Everything
Renaud Salmon may have the wordy title of Chief Experience Officer and Creative Director for Amouage but what the Belgian native is, in summary, is an editor. The job of refining, streamlining, seeing connections and threads and to put the work into perspective of the bigger narrative of theme. They visit, and then revisit to reimagine the possibilities of how something could be taken further.
It’s the approach that Salmon has done with the revamping of the house’s Library Collection. Of bringing a cohesive, understandable approach to bottle design as a distinct language within the world of Amouage. The revival of attars. And it’s what he’s doing with the Exceptional Extraits that take fragrances from the Amouage catalogue and push them to their extreme from an olfactive point of view, the latest additions to this pillar being Dia 40 Woman and Jubilation 40 Man in honour of the 40th anniversary of the luxury Oman fragrance house.
“It’s difficult to predict, even today, how a fragrance will turn out as an Extrait,” Salmon tells ICON. “ But Dia and Jubilation…I decided to produce them because I wanted two fragrances that felt celebratory for the 40th anniversary of the House. And celebratory means they need to have a bit of a grand feeling. And they feel a little bit more grand.”
First created in 2002 by industry legend Jean-Claude Ellena, Dia Woman captures the essence of femininity with a tender floral bouquet, while Jubilation XXV Man, crafted by Bertrand Duchaufour in 2008, merged Eastern and Western styles to present a modern take on masculinity. The grandeur that Salmon speaks of was already present in these original creations, but in Extrait form these are elevated to a more potent level. Reimagined with a 40 per cent concentration, offer a richer and more profound olfactory experience, marking the brand’s four decades of excellence.
Dia 40 Woman, brought to life by Alexandra Carlin, takes the already intoxicating original and transforms it into something invigorating and uplifting. The grand floral bouquet is given some additional height courtesy of an overdose of aldehydes and musks, culminating in a regal blend of orris, sandalwood, and amyris. The result is a fragrance journey that begins with the sparkling light of dawn to a mellow dusk. “What I love about Dia Woman is that it has this grand feeling, but at the same time it keeps on being very sparkling and vibrant,” explains Salmon.
Where aldehydes are often used to amp the olfactive wattage of a fragrance up, Carlin manages to maintain Ellena’s signature translucence. Salmon describes Carlin’s interpretation of Dia as one of duality. “There is this kind of armour or shell of metallic aldehydes, that to me looks like a very, very strong and worked silhouette. But then at the same time, it has this whole fragility that feels like ruffles or something like that that comes from the intricate florals and all of those very nuanced material. And on top of that, I think Dia woman was a key milestone of Amouage.”
Jubilation XXV, says Salmon, was a similar milestone for the brand. Launched in 2008 to mark the 25th anniversary of Amouage, the original developed a cult following for its spicy incense accord that merged notes of tart blackberry and rich, dripping honey notes.
Jubilation 40 Man, Salmon brought back XXV perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour to revisit his original creation. Starting with that same unique blackberry opening, it unfolds into a majestic heart of honeyed tobacco and frankincense, before settling into a rich base of patchouli, cistus, and opoponax.
“Jubilation offered its own challenges,” says Salmon. “There’s this beautiful blackberry note in Jubilation XXV that is very important. There is this kind of honey heart, like balsamic heart and so on that is really regal and beautiful and so on. For the 40, Bertrand added close to triple the quantity of patchouli, double the amount of incense and so on to get this very strong and heavy base. Then all of a sudden you lose the balance and the blackberry note was eaten alive by the woods, so we lost the blackberry note.”
To address this, and find the balance again, Salmon says that Duchaufour suggested black currant, one of the trickiest notes to manage in perfumery as it smells sulfuric when fresh. So when Duchaufour presented the sample to him, his first impression was rotten eggs. “But he says, ‘oh no, the fragrance is amazing!’ And I’m like, Bertrand, I think we are not smelling the same thing because I mean it smells like rotten eggs.”
To his credit, Duchaufour was right and after 10 weeks, giving the fragrance time to mature, the new creation revealed itself to Salmon. “I really admired actually how he was able to isolate the notes and fully trust that it would come in.”
While both Dia and Jubilation XXV were both popular among fans of Amouage, neither could arguably be called best-sellers. The choice to add them to the Exceptional Extrait line-up has something more about the potential resonance of both to be transformed. “It’s difficult to predict even still today, how a fragrance would turn out as an Extrait. It’s also not really about sales,” says Salmon.
“It’s defined by the creativity and the outcome. The end result is what matters even more than the creative intention and even more than some kind of strategic vision that we could have about the Extraits.”
