Maison Francis Kurkdjian: The poetry of perfume

Upgrade to High-Speed Internet for only ₱1499/month!

Enjoy up to 100 Mbps fiber broadband, perfect for browsing, streaming, and gaming.

Visit Suniway.ph to learn

Fragrance, for me, has to be the most ephemeral of luxuries, with scent as fleeting as a cloud yet its impact as eternal as the stars. The memories it evokes can outlast the more tangible of designer creations. Through the glorious perfumes of the luxury fragrance house Maison Francis Kurkdjian, my journey through the world of scent became a poetic one.

Like poetry, which abbreviates language and conveys a range of images and emotions in the space of a few lines, so legendary perfumer Francis Kurkjian likes to use a minimum of ingredients to create spellbinding fragrances that transport you to places familiar and exotic, remembered or imagined.

Take the scents that he has created for his eponymous maison. There is the groundbreaking Baccarat 540, the most famous of their scents, inspired by the process to create Baccarat’s gold red crystal. To produce this, pure gold is fused with clear crystal and at a temperature of 540°C, it turns into that signature Baccarat red. The scent celebrates this mysterious alchemy of precious materials and was originally designed to celebrate Baccarat’s 250th anniversary.

Then there is Oud, whose description left me spellbound even before I had a chance to experience it. The exotic name is also that of its ingredient, which is the most costly of perfumery wood. Coupled with the creator’s vision of a magnificent palace with gold carvings, set against a dark sky full of stars, it is my favorite of all Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s many fragrance offerings.

The refreshing Aqua Media, lovely in its green bottle, evokes conversations between the wind in the grass and the murmuring of water in a nearby stream. It smells as green, adventurous and as enchanting as the description.

The newest offering, playful Kurky, is meant to inspire you to view the world the way a child does, with eyes wide open and full of wonder. When children look at clouds, they see animals and other shapes whereas adults look at clouds and wonder if it’s going to rain. Instead of seriousness, Kurky’s fruity, candy-like scent and orange color evoke sunshine and laughter. You are encouraged to look at the past with nostalgia and to the future with dreams.

Before his fateful meeting with Marc Chaya, a fast-rising star in the business world, Francis Kurkdjian’s many perfume creations for top designer houses were unheralded. The stars decreed that these two would sit next to each other at a dinner after a Jean Paul Gaultier show, where Marc discovered that Francis was the creator of Gaultier’s bestselling scent Le Male, which was one of his favorites. Yet Marc had never heard of him. It was shocking to realize that Francis had developed dozens of scents for designers, ranging from Armani to Versace, Elizabeth Arden to Burberry, Gaultier to Escada, from Lancome to Kenzo, from Narciso Rodriguez to Yves Saint Laurent and so many more.

I recently had the opportunity to have a fascinating talk with Marc Chaya while he was in town to oversee the new Maison Francis Kurkdjian branch at Greenbelt 5 and to launch the new Kurky scent in Manila.

“The industry and marketing have deprived perfumers of their identity as creators,” declares Marc Chaya. “But they are creators like poets or musicians.”

Marc himself comes from an artistic background, leaning towards the arts, architecture and literature, though he heeded his father’s advice to pursue business instead. He and Francis became good friends and in 2009, they co-founded Maison Francis Kurkdjian where Francis would shine as the star, instead of the Hollywood stars often used to promote the perfumes of other fashion houses. Each store sports a large photo of Francis rather than an A-list celebrity, giving him the full credit for his work. There is poetic justice in that by focusing on the creator and running a maison that is creativity-based, rather than market-based, the brand has seen phenomenal growth.

Perhaps because of his background, growing up in Lebanon during the civil war of the ‘70s and ‘80s, Marc is a passionate activist, championing the cause of the unheralded perfumer and other injustices in the fragrance world. One of these injustices is the lack of any kind of intellectual property protection for perfume creators, leading others to shamelessly copy from each other.

“We need a ‘Me Too’ movement for perfumers!” he says of an industry where even falsehoods are promoted in the name of making a sale. “Some claim their perfume is 100-percent natural but only seven flowers in nature allow you to extract their scent. If you want lily of the valley, you have to go through synthetics, which is fundamental to creativity. Nature is not your best friend, it can poison you, it can give you allergies. Overexploiting nature leads to monoculture which leads to the destruction of biodiversity which, as a consequence, leads to the destruction of our ecosystem and our viability as human beings.”

For Francis Kurkdjian, his perfumes are created from a combination of natural and synthetic materials where he likens the synthetic to the beams in a structure, which provide strength. When only purely natural ingredients are used, they can actually fade. In fashion, this is very much like the situation between natural and chemical dyes. The former, though desirable in one’s eyes, are harder to control and can use up vast amounts of water. In the end, a compromise works out best where the synthetic gives both scent and color the stability it needs.

