Christèle Jacquemin: niche perfume as art

After years torn between her love of photography and perfumery, Christèle Jacquemin ultimately decided to unite the two in one artistic career path. Interested in the link between the visual and olfactory worlds from a young age, Christèle Jacquemin has embraced her synesthesia and created meditative scents which address the multisensory aspects of lived experience. When many of us smell a scent, it is often accompanied by a visual image in our internal memory banks which in turn is based on past experience. Exploring the relationship between these two worlds is a central theme in Christèle Jacquemin’s work. Understanding the causal relationship between how we understand scents and our previous experiences, Christèle Jacquemin expanded her frame of reference by travelling the world – clocking up over 50 countries to date. She further grew her taste palette by living in Spain for almost twenty years, working in the fragrance industry. Now back in France, she has taken up residence near the Pont-du-Gard, where she now creates and manufactures her highly personal niche perfumes in an artisanal way.

Artisanal perfumes in interdisciplinary communication

With an elaborate aesthetic repertoire in fragrance and visual representation, Christèle Jacquemin truly understands the unique position perfumes play in human culture. Whereas photographs can serve as visual testimonies to journeys taken, scents bring us straight back to the source. Simply smelling a fragrance can cause a visceral reaction which transports us right back to the time and place where those memories were made. The niche perfumer explores her passion for the connections and contrasts between photography and perfumery by animating multi-sensory activities and collaborating with other artists on multi-disciplinary projects.

Christele Jacquemin Perfume: Artistic Practice

In her fragrance creations, Christèle Jacquemin is motivated by an artistic need to give meaning to her life, to dream and to understand better how she interacts with the world surrounding her. Curiosity is probably that which best characterizes her drive to develop new and meaningful scents. By using high quality perfume absolutes and exclusive extracts, Christèle Jacquemin has found a beautiful medium to meet new people, explore new creative paths and, most importantly, search for the answers to those eternal existential questions. With images that bamboozle and scents that instantly project us into faraway scent landscapes, Christèle Jacquemin has a unique selling point in the niche perfume world.

Art and Olfaction Awards nomination

Having trained as an olfactive designer at Cinquième Sens in Paris, she has gone on to produce a collection of stunning niche perfumes. Her groundbreaking scent, Impermanence, was nominated as a finalist at the prestigious 2020 Art and Olfaction Awards (the Oscars of the global perfume world) in the Artisan Category. This accidental perfumer has now found herself at the centre of the niche fragrance industry. Perhaps it is her perspective as a half outsider which makes her creative insights into this rarified world so wonderfully striking.