Dominique Ropion

Dominique is considered by his peers to be a great talent, if not the best master perfumer working today, but he openly admits that there is nothing particularly striking about his career and that perfumery was not his vocation at all: "It took me a long time to realise that I was going to be a perfumer. At that time, perfumers were on a pedestal, so I never thought about it". It was only by chance that he became a master perfumer, when another student dropped out of perfumery school and was offered the job instead. Before accepting, he asked to meet some perfumers to get an idea of the profession. He spoke to Jean Amic, Jean Louis Sieuzac and Pierre Bourdon. "It usually takes me months to make up my mind, but I said to myself: why not? I moved to Grasse for three years and then went back to Paris to complete my training. It's funny, I had never thought of becoming a perfumer, even though I have always loved smells.
It is at the heart of Dominique's reactor, his passion, his core This is what he wants to convey Dominique experienced his own apprenticeship in scents as a journey: "I have always smelled everything. But I never combined that enjoyment with the possibility of composing my own fragrances, but I've always loved art, so why not compose with smells instead of sounds or anything else.
Dominique discovered the vast world of scents She knows instinctively that serendipity is not the answer, so she works very methodically. "I immediately felt I had to program myself to learn every smell before I could even begin to think about composing. And it was a moment of immense pleasure. Learning all those smells is a really interesting process, worthy of any psychoanalysis. When you learn a smell, the way you do it is to link it to everything that makes you think. It's very deep, very personal, and it can take you very far. I would advise anyone to go on that unfathomable inner journey". Like any learning curve, it came with its fair share of mistakes that taught him to try harder. And the poet and dreamer who travelled everywhere on the back of molecules became a workaholic: "You can't be a dilettante, the molecules won't let you".
What moves Dominique? "I think it's the perfume itself that creates that bubble of intimacy and all the smells that open us up to another world, take us out of the hustle and bustle and protect us in our own little space It's an aerosol of emotions I often have the sensation of swallowing a perfume as much as breathing it in It slides down my throat, my lungs and circulates to my cerebral cortex. Smells physically feed my thoughts. It is a living process and trying to create emotions in your fellow man is an almost poetic enterprise. The art of assembling smells, like the art of playing with sounds, helps to create bonds of community, religion or love. It gives confidence to the wearer, brings people a little closer together, invites interest in others, if only to see what others smell like. I am still a dreamer, anchored in the reality of others, spurred on by their desires. I am very attached to fleshy emotions and to encounters that show me a different way of thinking. When I think of perfumes, I evoke femininity, not a woman, not a book, not a particular painting, and I make perfumes because I love to talk about love, sexuality and freedom".
Dominique is a unique master, a dreamer, a liberator, an architect of scents, dedicated to the search for a formal aesthetic of fragrance.