Perfume
          What do you get when 
          the South of France       Cloud
          meets Silicon Valley? 
          A new generation 
          of fragrances made 
          using big data and 
          artificial intelligence. 
          By SARAH DANIEL 
          FROM THE OUTSIDE, the world of 
          fragrance creation can seem magical and 
          mysterious. A marriage of poetry and 
          chemistry, it captures the imagination, 
          conjuring images of a French-born nose 
          filling a weathered, leather-bound note-
          book  with secret formulas or hand-picking 
          ingredients from the idyllic fields of Grasse, 
          the world’s perfume capital. Now picture 
          that perfumer tapping a touchscreen and 
          using data-driven algorithms to develop 
          the next L’Eau d’Issey or Dior Poison. It’s 
          artisanry meets artificial intelligence, and 
          it’s the future of perfumery. 
            For 28-year-old Maxime Garcia-Janin, 
          whose start-up, Sillages Paris, creates 
          custom scents using machine learning—a 
          method of data analysis that falls under the 
          umbrella of AI—this digital transform-
          ation was a long time coming. Working 
          briefly in perfumery for LVMH and 
          L’Oréal (the latter is one of his investors), 
          he often heard colleagues pin the fragrance 
          industry’s decline on millennials. The 
          assumption was that because millennials 
          are obsessed with all things visual, they 
          wouldn’t be interested in buying perfume. 
          “For me, it was the complete opposite,” 
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                      says Garcia-Janin. “I think millennials         company’s database and suggest new                 Which brings us to the second benefit 
                      love fragrance because we’re a genera-          combinations and ingredient ratios.             of using AI: speed. While perfumers 
                      tion that wants to be unique—we want               Each perfumer’s style and approach           are artists, when they work for large 
                      to emphasize what makes us different            to perfumery comes with biases (if you’d        companies that create scents for fashion 
                      from one another. And fragrance is the          asked Matisse and Cézanne to each               houses and beauty brands, they’re also 
                      perfect product for that.” Similar to how       paint an apple, you’d have gotten two           under a lot of pressure to translate stacks 
                      Spotify creates personalized playlists based    very different apples, points out Viola),       of marketing briefs into future bestselling 
                      on listening history, Sillages Paris helps      whether that’s favouring ingredients (many      formulas, which can feel like the opposite 
                      consumers build a bespoke fragrance by          perfumers work with only a fraction of          of art. If fragrances like Lancôme’s La 
                      asking a series of questions and providing      the 3,000 or so available) or gravitating       Vie Est Belle take four years to create, 
                      the guidance of a team of young perfumers       toward certain fragrance categories, like       AI can shorten the incubation period to 
                      dubbed “super-noses.” It’s such a departure     gourmands or chypres. Philyra is doing          months, says Viola. It’s no wonder other 
                      from the traditional perfume model that         pure data analysis, explains Viola, so it       companies are leaning into tech too. 
                      Garcia-Janin considers his brand luxury         doesn’t have any biases, which means it         Fragrance giant Firmenich launched 
                      fragrance 3.0. “I think we went from            can eliminate those blind spots.                D-Lab, a collaboration with École 
                      zero to 3.0 because before we came to              A lack of creativity within the perfume      polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, a 
                      the market, nothing existed in terms of         world is what drove Edmonton-based Josh         Swiss university specializing in science 
                      digital technology in high perfumery.”          Smith to start his own brand, Libertine. “I     and technology. And earlier this year, 
                         Indeed, the perfume industry is a late       was interested in scent and found a lot of      Givaudan (of which Bill Gates is the 
                      adopter. The category trails behind skin-       releases and big-box-store fragrances sort      largest shareholder) introduced Carto, 
                      care and makeup brands, which have been         of boring,” says Smith, whose scents have       an AI-powered program that features a 
                      quicker at using AI and augmented reality;      been endorsed by notoriously-hard-to-im-        colourful touchscreen reminiscent of the 
                      for example, Sephora’s Virtual Artist app       press perfume critic Luca Turin. Smith          one CNN shows off on election night. 
