SCENT STORY From left:
SCENT STORY From left: at work in the Mane lab; rosa centifolia – or May rose – the essential ingredient in Chanel No 5 M E S S A G E I N A B O T T L E Jean Mane and his family’s eponymous fragrance firm combine cutting-edge tech with time-honoured tradition. By Lanie Goodman H ow do you coax a flower to exhale its sweetness? This was the tantalising challenge undertaken 150 years ago by Victor Mane, a French farmer who cultivated orange blossom in the village of Le Bar-sur-Loup near Grasse. His decision to learn how to distil his own crops put in motion his eponymous fragrance-extraction company that now has sites across 38 countries and plays a leading role in the complex, multibillioneuro global perfume industry. Jean Mane, the current CEO of the family-run firm, is a “chemist by heart” with diplomas in both chemical engineering and synthetic organic chemistry, but he has a keen appreciation for his ancestor’s business instincts. “By eliminating two intermediaries,” he explains, his bright eyes looking back a full century and a half, “my great-grandfather Victor started producing essential neroli oil that was directly saleable to creative fragrance houses like Chanel, Guerlain or Coty.” Today, the company continues the very same procedure, maintaining its headquarters on its native turf near Grasse because, Mane says, “when you distil flowers, they cannot travel”. And the medieval French town and its environs are ideally situated for growing those blossoms: snugly sheltered from sea air, the rich inland soil produces exceptional violets, irises, lavender and pale pink May roses – the latter being the ingredient at the heart of the fragrance world’s most iconic scent, Chanel No 5. Many generations of Manes have honed the art of extraction, but it is Jean who has travelled widely and amassed so many locations for the firm in so many places. Take, for instance, a bush that grows wild in Madagascar, the gnidia daphnifolia. When Mane discovered the aromatic plant during his travels, his company contacted a women’s cooperative on the African island to crop and extract the flower on the spot. As in other countries, such as Nepal or India, the firm’s development of local resources not only protects biodiversity but creates programmes that gives back revenue to the community. Over the years, the science of transforming vegetal life into the finest raw materials has evolved greatly – in part because of Mane’s innovations. The lovely steam-operated copper stills have been since replaced by stainlesssteel vats, and enfleurage, a method designed to capture the heady fragrance PHOTOS FROM LEFT: THIERRY BOUËT, SANDRO CAMPARDO/CHANEL 42 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
of jasmine, no longeruses animal fat. “In the past, extracting was extremely timeconsuming, labour-consuming,” Mane explains. “Imagine that every day, for three months, you’d go to the field to pick the freshly blossomed flowers. One kilo of jasmine requires approximately 6,000 flowers, plus you need 300 kilos to get one kilo of concrete [the semi-solid mass obtained by solvent extraction]. Only a few old fragrance houses can still afford to use Grasse jasmine in their creations.” This diversification of both ingredients and processes has allowed Mane to stay competitive across all manner of fragrance and flavour industries, but also remain at the height of the perfume world, creating oils and tinctures for master perfumers from houses like Dior, Vuitton, Hermès or Chanel, who combine them with synthetic ingredients and spend months readjusting their “recipes”. “The perfumer has a rich palette of maybe 4,000 different ingredients,” Mane explains, “although with just two, there are already an infinite number of combinations. It’s just a question of proportion, like how much salt or pepper you put in your cooking.” Whatever the final recipes – from topshelf perfumes to hair-care products, soaps and diffusers – the goal for Mane and his 5,500 employees remains identical: to find a way to tempt the olfactive receptors that rule our brain. “Modern trends aside, there’s no fragrance without emotion,” Mane muses. “Our head is in the sky, but your feet are rooted in the ground, because that’s where we farm, extract and distil.” mane.com PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: © DOLCE & GABBANA, © VITRUVIAN MAN, DAVID MORGANTI, GERARD UFERAS Jean Mane, who helms his family’s business in the fourth generation METRO MAN OF NOTE Vivian Lau created her four-piece men’s skincare collection with the urban gent in mind. Rich in nourishing, soothing and organic botanicals, Vitruvian Man is a powerful ally in combating the harmful effects of stress on the skin. vitruvian-man.com Pairing heady accents of patchouli and Indian papyrus with vibrant Sicilian blood orange and vanilla extract, Dolce & Gabbana’s latest fragrance is an intoxicating fusion of Eastern and Western influences. Available exclusively at Harrods, harrods.com CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 43
