Christophe Laudamiel
Introduction
The Art de vivre series offers a way of discovering three pillars of French culture, taken in the most general and immediate sense. Led by specialists in their respective fields, these lectures, including tastings, will bring new understanding to the creation of high quality products in the tradition of French savoir-faire.
The Speaker
Christophe Laudamiel is a creator of perfumes. His childhood was spent learning the names of exotic fruits, spices, and other plants and flowers.
Today he puts his skills to work for the organization International Flavors and Fragrances in New York.
After significant scientific training, including graduating at the top of his class from the École Européenne des Hautes Études des Industries Chimiques (European School of Advanced Studies in Chemical Industries) in Strasbourg in 1991, he went on to teach chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received a Perfumer-Creator certification from Proctor & Gamble in 1997.
His work has focused on the relationship between the world of perfumery and that of art and design. His creations are infused with a sense of ambiance, and his inspiration comes from various sources: a living room, a music video, a new scientific discovery, famous people or characters, or a geographic place could inspire the perfume that everyone will be wearing next year.
With the International Flavors and Fragrances Foundation, Laudamiel has organized programs to increase awareness about scents in primary schools. Activities include simple exercises: children are asked to relate a series of photographs to scents, and, in order to help teach good penmanship, to relate perfumes to words. This technique has been effective in helping with visual memorization of vocabulary.
Christopher Laudamiel boasts an impressive number of creations for well-known clients, including: Happy Heart and Happy in Bloom (Clinique); HN for Men and HN for Women (Harvey Nichols); Le baiser de l’Artiste (Orlan) (The Artist’s Kiss); Mimosa (Slatkin & Co.); the Perfumes of Perfume (Thierry Mugler for Patrick Süskind); and Polo Blue for Men (Ralph Lauren).
Lectures
Fact and fiction about perfuming at the dawn of the 21st century
Receptors in the nose are almost one hundred times more complicated than those in the eyes; nevertheless, olfactory senses have remained underestimated. As perfume companies, wine growers, botanists, and even doctors can attest, scent can bring to mind enless memories. In addition, in the world of business, more and more publicists, designers, and architects are looking to scent to attract customers.
Christophe Laudamiel invites us to travel to the heart of our senses, to biological levels within the universe of emotions awakened by smells. He will show us how olfactory senses are a powerful means of communicating and educating, in the business world, as well as in our personal lives. Laudamiel will talk about the use of technologies associated with the spread of a scent in order to create a specifically intended ambiance or concept.
Perfume, based on the best-selling novel by Patrick Süskind Perfume, The Story of a Murderer
Christophe Laudamiel worked with Thierry Mugler to create a set of 15 scents coinciding with key scenes in the movie Perfume by Tom Tykwer, an adaptation the best-selling novel by Patrick Süskind. It is a unique story in the history of perfumery.
The initial idea behind the project was a shared desire to conceive of a sort of anthology of perfume and to illustrate scenes in the book by using scents. It was also a matter of approaching modern perfume-making with different concepts, technologies, molecules and source materials.
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