OLIVIER POLGE

photo by Hajime Watanabe

Few ingredients, a certain instinct and just as much discipline: he makes perfume with a minimum of sophistication and juggles with paradox.  A somewhat abstract approach that could almost be qualified as craftsmanship.  Olivier is totally aware of the apparent contradiction.  “I find certain oriental or woody themes more inspiring than others, but I can also really get into a project using a single raw material or a simple note if it really appeals to me.”  Not that easy to approach, Olivier is not one of those people who will let you get away with just anything.  Perfume still remains for Olivier something that is primarily created in the mind more than anything else.  “I can’t imagine it as a continuation of nature but more of a sophisticated version.”  And when you ask him to associate perfume to a place, he replies: “The city” without the slightest hesitation.  A poet who keeps his distance and a connoisseur in the art of simple expression, Olivier is also an expert in the art of paradox.  A rich and complex profile both and already possessed of a certain charisma, Olivier still has plenty of resources.

Olivier Polge became the new Chanel nose in 2013.

(Olivier Polge is the author of A Lab on Fire L’Anonyme ou OP-1475-A .)

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