“Today, in the fragrance world, you have a whole territory of poetry, a whole territory of creative expression,” says Marc. “That means high-luxury fragrance and high fashion need to be helmed by creative genius. It needs to be ethical and embodied by quality, craftsmanship, and customer experience. We are playing on this field. Our luxury as Maison Francis Kurkdjian stands in the extraordinary. First, there is the extraordinary genius creativity of Francis Kurkdjian. Second, our extraordinary craft. We are so orthodox about quality excellence. Third, an extraordinary, uplifting customer journey where we make you smile as we offer you an experience that takes you out of your day-to-day activity. This is true luxury to me.”

The Armenian and Lebanese backgrounds of Francis and Marc, respectively, also brings to the brand an extraordinary richness.

“One thing about the Lebanese is that we are a diaspora, we’re at the four corners of the planet, like Filipinos,” says Marc.“The world is a village so we blend, we learn. When I’m in Paris, I am a Parisian;  when I’m in the Philippines, all my senses are aroused because I’m eating delicious food and I’m seeing beautiful people, and nature is different. It makes us richer, coming together from different cultures. Combining our differences into strength is a wonderful field of expression and creative power.

“In our maison, our team is very diverse. We don’t hire people for their culture, we hire them for their talent, regardless of whether you’re a man or a woman, Asian,Arab, European, American or African. What matters to us are your values and your richness. We end up having a team that is multicultural and it makes a huge difference, it’s a creative competitive edge.”

Going back to poetry, Marc adds, “Francis took perfume out of the bottle to express all dimensions of this art of creating scent. Putting it in the fountains of Versailles, creating art installations with music, the scented ceramic roses in the West Bund of Shanghai.” The poetry of perfume is that it can enhance and be enhanced by so many other art forms.

“Paris is a source of inspiration,” says Marc. “In the industry we have declared that Grasse is the capital of perfumers but Grasse is the capital of flowers, perfumers who base themselves there want to be near the ingredients. I want you to forget about the ingredients and step into the emotion.”

As we sit at a table inside the new Greenbelt 5 boutique, Marc points out, “We brought Paris into the store, the details are not just details. You see like this wall? It is made of Paris stone like the Haussman-style buildings.”

He indicates the table between us. “This is the marble used in Paris Hausmann-style apartments.” Then he points at the floor: “This is the Paris wooden floor.” Looking up to the ceiling, he points out, “The gold stands for the gold dome of the monuments of Paris. In our flacons, the zinc is a tribute to the rooftops of Paris that are made of zinc.”

To be relevant now and into the future, sustainability is very important to the brand.

“I am a consumer, and I am brand founder and CEO. I am responsible as both. Next year, there will be a whole world of changes that seem invisible but will be noticeable. Our bottles are going to be reduced by 25-percent in weight by removing the excess in glass. We are going to replace this heavy metal (zinc stopper) which is the synonym of quality today. We are going to replace it with 100-percent recycled and recyclable aluminum. Why are we doing that? Because the carbon footprint will be divided by two. The more heavy it is, the more it requires energy to be flown around the world. We are going to reduce our packaging.

“As a consumer you expect a gift to come in a box which comes in a bigger box which comes in a shopping bag with wrapping, ribbon and card to be impressive. You are responsible as well because you are requesting excess packaging, excess use of natural resources for a very ephemeral moment. You’re going to unpack it and all you’re going to have is this,” he declares, pointing to a bottle. “For a five-minute wow moment, we are, as consumers, requesting a lot of things. Can a brand alone go against that? Yes, if you’re a brand with a vision and an activism.”

It has also been a strategy of the brand to avoid quickly introducing new scents just for the sake of novelty.

“We reduced our launches, you see some brands throwing five new perfumes every year,” Marc says. “It’s a weapon of mass destruction where what is new today is old tomorrow. I am determined to consume less and we are running a revolution that has been embracing sustainability, not as an opportunity for marketing, but to make ourselves better. Because at the end of the day, it’s a legacy. We want to be around 100 years, 200 years. This is why we entered the LVMH group, so that our creation is safeguarded and fostered over time, and that the maison will become one of the most beautiful fragrance houses in the world.”

Scent may be ephemeral but the vision of Maison Francis Kurkdjian is a life where perfume can be enjoyed 24/7.

“You can spray it on your skin,” explains Marc. “It’s ephemeral for you, but not for those who cross your path. You can light a candle in your room, it’s going to walk with you for three hours. You can wash yourself in the shower with it and it can accompany you in a moment of freshness. You can layer it on your clothes, you can launder your clothes with it.”

Maison Francis Kurkdjian has been part of Rustan’s for 17 years, and the Philippines was one of the first early markets. The maison enables us to continually enjoy the poetry of scent that is the hallmark of creative genius Francis Kurkdjian, carefully safeguarded by the equally creative Marc Chaya.