Jean Carles: A Pioneer of Perfumery Education Who Changed How We Learn About Scent

When I was young and became a perfumer…
Most perfumers believed in good fortune. They would idly dip smelling strips into fragrance samples to smell them and alter their formulas by adding ingredients little by little, without planning their compositions beforehand. As a result, most of the great perfumes of the past, or perfumes that achieved commercial success, were largely created by good luck, sometimes to the surprise of the perfumers who made them. Of course, such happy accidents can happen at any time, but unwavering faith in them should not become a rule of education.

Jean Carles

Career in Perfumery

Jean Carles, who would later become a teacher to be revered by all perfumers, was born on January 12, 1892, in Grasse, the perfume capital of southern France. After joining Roure, now Givaudan, he quickly became chief perfumer. Dana’s Tabu (1932), Schiaparelli’s Shocking (1937), Carven’s Ma Griffe (1946), and Miss Dior (1947) are widely known among perfume enthusiasts as his masterpieces. These remarkable fragrances led him to become the first perfumer to be called “Mr. Nose” in America.

Of particular note is his founding of Roure’s perfumery school in 1946, where he taught perfumery as its first director. He devised a training approach known as the Jean Carles Method and placed great importance on training young perfumers. The premise of this method is that anyone can develop a highly refined sense of smell through training. The fragrance pyramid, familiar to anyone who has even dabbled in perfume, was also his invention, created to explain scents to people outside the industry.
His distinguished students included Monique Schlienger, founder of the Cinquième Sens perfumery school; Chanel’s in-house perfumer of several decades, Jacques Polge; and his son Marcel Carles, who took over the running of the perfumery school after his death.

The composition method he taught sent shock waves through the industry. It is said to have given Roure (Givaudan) a substantial lead over its competitors at the time, and even to have changed the structure of perfume itself. Everything he taught was published in the 1960s in Soap, Perfumery & Cosmetics, in an article entitled “A Method of Creation In Perfumery.”

There are very few miracles in perfume making. A perfumer should be able to judge from the outset whether a creation has the potential to become a commercial success. The technique I eventually developed made perfume creation remarkably simple. Thanks to it, I never have difficulty creating a new perfume.

Jean Carles

Furthermore, later in life, even though an olfactory disorder had left him unable to smell, he created perfumes such as Ma Griffe and Miss Dior together with his son Marcel Carles, relying on his own memory of scents. This, above all, shows that perfume is not made with the sense of smell. Because of this story, Jean Carles is sometimes called the Beethoven of perfumers.

He died on July 8, 1966, at the age of 74.

The Jean Carles Method

The following is a brief translation and summary of the Jean Carles Method. Although it is not taught in exactly the same form today, I believe the teaching at perfumery schools still follows these principles. If you are interested in scent, do use it as a guide.

1. Training for a beginner who knows nothing about the perfume industry should begin with studying the smells of perfumery materials, including both natural materials and synthetic materials. Start by trying contrasting smells, and learn the fragrance families as well. It is important to keep studying until you can identify and assess the smell of every material. In time, you will realize that scents change over time and that their rates of evaporation differ.
2. The next step is to classify materials according to their rates of evaporation. Apply each material to a smelling strip and write down the date and time; as time passes, you will recognize the characteristic changes in each scent. Materials that evaporate quickly lose their scent readily, while those that evaporate slowly tend to linger. This classification produces top notes, middle notes, and base notes. For example, bergamot and lavender are top notes, basil and geranium are middle notes, and jasmine and vetiver are base notes.
   When classified by evaporation rate in this way, base notes last a long time and define a scent’s character, making them the most important part of a perfume. Because base notes linger, materials that remain on the skin for an intermediate length of time are used to create a transition from the top notes. These materials are classified as middle notes and are therefore also called modifiers. Finally, top notes are needed to produce a pleasant smell the moment a bottle is opened, even though they soon disappear.
3. The next thing to understand is proportion. Because this determines how a perfume changes over time, proportions need to be adjusted with the balance of its development during evaporation in mind. As a general rule, base notes make up the smallest proportion, at about 20%.

Books

Perfume Creations

Perfumery is an art, not a science, as many people believe. A scientific background is not necessarily required for a perfumer. Scientific knowledge can sometimes even obstruct the freedom needed to create perfume.

Jean Carles