Diptyque’s perfumer reveals what your fragrance says about you - and why you don’t need a signature scent

When it comes to choosing a perfume, the options are endless - so how do you choose? Photo / Getty Images

If you’re like me, choosing a perfume can be an intimidating experience.

Maybe you’re yet to find your signature perfume and approaching the fragrance counter stacked with fancy bottles fills you with dread. You’re still trying to shake off the aroma of Juicy Couture that was your go-to during your uni days and you’re running out of perfume samples you nicked from your mum. And when there are countless options, how do you choose?

Perfumer Fabrice Pellegrin is the “nose” behind the glorious scents of Thierry Mugler, l’Occitane, Hermès, Jo Malone and countless others. He knows a thing or two about making scents - and how you can find the right one for you.

Fabrice Pellegrin is the creative perfumer behind many of our favourite scents. Photo / Supplied

So when it comes to finding your signature fragrance, where do you start? Pellegrin, originally from Grasse, France, says when it comes to choosing a perfume, there aren’t really any rules.

“You have to dare to try perfumes out of your comfort zone, to go towards less conventional creations,” he tells the Herald.

“The best way to discover a new perfume is to smell it directly on your skin. The most important thing is to feel good wearing it, to simply enjoy it. It doesn’t have to be intellectual. Just follow your own taste and let yourself be seduced spontaneously.”

And according to Pellegrin, you don’t necessarily have to have your own “signature scent”. Just as you change and grow over time as a person, your perfume can change with you - and you can actually just have fun with it.

“I think that perfumes are extensions of ourselves, and therefore reveal clues about our personality. They are a means of expression, an invisible language, purely sensory and instinctive,” he explains.

“Our tastes in perfume can evolve over time, just like us. We can also choose to wear a different perfume according to the occasion, to play with the aura it gives us.”

For Pellegrin, each perfume tells a story. We’ve all experienced this - you find an almost-empty scent bottle at the back of your cupboard, or you get a whiff of a stranger’s perfume that instantly takes you back to a certain moment in your life. It’s perhaps the most powerful way of bringing back memories.

Pellegrin drew on that theme for his latest creation for boutique fragrance brand Diptyque, inspired by paper.

Diptyque's newest perfume creation, L'Eau Papier. Photo / Mecca

“L’Eau Papier is a tribute to creation - the DNA of Diptyque - and to paper, the primary medium of its expression,” he says.

“Paper as a trigger for the imagination, a sine qua non [absolutely necessary] for the appearance of drawings and perfumes, which in turn liberate the imagination of each person thanks to the stories they initiate and the memories they evoke.”

And the perfumer reveals that the mysterious process of making a perfume is like writing those stories.

“A story, an introduction, an architecture, raw materials that echo each other to create a narrative, are all necessary,” he shares.

“Diptyque L’Eau Papier took a couple months to complete. I started creating this fragrance with one initial ingredient, grain – sesame, in the form of extract of roasted sesame seeds. I chose it to evoke the novel scent of ink and to add a delicate flavor to the scent.

“I enhanced this by working in musky notes, to develop the sensual aspect. Then I added floral mimosa notes to supplement the note of paper. The uniqueness of the cereal and ink accords, blended with the sweetness of white musks, creates the scent of paper – and this combination is what defines the fragrance.”

Pellegrin says when it comes to creating perfumes, the possibilities are endless.

“It would be sad to think that all perfumes have already been created! When you take an ingredient like rose, you might think that perfumery has already explored this theme a thousand times, but there are different varieties of rose that lead to multiple extractions with singular olfactory profiles.

“The rose has infinite combination possibilities, and as a perfumer I continue to be surprised by it.”

If there are countless ways of creating a scent, then your options at the perfume counter have no limits. So maybe it’s time to say goodbye to the idea of having a signature scent to wear for the rest of your life. Instead, why not try something new?