Bertrand Duchaufour

Beginning his career in 1985,[1] Bertrand Duchaufour trained at the Lautier Florasynth group in Grasse, then spent 10 years at Créations Aromatiques, then Symrise, working in their fine fragrance department.[2] His first signed fragrance came in 1995, creating Amber & Lavender for Jo Malone.[3] In 2008, he became an independent perfumer, taking on work directly, including at L'Artisan Parfumeur as house perfumer.[4] In 2014, he joined fragrance firm TechnicoFlor, where he has been consulting for three years.[2]

Duchaufour is a prolific creator, making fragrances for a variety of perfume houses, including Penhaligon's and Acqua di Parma,[5] as well as fashion houses Comme des Garcons, Givenchy and Dior.[6] Many of his fragrances have received substantial critical praise. In 2008, The New York Times perfume critic Chandler Burr wrote of Duchaufour's creation for Eau d'Italie Paestum Rose: "Duchaufour is an expert in shadows (see his Dzongka, done for l'Artisan Parfumeur). He paints olfactory charcoals and grays and deep purples with the smells of smoke and worn wood, a living Old Master of scent, and Paestum Rose is not just perfectly calibrated on a technical level. It is better than that. It is a work of art. The perfume unfolds with a scented crepuscular darkness, a twilight that is an exact balance of disappearing sunlight and incipient evening." The fragrance smelled modern, Burr said, without resorting to "easy clichés" to accomplish this. Rather the scent reminded Burr of a Caravaggio one of the Eau d'Italie owners admired. "Paestum Rose is a perfume that's rich and filled with meaning like the intimate opalescent blacks Caravaggio painted, instantly known and strangely unfamiliar. In this perfume we smell ancient beauty made thrillingly new."[7]

Though Duchaufour's œuvre is widely varied, he is especially known for incense fragrances, like Timbuktu (2004) and Dzongkha (2006) for L'Artisan Parfumeur and Jubilation XXV for Amouage (2007).[3] His 2008 L'Artisan creation for perfume boutique Aedes de Venustas was another entrant into this category, earning four stars in Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez's Perfumes: The A-Z Guide; writing of all four, Sanchez said Duchaufour's work with incense makes "austerity seem rich, as it does in Rembrandt's portraits of burghers, whose penitent black and white costumes are clearly cut of luxurious cloth."[3] In the same Guide, Turin gave Timbuktu five stars, calling it “the first true masterpiece of what, by analogy with nouvelle cuisine, I would call nouvelle parfumerie” and Duchaufour one of its “chief exponents”, with Jean-Claude Ellena. The ingredient cypriol gave Timbuktu “a smoky note without a trace of oiliness or tar, the smell of crisply burned dry wood on a bonfire”, but, Turin notes, “no single raw material ever ‘made’ a fragrance, and [Duchaufour] should take full credit for a masterly composition.”[3]

In 2017, Duchaufour's 2002 fragrance Incense: Avignon for Comme des Garçons was included in an exhibit at Somerset House on developments in perfumery in the prior 20 years, in particular "perfumes that have changed the way we think." Co-curator Claire Catterall named it as one of the 10 most important niche perfumes in the period, noting that scent, which uses frankincense, sandalwood and Iso E Super to evoke a Catholic mass, is Morrissey's favorite perfume.[8]

In 2012 Duchaufour worked for Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov. Duchaufour created her fragrances Victorious for men and Mysterieuse for women.[9][6] Asked why he would involve himself with the repressive regime, Duchaufour responded in writing to fragrance blog CaFleureBon: "I have been a little bit naive and just considered the good part of the project (money) and didn't realize what was behind."[10]

In 2017, Duchaufour was awarded perfumer of the year by the Russian FiFi Awards.[2]