Electimuss: Interview With Creative Director Claire Sokell Thompson

Electimuss - Claire Sokell Thompson

If you spend a fair amount of time on Instagram, you’ll have seen the stop-scrolling majestic bottles. But as this interview with Claire Sokell Thompson, Electimuss creative and communications director, will show you, there’s more to the London-based niche brand than eye candy.

Electimuss Black Caviar Parfum

The company was founded by Luke Granger and Jason Collison in 2015, with the myths, legends and history of ancient Rome as a rich source of inspiration (Electimuss means “to choose the best” in Latin).

Electimuss Mercurial Cashmere Box

While the brand has been around for seven years, it’s only recently that Electimuss has really started to take off. Its growing popularity is based on high-quality juices by perfumers who know how to give their creations luxurious oomph. See my reviews of Black Caviar, Mercurial Cashmere and Vici at the end of this interview.

Claire Sokell Thompson joined the team in 2020 and her influence can be seen in the house’s more cohesive creative direction. In this interview we chat about inspiration, perfumer briefings and 2023 projects.

Electimuss Sample

Let’s get the obvious question out of the way first. Those gorgeous bottles, Who designed them?

Thank you so much! We get a lot of positive feedback on them. They are a masterpiece of many hands and, in fact, we’re working on a new evolution at the moment.

The brand launched in 2015 and has really made an impression over the last few years. It’s not as easy as it looks, though, so tell us about a specific problem Electimuss had to overcome. 

In terms of our brand, we’re so lucky we’ve had so much support and passion from our customer base and retailers. The most difficult issues for us, like many of our compatriot brands, have been Covid and Brexit related in terms of supply, logistics and distribution.

Electimuss Mercurial Cashmere Parfum

Did you know Jason Collison and Luke Granger before you joined the team in 2020? 

No, I didn’t. I met them before lockdown early 2020. They were aware of my work creating and launching Thameen and brought me onto the team to steer the brand into a new phase of growth.

“They were aware of my work creating and launching Thameen and brought me onto the team to steer the brand into a new phase of growth.”

Who does what in the scheme of things? And what are your backgrounds?

We are a close hands-on team. Luke and Jason were previously Boadicea The Victorious, so our collective experience is niche luxury fragrance.

Luke is the founder and runs logistics, warehouse and supply side of the business and we work together on product innovation. Jason’s business development and sales, and my areas are creative direction, perfume and new product development, communications and digital.

Electimuss Box & Ribbon

Ancient Rome is rich with inspiration. Have you become a bit of a history/mythology buff in the process? 

Totally! I must confess that mythology was already one of my passions. I love exploring Greek, Nordic, Roman and Chinese mythology and seeing similar narratives and moralities pop up across different cultures throughout the centuries.

There is so much material to enjoy. Stephen Fry’s Mythos is an epic and very accessible introduction to the entirety of Greek mythology, on which most of Roman mythology was based. But there are interesting contemporary takes on the classics, like the incredibly talented Madeline Miller and Kamila Shamsie, plus great podcasts like Myths and Legends.

IMAGE: Penguin Books.

However, it isn’t just mythology, it’s also Roman history that’s so fascinating. We draw inspiration from both.

One of the things that separates Electimuss from an increasingly crowded niche sector is that all the scents are pure parfum concentration…

Yes, we’re unbending on that. Our name is a Latin portmanteau meaning “to choose the best” and that tenet runs through everything we do: the perfumers we work with, the ingredients and the concentrations.

We’re aware that luxury fragrance comes at a price, but our mission is to deliver the highest quality performance for the price. The budget on our perfumes far exceeds other brands in the same price band and with very high inclusion. So although our perfumes are not cheap, one spray goes a long way.

Electimuss Mercurial Cashmere Parfum

How did the collaborations with master perfumer Christian Provenzano (Pomona Vitalis, Persephone’s Patchouli, Capua) come about?

We’ve worked with Christian on eight of our perfumes now.

My idea for the Consort Collection was a collaborative creative approach. I wanted to work with one central note and explore it through two different lenses on a shared story.

So the story of Pluto, king of the underworld, and Persephone, daughter of the goddess of nature, was explored with patchouli representing the confluence of the underworld and earth’s surface. We worked with Christian Provenzano (pictured, below) and Kèvin Mathys for this new pair of perfumes.

IMAGE: Christian Provenzano Parfums.

Black Caviar from the Nero Collection is one of my personal favourites and very much captures what the brand is about… 

It is one of our first perfumes and one of our bestsellers. It typifies what Electimuss is good at: creating original perfumes with gravitas. Our ambition is to create modern masterpieces that will become iconic classics of the future.

Talk us through a typical briefing of one of your selected perfumers. 

