The brand Maison Francis Kurkdjian can be found in most high-quality perfumeries. The scent everyone immediately thinks of, and the one I got most often as a sample when I bought something online or in person, is “Baccarat Rouge 540”. This scent also got covered approximately 100 times by various brands. Although it is not my cup of tea, the fragrance stands for many qualities of the Maison Francis Kurkdjian. Sophistication, mixture of unusual ingredients, establishment, distance. For whatever reason after smelling it, I thought Maison Francis Kurkdjian to be a longtime player in the perfume world, there for dozens of years.
Far from true. The man himself is indeed in the business for some time, to be precise since 1993, and he is responsible for an incredible number of bestselling perfumes. You only understand this fully, when you search the database e.g. of the Parfumo platform. Francis Kurkjian’s first bestselling perfume was created for Jean Paul Gaultier, and there were many more to follow, signature scents of Elie Saab, Narciso Rodriguez, Burberry, Kenzo and Indult… He did not create the second-row scents, but the ones the brands got famous for. The diversity of his smell-universe is breathtaking. You really must admire his range of inspiration.
His first step into a more recognized role came with his offer to wealthy clients to create an individual scent only for them. He started this side-business in 2001 under his own name, but the real step into the spotlight came later in 2009, when Maison Francis Kurkdjian was founded.
From the interviews Francis Kurkdjian and his business partner Marc Chaya gave after they started Maison Francis Kurkdjian, their continual disappointment at the lack of recognition for a perfumer’s work is clearly audible. It is the big brands that have the name, the money and the fame, whilst the individual, the “nose”, who created a scent stays deeply in the shadows. This same frustration also led the way to Frederik Malle’s brands success.
Both Marc Chaya and Francis Kurkdjian combine business savvy with creativity. Being of Armenian and Lebanese descent, some of the most famous perfumes of the house have a certain foreignness about them, that give them an extra attraction. This includes “Oud Satin Mood”.
The Oud collection consists of Maison Francis Kurkdjian “Oud”, “Oud Silk Mood” and “Oud Satin Mood” in various different concentrations and sizes, from Eau de Parfum to Extrait de Parfum and from travel size to full bottle. All of them have a special smooth touch, not the typical oud scent that makes you open the window. The sweetest of them is “Oud Satin Mood”. It is the only one in the group easily wearable for women, the others are more on the male side of unisex.
For my nose this perfume has the quality of old liquor, dark chocolate, fresh, young, pink roses and soft fur. The perfume envelopes you like a full lengths mink coat on naked skin; it does have a sexy note.
The official scent notes according to Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s website are violet, oud from Laos, rose, benzoin and a vanilla amber accord.
Thinking about the scent longer, I smell the violet mingling with the dominant rose in that sea of softness.
“Oud Satin Mood” is a very grown-up scent, a big city perfume. It fits Francis Kurkdjians love for Paris, the glowing capital with its plentiful attractions and diversions, compared to the scent school from Grasse, that he seems to dislike. One can summarize that his fragrances, the ones I know, are all sophisticated and like works of art. Sometimes a bit too much for daytime wear to the office, but always perfect for a grand entrance.
Ah, and smell of the clothes you left the evening before drenched in the perfume on the next morning! The quality of “Oud Satin Mood” has changed by then, it became very soft, very gourmand, totally comforting.
The colours of “Oud Satin Mood” are a transparent brown, like in old liquor, alternatively the glamorous brown of a mink fur, and the fresh pink of a proud rose.
Francis Kurkdjian himself seems to be always looking for new targets – in 2017, not even 10 years after he and Marc Chaya founded the company, they sold it to now majority owner LVMH. The biggest company in the perfume world, Jean-Pierre Arnaults LVMH collects brands like few others do.
Whatever the deal between them, by now Francis Kurkdjian is also creative director of another LVMH brand, Christian Dior. For them he had also worked when he was the “nose” in the shadows, whilst others had the spotlight. He combines now the best of all worlds, freedom, and security.
When I watched and read the interviews with Francis Kurkdjian on the brand’s websites and in some online journals, a certain world weariness seems to be difficult for him to overcome. He has reached golden spheres and almost everything worked out during his life, even to keep an angle to the art world through high profile projects in Versailles and other places. Sadly, he said somewhere that dance and ballet are his passion, whilst perfume is his job. He had not been good enough to make it as a dancer in younger years. To me that does not sound like a happy statement, but on the other hand, maybe he needs an inner rift between dream and reality to perform as good as he does.
The interesting and sometimes entrancing perfumes he creates from gourmand to fresh to chypre to floral to fruity, as if he has no own favourites, only masterpieces in every department, are prove to it. He can rightly be described as a blank sheet of paper that fulfills the wishes of those he works for. The perfumes of his own Maison can be distinguished from the ones he creates for other brands. “Tihota” for example, created for the brand Indult, he would never have made for his own brand. It is one of the best vanilla gourmands I own, very sweet, but not close to the big city sophistication typical for the Maison Francis Kurkdjian. It is a safe bet that there is much more to come from that very professional duo of Marc Chaya and Francis Kurkdjian. Good for us!