Annick Goutal: Scent of a Woman

The movie Scent of a Woman starring Al Pacino certainly is not about perfumes. Neither is it about a nose, a person with a keen sense of smell, who has that rare ability to distinguish between hundreds of scents and ingredients that go into the making of a perfume.

But if a movie were to be made about a woman who had that gift to create scents, it should be about Annick Goutal.

Before I went to Paris to visit the Annick Goutal Laboratory at Rue des Renaudes, Annick Goutal was but a scent that I liked very much. Very delicate, so unlike those "matronic" scents that flourished in the Eighties and died a natural death, Annick Goutal was introduced to me by young, well- traveled friends who discovered the brand in the more exquisite stores of Europe.

After I discovered the story of this perfumer, I now look at Annick Goutal not just as a brand. It is the name of a woman whose life story is full of love, laughter, romance and pathos. Her scent stays on your skin, but her story lingers on in your mind and in your heart.

Annick Goutal was one of eight children of a sweet goods manufacturer who had a famous confectionery shop in Paris. As a child, she would help in the filling and packing of chocolate bundles. Perhaps this exposed her nose early to different exciting and delicious scents.

But her strict father smelled a brighter future for Annick as a pianist. He obliged her to practise six hours daily on the piano, including holidays.

Annick revolted and fled to London where photographer David Bailey, a family friend, made her overnight into a successful model. She made good money as a mannequin, but realized there was still that artist-musician in her yearning to play notes. At a hotel hall in between modeling stints, she could not resist sitting before a piano and spontaneously playing a ballad of Chopin. She eventually became a prizewinning pianist as well.

But the maverick artist Annick soon fled again, and found herself being charmed by the world of antiques.

Her love story began when she met Alain Meunier and fell in love with him. But soon after, they separated, leaving our tragic heroine alone, and taking care by herself of their daughter Camille.

Alone and lonely, she was later diagnosed with breast cancer. She thought it was the end of her world until she met two sisters who developed a skincare line using plants and which was so effective its formula was well-guarded. However, the skin cremes lacked two things – fragrance and packaging.

This was where Annick’s talent came in. "My fingers remembered," Annick said. "I had acquired a great manual facility, thanks to all the chocolate arranging. I had the idea of presenting the pots of creams like dainty packets of sweets. We would inscribe hundreds of tags with beautiful handwriting to go with the bags."

In 1977, Annick met perfumer Henri Sorsana and spent the next seven years of her life honing her talent as a nose in Grasse, France. Once again, this pianist would come across the same words: Notes, harmony, key. "I was back with music, that part of myself I had been sadly cut off from."

Her first creation as a parfumeur was Folavril or April’s Fool; her interpretation of spring, mixing jasmine with mango. She later created a winter version called Passion which became her personal perfume.

Annick became all the more inspired to create new scents when, after 19 years of separation, her childhood sweetheart Alain and she met again and married! Alain had become a cellist, so there was so much harmony with Annick the pianist in a home filled with notes (musical notes and perfume notes as well).

Annick created Grand Amour in honor of the true love of her life with whom she was reunited. She also concocted Eau de Camille, inspired by her daughter Camille. When she was seven, Camille was up on the terrace feeling the ivy after the grass had just been cut, and said, "Mommy, I want a fragrance like this." The fragrance is "as green as an ivy-covered garden, and as lively as a young girl at the break of a new day." And so Eau de Camille has the scent of freshly-cut grass.

In honor of Alain’s daughter Charlotte (from his first marriage), Annick designed Eau de Charlotte, mixing Charlotte’s favorite flowers and fruits, including blackcurrant (for Charlotte loved blackcurrant jam).

For her husband Alain, Annick created another scent called Sables, commemorating eternal love.

This was followed by many other scents which became popular not only in Europe but in the United States as well, where her line was marketed by the Taittinger group (also famous for its Champagne) headed by Brigitte Taittinger Warren.

There is Eau d’Hadrien (a favorite of Prince and Madonna) which uses authentic Sicilian lemon, grapefruit and cypress, "evoking the heart of the Mediterranean sun and the coolness of the shade of a lemon tree."

Then there is Eau de Sud (liked by both Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise) which Annick created to bring back memories of holidays spent at her father’s home in the south of France. It is a fresh light fragrance that can "satisfy a thirst under a running fountain in the cool shadow of a trellis in the garden."

Annick created unisex perfumes, making only her packing sex-specific: Round bottles for ladies, and angular bottles for gentlemen.

Annick attributed her success to the freedom she had as an artist. "It is very rare that a perfume creator can be free, because parfumeurs are always linked to a big perfume company. "I have always had complete freedom... it is like making music by myself."

Her music played on and on until 1999 when she died at the age of 54. But her scents live forever.

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Annick’s life story was told to us by her beautiful daughter Camille, who met us at the Annick Goutal Laboratory in Paris.

There on her table, amid endless rows of tiny bottled aromas, Camille gazes at a picture of her mother as if enshrined in a veritable altar redolent with candles.

She shows us a photo of a young Camille with mother Annick in a loving embrace. "I would watch her work every day. She was making me smell everything. It was like a training I got from five years old. She would say, ‘Camille, smell this, this is jasmine...’ and then I would watch her check on colors of packaging day in, day out. Every week, my father would give her lilies... I was raised in this kind of universe."

Camille herself was trained to be a nose by Isabelle Doyen, her mother’s assistant. Camille says she was into photography when the scents from her mother’s laboratory beckoned and made her stay to smell the flowers.

"You can train your nose to distinguish between two different flowers and two different spices. You have to know the essences and formulas behind each scent," she explains.

"I can tell synthetic rose from real, fake jasmine from real," says Camille, stressing that Annick Goutal uses only pure ingredients. "That is why it would be expensive for other perfumers to copy us. I know that among perfumers, only Chanel and Guerlain use pure ingredients like us."

One thing she enjoys doing is helping pack the fragrances. "Yes, we do everything by hand, just like when my mother was alive. It takes five minutes to tie the ribbon for each bottle," she says, obviously never finding it a boring routine. "Look at the two butterflies kissing in our label, they are always there."

Annick Goutal’s touch is always there, in every bottle, in every daintily beribboned package that carries her scent. It is the scent of a woman who followed her nose and followed her heart.

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Annick Goutal fragrances are available at Rustan’s Department Store, Essenses at Robinsons Place Ermita, and MIX at Greenbelt 3.