The French Perfumer Behind the Internet’s Favorite Fragrance

Kurkdjian had formulated the scent the year before, as a technical experiment in making a new kind of “gourmand,” the industry term for a fragrance that smells like food. Gourmands are often cloyingly literal, emulating the aroma of cake batter or candied fruit. Kurkdjian wanted to “bring the gourmand into the twenty-first century,” using a recipe of synthetic aromachemicals to produce a more impressionistic bouquet. HEVA was an acronym for Hedione, a jasmine-scented chemical that acts as a smell amplifier; Evernyl, which lends a mossy, musky note; Veltol, which smells like caramelized sugar; and Ambroxan, a synthetic form of ambergris, a pungent substance regurgitated by whales, which has a ferric quality, like blood in the back of the throat. The resulting perfume did not smell edible or organic; it evoked something air-gapped and untouched by human sweat, like a new Porsche that happens to be filled with cotton candy. Kurkdjian had tried to sell the formula to several luxury fashion houses, but they’d all turned it down. Before the Baccarat meeting, he recalled, “I smelled it, and said, ‘Why not? Let’s try again.’ ”