Ellena's methodology -- and originality -- provides a sharp contrast to the world of perfume today. Indeed, he represents a throwback to another time and place when perfume was a carefully crafted luxury commodity designed for elite and wealthy clientele. That his fragrances are both luxurious and accessible is a mark of his adaptability to modern tastes.
When Ellena was approached by Hermes in 2004 about becoming its official in-house perfumer (Chanel, Patou and Caron are the only other luxury brands with their own nose), he accepted but only on his own terms: He'd be allowed to dream up formulas at his own pace and on his own turf.
"He's a veritable aesthete," says perfume expert Jean Kerleo, Patou's chief nose for 35 years and now the founding president of France's national perfume conservatory. "He started his training very young, at home with his father, who was a very good perfumer. After working many years with huge multinational companies, he's been able to pursue a very personal direction."
Ellena began his training as an apprentice in a local perfume factory in 1964 when he was 17. Over the years he has cultivated a deep memory of odors, an olfactory vocabulary that he draws upon when he begins developing a new fragrance. Perhaps the greatest professional influence in his life was the renowned perfumer Edmond Roudnitska, who created Eau Sauvage for Christian Dior in the 1960s and was a pioneer at developing minimalist formulas.
In the early 1990s, Ellena worked in New York for two years and found the American corporate approach too cut and dried. "I've been told that I'm very French," he says, "and the way I presented my ideas didn't go over well. I'd be talking poetry; they'd be talking product, and whether or not it would make money."
His decision to leave Manhattan -- and an industry in which he'd receive marketing directives such as "make it smell like a woman in stilettos" -- is not surprising. Due to market pressures over the last few decades, most perfume is diluted into eau de toilette or eau de parfum. What was once an elitist privilege -- purchasing a highly crafted extrait de parfum -- is no longer in vogue. Many luxury brands, in their struggle to create new perfumes and advertise them, cut costs mostly by producing less expensive, less complicated fragrances.
