Nathalie Benareau
Nathalie Benareau’s perfumery career was closely shaped by her upbringing in the French Alpine countryside. “We would hike every afternoon and I would stop to smell everything. I would smell the moss and the trees and the flowers”, she remembers. “When I went to engineering school, I realized that there was actually an industry for doing just that.”
“Scent is like an alphabet that you can use to create a story, and you can create the story of a person using scent. I chose to enjoy my creative freedom to tell the story of Odette, my closest friend who has an electrifying personality."
Though she moved to New York 17 years ago, Nathalie still returns to France every year with her family to go snowboarding.
“I find snowboarding very liberating”, she says, with passion in her eyes. “That feeling of going off the trail, exploring places where nobody has been before and taking risks. It’s the same kind of feeling you get from creative freedom – going into the unknown and creating something new. And if the snow is no good you’re in France, so at least there is excellent wine and cheese.”
“My fragrance for A. N. Other was inspired by a childhood friend who has amazing style and a great sense of humor," she says. "She wears a leather jacket like nobody else”, so my starting point was to create a deeply textured leather, then inject some fun.
“I think the best way to create a fragrance is to think of somebody and then work from there. That way you know there will always be a lot of love in it.”
“I tried to capture Odette’s love of the unexpected, so the perfume is full of surprises – hidden notes that only emerge as the fragrance dries down. It has the ability to surprise, even when you think you really know it.”
For Nathalie, working without a fragrance brief and not having to worry about budget, lends itself to creating something far more personal, paying a tribute to a special friend that she misses having around as her companion.
“I can create with notes and materials that really interest me without having to worry about price or commerciality," she explains. "It’s very liberating. It encourages creativity, and it means that I can create something very meaningful to me that has great quality.”
Floral by Nathalie Benareau
