Jean-Claude Ellena (b. 1947, Grasse, France) is a perfumer or "nose." He has the business and practice of perfumery in his blood. At an early age, he picked roses with his grandmother to sell to perfumers, and, in fact, his father, brother, and daughter are perfumers. (3)
Beginning with menial jobs, he became an apprentice at the essential-oils maker Antoine Chiris factory in Grasse at the age 16, on the night shift. He has reminisced, “Among other essential oils, we made a lot of oakmoss, and after I’d put the distiller on, I’d lie down on a bed of it and sleep.” (1)
In 1968, he became the first student at what-was-at-the-time the newly formed perfumery school of Givaudan, one of the oldest perfume factories, in Geneva, although he attended only nine months of the three-year course and went on to work for Givaudan in Dübendorf, Switzerland, as a perfumer. He apprenticed under Maurice Thiboud and worked at Haarmaan & Reimer in Nördlingen, Germany (which merged in 2003 with Dragoco to form Symrise). (3)
Ellena has been profoundly influenced by perfumer Edmond Roudnitska, particularly by an article, “Advice to a Young Perfumer,” by Roudnitska in a magazine article given to him by his father. (3)
Known for his ubiquitous white shirts, Ellena himself never wears perfume or cologne.
From 2004, he has been Hermès's exclusive in-house perfumer, appointed by Jean-Louis Dumas and Véronique Gautier. He has created fragrances for several major perfume houses including The Different Company, which he founded before joining Hermès. His daughter Céline Ellena now creates for The Different Company.
In 2005, Ellena created Un Jardin sur le Nil for Hermès. The story behind the creation of this fragrance was the subject of the book The Perfect Scent: A Year in the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York by Chandler Burr. (2) In addition, the story in a limited form and accounts of other scents as well as his autobiography has been published in Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent. (3)
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(1) Alexandra Marshall, “A Hermes Perfumer.” The Wall Street Journal, 5 March 2009.
(2) Chandler Burr, The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2008. ISBN 0805080376
(3) Jean-Claude Ellena, Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent. New York: Arcade, 2011. ISBN 1611453305 (English translation of Parfum. Collection: Que sais-je? Paris: Presses Universitaires de France - PUF, 2007. ISBN 978-2130560821)