Inside France's exclusive school of perfumery

(23 Oct 2016) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4060424
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Like wearing clothes, spraying on perfume or cologne is part of the daily experience of billions of people around the globe.
It may take just a few minutes to fall in love with a scent, but years are necessary to create the perfect combination that gives birth to a perfume.
In Grasse, France an exclusive school teaches a handful of students each year to do just that.
STORY-LINE:
These students are memorising smells, not books.
The class they're attending is a window into the most evocative of human creations: perfume.
The group is following a course in the world capital of perfumery, Grasse, near the French Riviera.
Elusive yet memorable: just a single drop of perfume is enough to bring up memories, elicit joy or nostalgia and evoke dreams.
Nothing is as intangible and yet as powerful as perfume.
Worldwide only a handful of schools teach the know-how to become a perfumer, the creator of magic in a bottle. The profession is also commonly referred to as "nose", a word that points straight to the sense mostly needed to succeed in the job.
One of the most prestigious perfume schools is the Grasse Institute of Perfumery (GIP) in Southern France; its one-year course is sought-after by students from all over the world.
Classes are held in English by professional perfume-makers or technicians who teach how to recognise and evaluate scents, create accords and blend raw materials.
Philippe Masse is the President of Prodarom - the National Association of Fragrance Manufacturers in France - and the President of ASFO, the association in charge of the Grasse Institute of Perfumery (GIP).
"The target of our school is to teach the students the main raw materials natural and synthetic to be used for perfumery. But the knowledge of these raw materials is very important. And to know the best quality of these raw materials is very important for a creator. And at the same time the school is teaching our students how to mix the raw materials in order to obtain a certain characteristic or a certain objective in term of odour," he explains.
It's no chance that the Institute of Perfumery is located in Grasse: perched on a hilltop more than 40 kilometres (26 miles) from Nice, the town is where modern perfumery was born.
Its special micro-climate allows the cultivation of flowers such as roses and jasmine; they are then turned into natural fragrances and form the basis of most perfumes.
In the late 1700's, just before the French Revolution, craftsmen in Grasse were the first to combine the extraction of natural fragrances with the creation of perfumes.
Today more than sixty companies are based in Grasse and produce flavours, raw materials and perfume concentrates. In France they create 50% of the perfume industry turnover and 6% worldwide.
Like three centuries ago, fragrance creation today starts from the raw materials. Getting to know as many as possible is a technical skill that any perfumer needs to acquire, says Philip Collet, who has had a long career as a perfumer and has been teaching at the Grasse Institute of Perfumery for the past six years.
"The beauty of the perfumer is every time to translate one impression, one emotion, one image in a perfume. And for this we need to use some specific ingredients to get it. And if you don't know the smell, the real smell of these ingredients, you don't have the key to make it," Collet explains.
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[@smeenasiddiqui2374]

Wow a School well perfumed. What more does a woman want.💝💝💝💝💝🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓

[@brvndxxxn]

Very nice!

[@vickibazter3446]

I smell class and elegance!

[@onyinyesandra6920]

How can I apply to learn how to make perfume am from Nigeria

[@jkhan5424]

Can we join in this school?

[@chinay1632]

.