Bernard Chant: Landmark Fragrances Born from Leather and Moss Accords

“We smell with our minds. Our moods change how we perceive a fragrance. The French verb ‘to smell’ also means ‘to feel.’ Fragrance changes our mood. It does not work well when we are tired. We must keep our minds fresh.”

Bernard Chant, in remarks presented by Bois de Jasmin

Believed to have been born around 1927; died in 1987.

Cabochard, Aramis, Aromatics Elixir: at first glance, they are perfumes from different brands with different personalities. Yet tracing these creations leads back to the work of the same perfumer.

Bernard Chant was a French-born perfumer who worked in New York. As chief perfumer at International Flavors & Fragrances, referred to here as IFF, he left a substantial body of work in American perfume history.

Over the depths of moss, patchouli, and leather, he layered bright greenery and flowers. Although the fragrances are complex, each as a whole conveys a distinct personality. Understanding that approach to construction begins to make Chant’s work resonate a little differently.

A Life in Perfumery

From France to the Perfumery Rooms of New York

Much remains little documented about Chant’s childhood and training. He is described as having been born in France around 1927, but there is no widely agreed record of his precise birth date or hometown.

His professional life, by contrast, comes into focus through the fragrances and his colleagues’ accounts. His career centered on IFF’s New York operation. From the late 1950s through the 1980s, he created perfumes for French couturiers and American cosmetics and fashion brands.

IFF was formed in 1958 by the merger of the American firm van Ameringen-Haebler and the Dutch company Polak & Schwarz. Its New York perfumery culture included predecessors such as Ernest Shiftan and Josephine Catapano.

In that environment, Chant served as chief perfumer and helped train younger colleagues. Carlos Benaïm names Chant as his second mentor after Shiftan, saying he learned to develop formulas thoroughly and to create in an orderly, precise way.

Work That Grew Alongside Estée Lauder

Chant’s relationship with Estée Lauder occupies a major place in his career. Collaboration between the company and IFF had developed since the time of founder Arnold van Ameringen.

Chant created fragrances not only for Estée Lauder but also for the group’s Aramis and Clinique brands. While the brands had different personalities, a consistent exploration ran through the structures of the scents.

A corporate history records that in 1982 Chant supervised forty staff and received a base salary of $230,000 plus bonuses. The account shows that perfumers’ creativity was treated as an important asset even as management pursued cost reductions.

Alongside creating fragrances personally, he occupied a position through which technical skills and an aesthetic sensibility were passed on within the organization.

First, Understand the Other Person’s World

The development record of Halston, released in 1975, offers a concrete view of how Chant worked. Perfume historian Michael Edwards assembled accounts from the people involved.

The client was designer Roy Halston Frowick. Before considering the scent, Chant first looked at the clothes he made.

“I studied his clothes, his style, and his image before considering a suitable theme.”

Bernard Chant, on creating Halston

He did not simply offer an accord in which he specialized. He sought a direction for the fragrance by looking at the appearance the clothes gave their wearers and at what the brand valued.

Early development explored two directions, one centered on white flowers and another on woody notes. Chant guided the fragrance toward a woody chypre with green facets.

Signature Fragrances and Their Backgrounds

Cabochard: An Accord of Leather and Moss That Flowed into Later Works

Released by Parfums Grès in 1959, Cabochard is a signature leather chypre by Chant. Its French name suggests a “headstrong person.” It has green sharpness and the shadows of moss, patchouli, and leather.

Madame Grès’s trip to India forms part of its creative background. Perfume histories and criticism recount that a light tuberose-style trial came first, before Chant’s chypre was ultimately chosen.

The finished scent is also said not to have fully matched Madame Grès’s own initial preferences. Even so, it became a major success as the house’s perfume. The anecdote illustrates that a creator’s private tastes do not necessarily coincide with the work that endures for a brand.

Perfumes featuring leather and moss already existed. In Cabochard, Chant retained their strong contours while bringing them together into a refined form through flowers and greenery. Benaïm later recalled that this accord influenced much of Chant’s work.

Aramis: A Different Personality from the Same Structure

Aramis is a men’s fragrance released in 1964, or 1965 according to some sources. It is known as an important early prestige men’s fragrance distributed through American department stores.

Like Cabochard, it has impressions of leather, moss, and wood. Yet the dry outlines of herbs such as artemisia give it a more taut character. Despite a shared structure, it does not read as the same scent.

Some critics describe it as a development of Cabochard for men. Rather than entirely separate worlds of materials for each gender, changes in balance and texture can give a fragrance a different bearing. Placing Chant’s creations side by side makes this clear.

Aromatics Elixir: A Deep Fragrance for a Clean-Image Brand

Aromatics Elixir appeared at Clinique in 1971. For its first perfume, a brand with a clean skincare image chose a creation with the complex depths of rose, patchouli, moss, herbs, and other elements.

Patchouli and moss wrap the splendor of rose in darkness. Beneath them lies the dry feel of wood, while the brightness of herbs remains above. It is neither floral sweetness alone nor simply heavy woodiness.

Chant’s opening words about “smelling with the mind” also resonate with this perfume. Depending on physical condition or mood, it may feel herbal or bring to mind old wooden furniture or a bouquet. It has a clear personality, yet leaves room for the wearer’s memories.

Although a creation of the 1970s, it has been repeatedly referenced by later perfumers and critics. It is another essential point of reference for understanding Chant’s perfumes.

Halston: Making a New Material Unforgettably Distinctive

During Halston’s development, Max Gavarry, based at IFF in Paris, showed Chant a trial formula called Madame. It combined aldehydes, geranium, rose, green impressions, and a peach accent with a new woody material.