                      lets consumers try on thousands of lipstick     puts out one perfume a year, which leaves          Even with all these high-tech tools, 
                      shades, and Olay’s Skin Advisor offers          plenty of time for him to experiment with       the process doesn’t work without the 
                      personalized product recommendations            his formulas and dream up new ideas.            perfumer. Similar to how autonomous 
                      based solely on an uploaded selfie. While       While he sees why the big fragrance com-        cars—whose algorithms can be thrown 
                      some 20th-century innovations—such as           panies are betting on AI to transform the       off by pigeons, snowflakes and even 
                      gas chromatography mass spectrometry            creative process, he doesn’t think we’ll see    tree shadows—require a human to 
                      in the 1950s, which allowed perfumers           a big change at the fragrance counter. “I       make sense of anomalies, only a human 
                      to discern the molecular composition            think with AI, it will just be a faster way     perfumer can understand the difference 
                      of a scent, and headspace technology in         of creating more of the same.”                  between a potential masterpiece and 
                      the 1980s, which enabled them to cap-                                                           a mediocre formula. “It’s logic, not  
                      ture the fragrance of a rare flower or an                                                       creative,” says Firmenich master  
                      obscure aroma and then recreate it in a               WITH AI,                                  perfumer Olivier Cresp of the technology. 
                      lab—have pushed the fragrance industry                                                          Cresp, the man behind blockbusters like 
                      forward, many consider AI to be the most              PERFUMERS                                 Thierry Mugler Angel and Dolce & 
                      significant development in over a century.                                                      Gabbana Light Blue, started his career 
                      “It’s probably the biggest disruption since           WILL HAVE                                 as a perfumer in the mid-1970s and 
                      1874,” says Claire Viola, vice-president of                                                     received the Fragrance Foundation’s 
                      digital strategy fragrance at Symrise, a              THEIR OWN                                 lifetime achievement award just last year. 
                      global fragrance company. That was the                                                          He says using this new technology is a 
                      year Symrise’s founders created vanillin,             PERSONAL                                  “positive” change because it allows him 
                      one of the first synthetic ingredients to be                                                    to concentrate on important projects, like, 
                      included in a fine fragrance. Vanillin was            DIGITAL                                   say, Akro, the niche perfume line he’s 
                      featured in Guerlain’s Jicky, which debuted                                                     working on with his daughter. “I see it as 
                      in 1889 and was the first perfume to feature          APPRENTICE                                a big help, not as a competition,” he says. 
                      both synthetic and natural ingredients. It                                                         While Cresp seems to be embracing 
                      was a major turning point in the industry:            TO HELP THEM                              the shift, Kilian Hennessy, creator of the 
                      With synthetics, the sky was the limit in                                                       By Kilian luxury-fragrance line, doesn’t 
                      terms of what perfumers could do.                     DREAM UP                                  see the need for a digital apprentice. Like 
                         And now, with AI, perfumers will have                                                        with other niche perfumers, pushing 
                      their own personal digital apprentice to              INFINITE NEW                              boundaries and taking creative risks are 
                      help them dream up infinite new ways                                                            what he does best. For Hennessy, who 
                      to use every ingredient in their palette.             WAYS TO                                   learned from perfume icons Thierry 
                      “Creativity is the number-one reason                                                            Wasser and Jacques Cavallier, the ideas 
          E           we developed a partnership with IBM,                                                            flow like champagne. “Mozart used to 
          UC                                                                USE EVERY 
           BR         because it enhances the realm of possi-                                                         say that he could hear the opera in his 
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          W           bilities,” says Viola. The result of that                                                       head and he was just writing the notes 
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          P           collaboration is Philyra, a program that                                                        he heard,” he says. “I can give you  
          A
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          O           uses machine learning to scan the nearly              THEIR PALETTE.                            combinations that have never been done 
          T
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          H           two million formulas in the fragrance                                                           by anyone—I don’t need AI to do that.” 
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