Jean Carles

Jean Carles (1892-1966) was one of the great architects of 20th-century French perfumery. Initially self-taught, he joined Roure Bertrand Dupont in Grasse, before becoming the official perfumer for **Dana** and **Caron**, two prestigious houses for which he would sign his masterpieces. A visionary, Jean Carles revolutionised composition by developing **a rational learning method** based on structure, contrasts and olfactory memory. His analytical approach trained generations of perfumers, and became the basis of teaching in many schools, notably Roure, where he created a learning programme that is still used today. His fragrances have become legendary, including **Tabu** (1932, Dana), a boldly sensual fragrance, **Ma Griffe** (1946, Carven), a pioneering green chypre, and **Pour un Homme** (1934, Caron), a timeless masculine fragrance with lavender and vanilla. Although he suffered from partial anosmia in the last years of his life, he continued to create using his exceptional olfactory memory - proof of his genius and rigour. Jean Carles remains a founding figure of modern perfumery: an inspired creator, a genius teacher, and a man who transformed intuition into method, instinct into poetic science.