I think it is La Rochefoucauld who said, "The light of the past illuminates you from behind and casts only shadows before you".
I will attempt to shed light on some corners of this zone of shadow where the souvenirs of the past years are starting to fade.
I was born in 1914 in
Saint Petersburg and I am an ex "immigrant" - although at that time we were called "emigrants".
Nuance ... To all appearances there was nothing that predicted I would become a perfumer or even become a part of the fragrance industry, which was, at my debut, but a luxury craft for some "happy few".
It was only much later - after the war - I learned from
Paul Bedoukian, that my father,
David Gutsatz, who was a qualified chemist and who was unable to follow us when we emigrated to Berlin In 1924, had filed patents for amyl-cynamic aldyhyde in 1935.
It so happened that my family had relations in Paris, among them a friend of Russian origin, who had become the owner of
Parfums Mury.
I thus obtained a visa, a work permit and a job at
Mury, allowing me to leave Berlin for Paris in 1933. At
Mury, at the Argenteuil factory, I was not needed at all: "You can join sales or accounting or perhaps the laboratory. I think the laboratory would be the most appropriate". Thus fate once again led me by the hand. I learned everything at
Mury, even how to stick labels.
Someone once said that a civilized man has two homelands: his own and France. Like thousands of other refugees, I enlisted as a volunteer in March 1940 and was dispatched to the Foreign Legion, which had its headquarters in Algeria in Sidi Bel Abbes.
The war ended for us with the armistice and I wrote to Grasse, offering my services: I received a letter offering me a job with a company that had just been set up in Marseille to manufacture and distribute a Jean Marie Farina cologne in the "Free Zone", taking advantage of the fact that major brands in Paris could not deliver to the perfumeries in the south of France.
I built a small laboratory, which helped me to meet representatives of the houses of Grasse - and to be invited to attend a training course in perfumery at
Chiris.
That was how I worked for the first time in a real laboratory under the direction of
Edward Hache.
In September 1945, on the Etoile subway platform a man approached me and said: "Don't you recognize me? I am
Jean Carles. Looking for work? Come to rue du Rocher tomorrow morning, I'll introduce you to
Louis Amic.
Jean Carles, who worked with
Roure Bertrand Fils and Justin Dupont (RBF & JD) and whom I had met in Grasse, brought me into the firm where I stayed for 31 years.
I remember this phrase from my first interview with
Louis Amic:
"I will hire you as a perfumer. I do not care about working hours, what is essential is that you're there when I need you! " The ten years I spent in the
Roure laboratory were the glorious years of French perfumery (and RBF & JD in particular). From the Roure laboratories came virtually every perfume of
Carven, Balmain, Balenciaga, Jacques Fath Robert Piguet, Jean d'Albret, Nina Ricci, Emilio Pucci, Robert Ricci, among others.
Two events of varying importance marked my career at Roure: my two encounters with India.
In 1952 the opera-ballet by Rameau, "Indes Galantes" was staged at the Opéra de Paris by
Maurice Lehmann, for which he wanted to introduce fragrance as part of the stage effects.
I volunteered and we succeeded in perfuming the 19 000 m3 of the Opéra hall to its very corners with two small vials of 25ml with a 15% concentration of a perfume of roses that I had created – making certain that the perfume reached the audience when, in the fourth act, the ballerina dressed as a rose, emerged through a trapdoor and ended when the ballet of the roses was over.
150 times I heard the audience murmur "It smells like roses! "...
It would take me hours to narrate my experience of India, the country where now any tour operator will take you for a small fee but which, in 1956, was like the other end of the world.
I left, with my whole family, as perfumer and Roure representative, to join a new company created in collaboration with the
Tata group.
"I have decided to join with an Indian group to manufacture locally a certain number of synthetic products and fragrances for the local market. This does not enchant me unduly: I do it to prevent Givaudan from doing so! Would you like to go there for three years?",
Louis Amic asked me.
I accepted and we stayed there for 6 years! I was perfumer-creator, technical director, sales strategist, production manager, member of the Board of Directors, handyman and know-all for our partners.
Back in Paris,
Louis Amic asked me to take charge of the German and English markets - and continue to be his "court jester".
This led me to work with
Mary Quant (who in dedicating her book to me, said, "to the one perfumer who knows how to blend a perfume at 2 o'clock in the morning!"), with
Emilio Pucci and with
Estée Lauder – when the first fragrance from
Emmanuel Ungaro was created ("
Ungaro is nothing at all. The dollars, it's me, so I decide,"
Ungaro said exactly the opposite to me!).
And then in 1976, when
Roure moved from rue Legendre to Argenteuil, I left.
Perhaps I did not want to end my career at Argenteuil, the town where I had started out 40 years earlier.
But one cannot stop, one cannot abandon, the métier of a lifetime.
Then, urged a bit by my family, I launched on my last chapter, we created
Le Jardin Retrouvé, and I went back to the artisanal sources of perfumery with simple formulas, perfumer's perfume, not marketing perfume.
My latest fragrance in 1987, was
Cuir de Russie (a Russian leather); and if I still have to create one, it will be around a hyacinth note - to come around full circle.
"The night comes, the hour chimes, the days go by, but I linger.... "
Yuri Gutsatz Paris, 5th June, 1989
Related links:Savvythinker: His fragrances are true, rich and warm, long lasting. They are balanced perfectly. I’m very glad to know they are still on the scene, and perhaps becoming better known to the modern perfumista.