Jean-Claude Ellena

Jean-Claude Ellena was born into the perfume world. Both his father and brother were perfumers and now, even his daughter. Even at a very early age, he was helping his grandmother to pick roses that would then be sold to the perfumers. When he did not succeed so well in school, his father decided that it was better if Jean-Claude began working. At the age of 16, he began as a student at Antoine Chiris factory for fragrance oils in Grasse. When Givaudan started their school in 1968, he became their first student. He made his first fragrance at the age of 28.

Jean-Claude Ellena is by many called "the best nose of our time", a phrase he thinks is strange because he composes his fragrances in his head and says that the nose only is a control instrument.

He has pared down the number of ingredients in their laboratory to 200 (most perfumers have about 1000). His first fragrance contained 160 ingredients, while the ones he has created recently contains around 30

 "I want to be simple, like a Japanese haiku. It's actually the most difficult thing, being simple."