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Which fragrance does a perfumer pick as their signature personal scent?

For Francis Kurkdjian, the answer is none.

Instead, the French master perfumer and nose behind both the namesake fragrance brand Maison Francis Kurkdjian as well as the Perfume Creation Director at Parfums Christian Dior, doesn’t wear fragrance at all.

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“I create them, but I don’t wear them,” Kurkdjian revealed during an interview in a plush New York City space earlier this summer. “I don’t like wearing perfumes. I create perfumes for myself and for a job. But, wearing perfume is something different than just creating them.

“When I’m off, I don’t wear perfume. Because I’m off.”

While not a wearer of fragrance himself, Kurkdjian is most certainly an expert in creating ones that other people enjoy. And one of his latest covetable scent creations adds a new chapter to the Dior Sauvage scent story.

The first men’s fragrance from the house, Dior’s Eau Sauvage launched in 1966. Created by perfumer Edmond Roudnitska, the elixir, which is still available today, featured notes of San Carlo bergamot from Calabria and lavender from Provence.

The modern Sauvage interpretation, launched in 2015, has evolved to include four diversified fragrances — an eau de toilette, eau de parfum, parfum and elixir — each one serving to add an additional olfactory building block to the bestselling men’s fragrance franchise.

“To me, creating a perfume is a way of telling a story,” Kurkdjian explains of the creation process.

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Noting the power of a perfumer is the “vision that you bring to the world of perfumery,” Kurkdjian felt there was a gap in the ongoing collection.

“How can we go back to our roots? Because the very first roots of Sauvage is freshness,” Kurkdjian says. “I was wondering, where should we go?”

But, well into the process of creating the latest iteration, Kurkdjian felt like something was missing: Freshness.

“When you cut flowers, when you remove life from plants — meaning you remove water — you lose something. You lose the dewiness,” Kurkdjian shares. “And I was trying to capture that dewiness, that wetness. But, in fragrance, to bring back the idea of wetness, usually, you have to be figurative. To get the wetness, to be watery, you go by watery fruits or watery flowers … Water doesn’t have a smell. But it’s a feeling.

“So, the idea was, how can I get that extra aromas that I need to get that idea of water and life and dewiness?”

The answer, it turns outs, was found in water.

A fresh new way to make fragrance

Alcohol is a common ingredient in cologne compounds. Used as a stabilizer in scents, perfumer’s alcohol also helps to deliver the fragrance ingredients to skin, quickly evaporating after being spritzed.

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But, recent advances in fragrance innovation have allowed for water to be used more broadly as a fragrance base.

“We have creative limits. In perfumery, we are limited in so many ways,” Kurkdjian says. “Long-lasting freshness is very hard to do. From nature, it does not exist. Every single ingredient that is fresh is not long lasting.

“I depend on what nature gives me. So, at some point, to get some tricks, you have to rely on technology. In this case, technology helped me to linger the freshness.”

Launching in September, Sauvage Eau Forte ($220 CAD for 100 mL) aims to encapsulate the very fragrance of fresh through water.

First rolled out by Dior with the release of J’adore Parfum d’Eau in 2022, Kurkdjian also played with water in fragrance for Baby Dior.

“I think it’s interesting, from a creative standpoint, when you have a new technology, to use it,” Kurkdjian says of the expanding presence of water-based products from the luxury French brand. “I thought it would be interesting to see, OK, we have now a technology that can bring freshness in a very different way to masculine perfume, helping me to avoid fresh notes or aquatic notes, and removing the watermelons.

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“Because, to me, they are a bit old school. A bit passé. Or very classic.”

While a seemingly straightforward ingredient, Kurkdjian says the process of employing water as a primary fragrance ingredient is trickier than one might expect.

“It’s very simple to explain, and very hard to achieve,” Kurkdjian says. “It’s like mixing a cocktail. If you think that you have a syrup, gin and tonic … In a regular perfume, you have the syrup, the gin and the tonic. You have to find the right balance in between the three elements.

“And you have no issue with mixing because they blend very well together.”

In the perfume world, if you remove the alcohol, the potion becomes like mixing oil and water.

“And oil and water don’t touch at all. They sit one on top of the other. To blend them, what you have to do is to shake them very fast,” Kurkdjian says. “However, when you stop mixing, the drops of oil come together. The drops of water come together. And, again, you have that separation.”

The milky elixir of the new Sauvage Eau Forte comes courtesy of a unique nano-emulsion that is exclusive to Dior. The technology, which comes from techniques used in cosmetics, allows for the water and perfume materials to mix.

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“The only difference here is that you don’t have any cosmetic additives,” Kurkdjian explains. “It’s only perfume and water.”

Sauvage Eau Forte is billed as the first high-concentration men’s cologne with a water-based formula. The fragrance boasts the same duration on skin, Kurkdjian says, as an alcohol-based elixir.

“It’s soft and powerful at the same time,” he says. “And that softness I could not get it without being alcohol free.”

Fans of the Sauvage collection will find a decidedly different elixir with this new release. Just how different it is from the others, Kurkdjian says, is best experienced by sniffing the colognes side by side.

“Sometimes, smelling is worth 1,000 words,” Kurkdjian says, dolling out paper perfume testing strips spritzed with all five of the Dior Sauvage collection scents.

Ranging in softness from Sauvage Eau de Toilette from 2015 through to the most potent with Sauvage Elixir from 2021, the new Sauvage Eau Forte is both fresh yet makes a statement thanks to notes of cool spices, bleached lavender and a woody-musky base.

“It’s as fresh as an eau de toilette, and as powerful as a perfume,” Kurkdjian summarizes.

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Sitting with one of the best noses in the perfume business, it was easy to wonder if there’s one memorable scent that sticks out most in his life.

“The smell of the mimosa flower in my grandmother’s apartment,” Kurkdjian responded with only the slightest of pauses to consider the question. “January-February is when the mimosa flower blooms in France, and I remember it was one of the very first bright colours during that period of time of the year.

“The smell is one of my favourite smells, I would say.”

Aside from the warm, powdery floral that boasts a hint of honeyed sweetness, Kurkdjian pointed to a more profession-specific scent as a close personal followup favourite.

“If I had to pick the smell of something that is more related to what I do, maybe the perfume that my father used to wear. Because he never had one. He was not loyal to one,” Kurkdjian says. “My father used to wear many things, but I remember among them was the Eau Sauvage bottle …

“I remember it precisely.”

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