The Master Perfumer Session: The Technical Challenge

In part three of The Master Perfumer Session, Patty Canac and Clémentine Humeau share the real challenges they faced creating Prem Rouge with only natural ingredients and no alcohol.

Pure But Difficult

"It was a real challenge indeed," Clémentine admits. "Working 100% pure rose and tuberose with only molecules isolated from nature to make a perfume that will spread and evoke an emotion was extremely technical for me as a perfumer."

The constraint was clear: natural only. No synthetic shortcuts.

But natural doesn't mean simple.

Poetry Meets Science

"The rose and the tuberose are two poems of nature," she explains. "How do you interpret and shape them in a certain way with an extremely limited range of raw materials?"

It's one thing to admire these flowers in nature. Another entirely to make them work as perfume.

"So it has not been easy," Clémentine continues, "because in life, often the simplest things are the hardest to achieve."

No Alcohol, More Problems

Then came the bigger challenge: creating perfume without alcohol.

"We had to be very creative working without alcohol," she explains. "Working with the mediums of water and oil, and to reimagine these ingredients mixing together."

Most perfumes rely on alcohol. It carries scent, helps it project, makes blending easier.

Without it? Everything becomes harder.

"With particular properties that are specific to a compatible alcohol-free palette of perfumers," Clémentine adds.

They had to rethink everything they knew about making perfume work.

Next week: How their partnership makes the impossible possible.