Photography | Dior
The House of Dior calls it an atypical smell-good movie. To me, Nose is akin to a scent-lover’s version of a great food documentary, like Netflix’s Chef’s Table or Cooked.
I’m one who is passionate about fine perfumes, as well as superb food. To create a great-tasting dish, an inspired chef will search high and low for the perfect ingredients and combine them in interesting ways, using the best cooking methods Dior’s Nose shows us that the process of creating a great scent is no lesser a feat.
Filmmakers Clément Beauvais and Arthur de Kersauson followed Dior’s head perfumer, François Demachy, for two years as he travelled the world, stopping in 14 countries in search of the most exquisite ingredients, shedding light of the little-known world of perfume creation.
The documentary team spent two years following François Demachy, one of the greatest noses in global perfumery, as he explored the origin of the precious ingredients used in his creations. From the May roses of Grasse to Calabrian bergamot, Indonesian patchouli and Sri Lankan sandalwood, we meet the passionate men and women who painstakingly cultivate the exceptional raw materials to be distilled into beautiful scents.
The movie is a joy to watch: the scenery of where these natural ingredients come from is awe-inspiring. The narration is poetic and the diverse soundtrack transports you to the time and place of the story. But the greatest takeaway is that you will never look at perfumes the same way.
In Nose, we see the harvest of May roses in Carole Biancalana’s flower fields. They form the heart of Miss Dior Rose N’Roses. 100 ml | $146
Dior Homme Eau de Parfum is a polyphonic symphony of woods, including patchouli heart, which comes from Indonesia. 100 ml | $124
J’adore Infinissime contains jasmines and tuberoses from Grasse, where Dior head perfumer François Demachy grew up. 100 ml | $185
Spritz on Miss Dior Rose N’Roses and you are smelling the pink roses you saw from Carole Biancalana’s Domaine de Manon in Grasse, France. Take a sniff of J’adore Infinissimi, and you are reminded that it takes seven hundred kilograms of jasmine flowers to make one kilo of absolute. And that bottle of Dior Homme eau de toilette? Demachy was working on its final blend in the movie, and now you know where patchouli comes from.
Much like how food documentaries let you appreciate how great chefs come to be, Nose instills a deeper appreciation of what goes on inside and behind a perfume bottle.
Nose is available on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play and Canal VOD.
