Conjuring paradise

To demonstrate how he creates minimalist fragrances, Ellena pulls open a drawer in his lab. He takes out a thin paper blotter, dips it into a vial filled with a synthetic, fans it in the air and hands it over. It smells like coconut oil. He repeats the process with another synthetic. This time, it's unmistakably mint. Then he superimposes one blotter on the other, and the effect is magical: a fresh, ripe fig.

"I can conjure it in just two molecules, even if a real fig has 400," he says. It's that simple and that difficult, this art that combines experience and playfulness at a remove from the world.

"It's never clear what I'm going to do next," he says, gazing out the window at the birds in the pines. "For me, creation means walking down a road where you suddenly realize, it's not this way; it's that way. The challenge remains the same. I hope that when people smell my perfume, they'll always say, 'Wow, I've never smelled anything like that before.' "

--

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SCENT

The perfume industry was in its infancy when manufacturing icon Francois Coty declared in 1904, "Give a woman the best product you can, market it in the perfect bottle . . . ask a reasonable price for it, and you will witness the birth of a business the size of which the world has never seen."

His judgment helps explain a number of notable developments in the history of perfume.

JICKY, created for Guerlain in 1889, was the first perfume that didn't try to copy the scent of flowers. Credit the discovery of two synthetic molecules, vanillin and coumarin.

CHANEL NO. 5, created in 1921 when Gabrielle Chanel asked Ernst Beaux to develop a women's perfume "that smells like a woman." It surged in popularity when Marilyn Monroe declared it the only thing she wore to bed.

SHALIMAR, created for Guerlain in 1925, was the first perfume to contain ethyl vanillin, a synthetic compound more potent than real vanilla. It soon became the essence of seduction, down to the fan-shaped glass stopper.

ARPEGE, created for Lanvin in 1927, was immortalized by its marketing campaign. First came the black and gold Art Deco bottle, then the slogan, "Promise her anything, but give her Arpege."

JOY, created for Patou in 1929, was launched after the stock market crash as "the most expensive perfume in the world." At the end of World War II, it became the gift that American soldiers brought home from Paris to their wives.