THE ULTIMATE IT-SPRITZ

As fashion house Louis Vuitton launches its first fragrance collection in decades, we meet the nose behind the label's latest lust-have

Who has changed your life or set you on a new path? Who has opened your eyes – or, in my own case, nose? For me, it happens to be this man: Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud, creator of the new Louis Vuitton fragrances – and the person who, more than 20 years ago, taught me how to smell.

Fast-forward to 2016 and Jacques surely has the plummiest job in perfumery. Earlier this year, four years after joining Louis Vuitton, he put the finishing touches to not one, not two, but seven new fragrances for the French luxury goods label, which go on sale in its boutiques this Thursday. But until today, when we meet at Les Fontaines Parfumées – Louis Vuitton’s perfume HQ in Grasse, France – this olfactory genius knows nothing of the role he has played in me setting up The Perfume Society, the world’s first ‘networking’ organisation for fragrance lovers, or in an exercise that has become central to our ‘How to Improve Your Sense of Smell’ workshops.

More than two decades ago, I’d just won a Jasmine Award from The Fragrance Foundation for my first-ever article about perfume and, in a quest to improve my sense of smell – once described by Helen Keller as ‘the fallen angel of our senses’ – I interviewed Jacques for some tips. He’d recently enjoyed huge success creating L’Eau d’Issey for Issey Miyake and Lancôme’s Poême. I imagined he’d send me away to sniff some oils but, instead, what he told me is imprinted on my memory for ever. ‘Fragrance is liquid emotion,’ he began. ‘Smell things. Smell everything: flowers, fragrances, essential oils… But, most importantly, write down what comes into your mind: colours, feelings, people, places. And do it every day, as if you were practising a musical instrument.’

I did as I was told. And what felt like a miracle happened: over the following weeks, not only did I get better at identifying smells, but the physical distance I could smell things from got longer and longer – and stayed that way. (My record? Once, in Copenhagen, I got a whiff of curry from a restaurant that turned out to be over a kilometre away – and there wasn’t even a breeze.) ‘But, of course!’ is his reaction, when I tell him this now. ‘And congratulations,’ he adds. ‘You joined our “club” of people who understand the real magic of smelling, and you began your emotional scent journey.’

And that was long before he presented the world with the seven sense-delighting new creations that are about to put Louis Vuitton firmly back on the scent map. Les Parfums Louis Vuitton are mostly florals – appropriately, given the centuries- old role Grasse has played in growing scented flowers for perfumery – and, unashamedly, swimming against the current tide of ‘shareable scents’, they