Perfumery

Perfumer Edmond Roudnitska

Edmond Roudnitska is a legendary perfumer, a teacher of many famous perfumers, who himself studied with Ernest Bo and created aromatic masterpieces that are familiar to us to this day and have become classics of perfumery.

Edmond Rudnitska is the son of Ukrainian emigrants, born in 1905 in Nice, France. In 1946, Edmond Roudnitska founded Art et Parfum, his private perfume laboratory, and he began studying perfumery in Grasse in 1926. In 1927 he moved to Paris. The future perfumer studied chemistry at Bertrand Dupont and Delaire. He lived for 90 years and left the memory of the great perfumer about himself. His disciples became Jean-Claude Ellena, Mona Di Orio, Francois Demachy, Oliver Cresp and many others who consider him their teacher and the pinnacle of perfumery creativity. It was he who influenced them, taught them to embody bright emotional experiences in fragrances.

“Any modern perfumer can create a sweet scent. The trick is to create a fragrance that has a soul. " These words of the great perfumer are remembered by each of them and each time he checks his creation using them - whether it corresponds to what was said.

Diorissimo, Eau Sauvage or his beloved Diorella and many other fragrances have become not only masterpieces of world perfumery, but also benchmarks.

Once upon a time, Christian Dior set out to create a fragrance that would repeat himself and become an expression of his soul. And this scent was created by Edmond Roudnitska. It was Diorissimo.

Diorissimo is a classic, it is the ideal of human genius. The composition of the fragrance consists of a delicate lily, fragrant lily of the valley, luxurious lilac, sensual ylang-ylang, majestic amaryllis, gentle boron, spicy scent of rosemary.

For 70 years, Edmond Roudnitska created only 17 perfumes, but all of them became the pinnacle of his talent, because before calling the fragrance created, he worked hard, although literally from the first attempt, for many, the fragrance conceived by Rudnitska seemed already complete. The great perfumer himself thought quite differently: “I still have a lot to work on this”.

His first success was the Femme perfume - "Woman", which Roudnitska created for the wife of Marcel Roche. At first, perfumes were produced in very small quantities, and only select ladies could use them. But a year later, their mass production began.

We sometimes think - to become a great perfumer, or at least just a perfumer, the first condition must be a direct connection with the beautiful creations of nature, such as the luxurious plantations of Provence. Is it really possible to create a luxurious fragrance without contemplating this beauty, in which the intoxicating scent of jasmine, delicate lavender, cherry, mimosa and a luxurious queen of flowers - a rose ... It turns out you can. After all, Edmond Roudnitska created his Femme in 1943 - 1944 in Paris itself during the war, when he was in a building that had a chemical plant on one side and a garbage dump on the other. Of course, contemplating and feeling the beauty of nature, for many perfumers this is the first of the conditions for creating a masterpiece. But, probably, that is why Edmond Roudnitska in the world perfumery also belongs to the glory of the greatest perfumer of the 20th century, since he did not always have this condition. For him, the stimulus to creativity was his own inspiration, which he drew from his inner world.

Edmond Roudnitska is a genius perfumer of the 20th century. We can say about him that he has comprehended the secret of the creation of perfumes.

And for all his creative activity, he released 16 fragrances. Le Parfum de Therese, released by the Frederic Malle brand after the perfumer's death, became the seventeenth. This fragrance was created by a perfumer for his wife Teresa Delvo, and only she had the right to use them. The composition, which includes delicate flowers and juicy fruits, is bright, strong and feminine.

Only in 2000, Frederic Mal received the right to produce these perfumes under his own brand. Despite its age, this perfume remains a wonderful creation and meets the preferences of modern ladies.Now some of those who carefully respect the creations of the great perfumer still have the famous bottles of Diorella, Diorissimo or Femme Rochas. And those that are produced under these names in modern perfumery, of course, are no longer the same, since some of the ingredients had to be replaced. The replacement is taking place based on new rules for manufacturers, or some ingredients are recognized as allergenic, so they were replaced with analogues.

Edmond Roudnitska strictly approached the creation and release of his creations, bringing them to perfection, so those that we know are only 10% of those created by the perfumer, not counting the sketches.

His creations are interesting and surprising also because they are unusually simple. Their simplicity lies in the fact that the composition of aromas sometimes consists of only 5 ingredients.

From 1949 Art et Parfum moved to Cabris, a small town near Grasse. Here Edmond Roudnitska lived and worked until his death in 1996. Edmond Roudnitska generously donated his richest experience not only to his students, but also tried to describe in books about fragrances: "Le parfum", "Que sais-je?", "L '? Sthetique en question" and "L'intimit? du parfum ".

Now his son, perfumer Michel Roudnitska, has become a worthy successor. Michelle Roudnitska was born in 1948. He studied the art of perfumery from his father, Edmond Rudnitska. Michel worked as a photographer, video director, and traveled a lot. He created Noir Epices for Frederic Malle, and several for DelRae. Michel now runs the Art & Parfum studio, founded by Edmond Roudnitska in 1946. Lives in Grasse.

"... And what should not be present in the character of a perfumer is absent-mindedness, laziness, negligence and ignorance" - EDMON RUDNITSKA