel instinctive and obvious at first, yet reveal extraordinary complexity and structure over time,” Salmon says via email.
“His first creation for Amouage, Guidance, became by far the most successful fragrance in the history of the house,” Salmon continues. “To me, it perfectly captures his talent: a kind of ‘loud whisper’ that combines richness, diffusion and technical precision with softness, ambiguity and deep emotion. Finally, what also makes Quentin unique is that he is a true complete artist. His paintings, his musical world and his emotional sensitivity are all extensions of his olfactory language. Quentin is an entire artistic universe.”
To that end, Bisch often looks for as much artistic freedom as he can take, and triangulates with external influences rather than deriving inspiration from them.
“If you always try to start from a white page, you have more of a chance to be creating something that doesn’t resemble something that already exists. Maybe, sometimes you try to create original things and you can’t. You cannot know every perfume, especially with the number of launches every year,” Bisch says, quantifying that cadence at around 3,000 annually.
“It’s impossible to stay in touch and stay on top of everything,” says Bisch. “But if you remain true to your singularity, your own personality and the uniqueness of what you are, and you try not to copy or follow a trend, you maximize your chances.”
Nature is key for Bisch’s creative process, as well as a few other sources. “People are sources of inspiration, and so is art, but the raw materials themselves are a real source of inspiration for me, and they’re the starting point of a lot of perfumes I’ve created.”
He doesn’t necessarily have a holy grail scent he hasn’t been able to capture, but his secret sauce is his general openness and curiosity. “I wouldn’t say there is something I’m really dreaming of doing that I haven’t already done,” he says. “I follow the flow of life, and that drives me to new encounters.”
