The man who recreated Marie Antoinette’s favorite fragrance opens his first shop in Paris this month. You can go there to pick up off-beat gems like fragrant bubbles and paper, or, better yet, make an appointment to have this prince of perfume design your signature scent.

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While on a red eye flight home to Paris in 2001, the young, talented French perfumer Francis Kurkdjian was enjoying small talk with the woman beside him about their respective lines of work. It was a lovely tête-à-tête, full of funny coincidences and friends in common, but the conversation, however casual, was about to change his life!

Having already designed top-selling fragrances for big name brands (Le Mâle for Jean Paul Gaultier; Miracle Homme for Lancôme; Green Tea for Elizabeth Arden) and won prestigious industry prizes (the Francois Coty Perfumer Award in 2001, at the ripe age of 32!) Kurkdjian was itching for an exciting new career twist.

His words didn’t fall on deaf ears. By the time we walked off the plane he had his most thrilling order yet: a private commission to design a made-to-measure scent for his well-heeled neighbor, Terry de Gunzburg, founder of the luxurious beauty brand by Terry and former creative director of YSL Beauté. (Note to self: Start talking to people on planes.)

De Gunzburg naturally fell head over heals for the one-of-a-kind Fleur d’Oranger that Kurkdjian crafted specifically for her, and before he knew it le tout Paris was buzzing about his original olfactory works of art.  It didn’t take long before overseas beauties sniffed him out and he was back on those red eyes following his clients around the globe with his “labomobile,” a Pinel et Pinel custom steamer truck filled with over 200 scent samples.

“For me, it’s all about the de-dramatization of luxury and finding that perfect balance between tradition and modernity,” says Kurkdjian, while playing with the compartments of his nifty nomad lab.

Before each appointment he fills his magic box with a new range of raw materials to best suit his client’s taste. After the meeting (akin to a therapy session with perfumed memory triggers) Kurkdjian spends the next three months tweaking his formula, sending samples back and forth until he gets two thumbs up. From there, the juice is bottled in two gorgeous hand-engraved dark green glass flacons, packed into handmade Italian fabric boxes and shipped off to the lucky client. The secret formula is stored away for future flacons, never to be shared with anyone else.

“My style is about having no style. Other fragrance houses tailor their creations, even the customized scents, to fit their brand’s identity. I don’t have those limitations.”

So, just how far can he go? “It’s just a question of time and budget,” says the wild child of perfume, who in addition to bespoke fragrance also does on-site olfactory installations like perfumed fountains (at the Château de Versailles, no less) and edible collaborations with pastry chefs such as Christophe Michalak of the Plaza Athénée.

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Call or email well in advance to schedule an appointment:
E-mail: surmesure@franciskurkdjian.com
Phone: + 33 (0)1 42 77 40 22
Price: €8,000 and up for made-to-measure; €2,500-5,000 for demi-couture (an adaptation of an existing scent)
Boutique: 5 rue d’Alger 75001 Paris

Appointment with: French designer Patrick Jouin
Where: 58 Tour Eiffel (Alain Ducasse restaurant on 1st floor of Eiffel Tower)
Date: June 9th, 2009
Time: 10am
On the agenda: Learn about Patrick Jouin’s 10-yr retrospective in São Paolo as part of the Year of France in Brazil

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I have been living in Paris for ten years and until last month I had never climbed the Eiffel Tower. Somehow I just never got around to it. I wasn’t deliberately avoiding it but the thought of waiting in line for hours to squish inside an elevator full of scarily-clad tourists (e.g. the kind who wear “I love Paris” varsity sweatshirts with mint green leggings, Birkenstocks & socks and backpacks worn over chests), and shell out the price of an excellent bottle of wine just to do so, never appealed.

Call me blasé, but I needed more incentive…

The calling came in the mail in the form of a 3-D rendering of Paris viewed from the sky. Even without the words “Le Paris de Patrick Jouin” splayed across its center, it had the prolific designer’s named all over it. The raised-type medallion was an invitation to preview Jouin’s first monographic show, a traveling exhibition that kicks off in São Palo this July at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake as part of the Year of France in Brazil (Brazil is returning the favor after being featured in France in 2005).

The show features approximately 150 Jouin objects and offers a peek at future projects, like the 100m2 experimental “Extreme Wow Suite” that his Paris-based agency, Jouin Manku, is working on for the luxury hotel chain, W.

I first interviewed Jouin in 2003, only five years after he started his own agency. He was just starting to generate buzz for his groundbreaking interior architecture for Michelin-starred chef Alain Ducasse’s restaurants (Plaza Athenée in Paris, The Dorcester in London, Mix in Las Vegas).

But it was his revolutionary Solid series, a collection of chairs created using 3-D rapid prototyping, or stereolithography, a technology that allows you to build objects out of drawings, that cemented his reputation as one of the most innovative and industrious designers of his generation.

“We did the count. You run across a Jouin design in Paris every 350 meters. From publicity signs to bike stands, he’s contributed over 46,000 designs to the urban landscape,” says Valérie Guillaume,* curator of design at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and organizer of the retrospective exhibition.

In the ten action-packed years since opening his own design firm in 1999, Jouin has proven himself to be a master of many mediums. He’s also demonstrated that no project is too pedestrian for his burgeoning britches. When he’s not adding to his compendium of masterpiece interiors for Ducasse (including the 58 Tour Eiffel) he can be found designing municipal toilets for the city of Paris, for example.

So if you can’t make it to a Ducasse restaurant anytime soon, the best way to “experience” a Jouin design is by going to the loo on your next trip to Paris.

Q&A with Patrick Jouin

How does it feel having a 10-yr retrospective at such a young age?
I don’t know what to say. Even though I always feel that I’ve done nothing and that time rushes by too quickly, when you look back you can’t help noticing that much has been accomplished. Despite that, I always have the impression that we could have done more or better, and that we’re not organized enough.

Do you look back and wish you had done certain designs differently?
Yes and no. It’s better to move forward even if you make mistakes along the way. My ego gets hurt less these days when I see the errors that I’ve made because it’s all part of the process. The important thing is to apply those lessons to future projects. I don’t live thinking that I should redo something that I messed up in the past, I should have just been better the moment that I did it, that’s all.

Tell us more about the W hotel suite project?
In addition to showing the past projects, we’re going to give a hint of things to come to show how a designer works. So we’re presenting this room. For its design we thought about the future of accommodation and new ways of living in a hotel room 5-10 years from now. There are new ways in which the space is organized from an architectural perspective, as well as new services linked to technology and new services that have been entirely invented.

Which four designs stand out most for you as key moments in your career?
1.    The Velib bike stands for their rapport with the public.
2.    The Solid series for its use of stereolithography.
3.    The YTL Residence in Kuala Lumpur for its relationship between space and design.
4.    The NightCove alarm clock for its use of electronics.

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Exhibition details: “Le Paris de Patrick Jouin,” on view at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo, Brazil, from July 29 – September 27, 2009.

Scoop: Valérie Guillaume, curator of design at the Pompidou Center in Paris is working on another Patrick Jouin exhibition for early 2010 at the museum. The show will take a behind-the-scenes look into Jouin’s creative process, and will include private visits to his Paris studio.