That material was Iso Cyclemone E, which led to the subsequently enhanced Iso E Super. It has a light woody character reminiscent of cedar and an effect that expands the flowers and the fragrance as a whole.

Marketing executive Joe Forkish remembered the exchange when Chant let him smell the material. When Forkish said it smelled wonderful, Chant reportedly replied:

“Yet no one will use it.”

Bernard Chant, as recalled by Joe Forkish

A new material does not change perfume history merely by existing. Decisions must be made about which creation to use it in, how much to use, and how to balance it with other ingredients.

Chant and Gavarry built a fruity chypre that memorably demonstrated the new material’s character. Keeping the mossy, woody accord inherited from Cabochard in the background, they added brightness suggesting marigold and chamomile and a richly floral heart.

Forkish recalled working directly with Chant and sometimes visiting his home on weekends. Development took about seven to eight months. At times progress faltered and coordination with management was needed: the successful fragrance did not emerge in a straight line.

Opening an Ice-Cream Container: The Finishing Touch

Halston’s finishing touches involved a somewhat unexpected scene. What Forkish wanted was not sweet vanilla itself, but the cool, smooth scent encountered when opening the lid of a large container of ice cream.

The two actually bought ice cream and smelled it. Chant gave a brief reply:

“What you are smelling is vanillin.”

Bernard Chant, as recalled by Joe Forkish

Chant added vanillin little by little, adjusting it to 2.2 percent of the formula according to the account. The whole fragrance became mellower. Forkish says this finishing touch also helps explain why some people perceive an ambery warmth in Halston.

Translating a sensation from everyday food into the language of fragrance materials, then balancing that material within the whole: the episode shows how a perfumer’s work moves between experience and knowledge.

Halston became a major commercial success after its release. It helped make the use of the new material widely known and influenced later woody perfumes.

Antonia’s Flowers: Approaching the Scent of Living Flowers

Chant was not creating only weighty chypres in the 1980s. In Antonia’s Flowers, he explored the impression of freesia drifting through a flower shop.

The project began with Antonia Bellanca, who ran a flower shop in East Hampton, New York. The floral scent she sought met IFF’s analytical technology.

Headspace technology examines the fragrant compounds released into the air around a flower; perfumery techniques then build them into a fragrance. An account introducing Michael Edwards’s book identifies this as a collaboration by Chant and Josephine Catapano and a pioneering creation using IFF’s Living Flower technology.

Records give both 1984 and 1985 as release years. The interest not only in scents obtained through distillation, but also in what living flowers release into their surroundings, shows another dimension of Chant’s work.

Perfumery Style: Reconsidering an Accord Again and Again

Some of Chant’s fragrances echo one another. From Cabochard to Aramis; in Azurée, greater citrus and green brightness; in Aromatics Elixir, expanded depths of rose and patchouli. Aramis 900 also reveals that relationship between flowers and woods.

This does not mean that all had the same formula. These are connections that several critics have perceived from the placement of materials and the development of the scents. Returning to the same theme reveals other expressions and possibilities. Chant continued that exploration through commissions from different brands.

The darkness of patchouli and moss can also provide a backdrop that highlights flowers and greenery. Leather’s animalic presence can become either roughness or quiet sensuality, depending on how it is refined. The individuality of his perfumes lay not just in the materials themselves, but in the relationships he created between them.

At the same time, he adopted new synthetic materials in Halston and applied analytical technology in Antonia’s Flowers. For Chant, expertise in traditional chypres did not conflict with openness to new technologies.

An Aside…

A Precise Working Method Passed on to Younger Perfumers

Benaïm says that what he learned from Chant was thorough formulation and an orderly creative process. What was passed on was not simply the imitation of a brilliant inspiration, but a method of accumulating trials and examining structure.

Eugene Grisanti, later IFF’s chairman, also recalled Chant’s ability to turn a good perfume into a work of art through its final touches. The episode of finding vanillin in ice cream gives concrete meaning to that assessment.

Beautiful and the Later Years

Estée Lauder’s Beautiful was released in 1985. Presented as a collaboration by Chant, Sophia Grojsman, and Max Gavarry, it is a floral like a great bouquet.

From weighty chypres to expansive flowers, Chant’s creations do not fit within a single fragrance family. After his death in 1987, his perfumes and the work of the perfumers he trained remained.

Smelling the material in front of you and constructing the whole in your mind: perhaps the opening words about “smelling with the mind” were not only about emotion, but also a working principle for keeping the imagination fresh.

Perfume Creations

References

• Bois de Jasmin — Bernard Chant Archives
• Michael Edwards — American Legends, Halston chapter excerpt
• ÇaFleureBon — American Legends by Michael Edwards
• Encyclopedia.com — International Flavors & Fragrances Inc.
• Maison d’Etto — Carlos Benaïm Perfumer Spotlight
• IFF — IFF and Master Perfumer Carlos Benaim Celebrate 50 Years Together
• Now Smell This — Perfumers A to E
• Bois de Jasmin — Parfums Grès Cabochard New and Vintage
• The Black Narcissus — Master of Chypre: Imprévu by Coty
• Perfume Shrine — Aromatics Elixir by Clinique
• Persolaise — Aromatics In White from Clinique
• Parfumo — Bernard Chant and the Cabochard Family Tree
• Town & Country — The Real Story Behind the Making of Halston Perfume
• Australian Perfume Junkies — Antonia’s Flowers
• Skins — Antonia’s Flowers
• Basenotes — Devin by Aramis
• Basenotes — Cinnabar by Estée Lauder
• Parfumo — Bernard Chant
• Fragrantica — Bernard Chant
• Scents Memory — Bernard Chant