It usually starts with a muse. For example, currently my muse is Venus for the next fragrance, so I explore all different aspects of Venus, from her different depictions through mythology to the way she has been represented in literature, art, music and more.

CREATIVE EXPRESSION: Sofia Bardelli created Mercurial Cashmere for Electimuss. IMAGE: Accademia del Profumo.

From there I either develop a conceptual brief around a specific ingredient (like the two patchouli perfumes launched earlier this year) or a map of scent references I’m interested in exploring, inspired by our muse.

The brief can include paintings, music, colours, stories and ingredient references. But we never want to be prescriptive – the key is creating a concept and an anchor for creative exploration.

“We never want to be prescriptive – the key is creating a concept and an anchor for creative exploration.”

Each perfumer we work with explores the brief in different ways: some like to talk, others to be more straight to creation to express their response. We then assess and evolve the fragrances together.

From the website, I see you’re about to launch a new collection. Tell us more about that please. 

Our new launch is Travel Atomisers. We are working some of our best-selling perfumes into travel size with a stunning purple and gold atomiser.

IMAGE: Electimuss.

And we are due to launch Hair Mist early ’23. With the launch of three new beautiful perfumes next year, we have been busy creating. We’re so excited about these scents.

With the brand’s luxury credentials, there’s increasing pressure to be eco-friendly too. What progress is Electimuss making on that front?

Good question and on our minds constantly. It’s tough to make real change in this business. Sustainability runs from back to front end and we are making progress. Some solutions we look at seem sustainable, such as refillables, but when you pull them apart, they actually aren’t any more sustainable. And we aren’t interested in sustainable messaging, our focus is affecting real change.

Electimuss Mercurial Cashmere Box

Our ingredients are sustainable and vegan. We offset on delivery and logistics. On the packaging side, we are currently working on innovating the interiors of our boxes, but with luxury products keeping the product safe and pristine is paramount to customer satisfaction, so it takes innovation to find the solution.

3 ELECTIMUSS FRAGRANCES TO TRY NOW

All these perfumes from the Nero Collection capture what Electimuss is about in different and delightful ways.

ELECTIMUSS BLACK CAVIAR PARFUM (MARCO GENOVESE)

To call this 2019 release “intriguing” would be a massive understatement.

Taking its inspiration from the decadence of emperors Severus and Nero, it opens with the saltiness of caviar. The savoury gourmand note is made even more appealing with a chic coolness, as if on ice. A note of animalic oud adds to the richness. There’s aromatics aplenty from notes of rosemary, sage and lavender, with the latter standing out with its fresh and spicy, almost aniseed-y facets. The woodiness of vetiver, patchouli and oakmoss is maximised in the drydown.

From start to finish, it’s delicious stuff.

Electimuss Black Caviar Parfum

ELECTIMUSS MERCURIAL CASHMERE PARFUM (SOFIA BARDELLI)

An apt name for a fragrance that changes from the light and bright to the sensual and deep.

This 2021 release starts out in fresh and spicy mode with notes of Madagascan pink pepper, cardamom and Italian bergamot. The powder of iris and violet is paired with the white floral intensity of tuberose and the slight saltiness of a note of ambergris. And what about the cashmere? In perfumery, this refers to the synthetic Cashmeran (also known as blonde woods). It’s at its musky-woody best here. There’s more sweetness (just enough) from notes of caramel, vanilla and tonka bean. I don’t pick up much of the listed oud note, but that’s just me being fussy.

Named for the Roman god Mercury, it might imply a rapid change in mood from charming to nasty, but no worries, this beauty is definitely about the former.

Electimuss Mercurial Cashmere Parfum

ELECTIMUSS VICI LEATHER PARFUM (JULIEN RASQUINET)

Julien Rasquinet is admired for his work for niche brands such as Amouage, Zoologist and Masque Milano. His first fragrance for Electimuss, a 2022 release, takes its cue from the Latin phrase “veni, vidi, vici” (“I came, I saw, I conquered”).

An elegantly cosy scene is set with the spicy and powdery warmth of cinnamon. There are subtle touches of wormwood and pink pepper in the background. A leather accord-tuberose combo gives the composition a subtly sweet animalic quality without the white floral dominating things, while the musky amber accord in the drydown maintains the comfy ambience.

*Electimuss samples, Mercurial Cashmere and Black Caviar kindly gifted to me by the brand.

The Ghost Perfumer (The Perfume Book You Should Read This Year): An Interview With Author Gabe Oppenheim

The Ghost Perfumer

Every now and then, a book comes along that changes your perspective of an industry and some of the players within it. The Ghost Perfumer: Creed, Lies, & The Scent of the Century by Gabe Oppenheim (Solicitude) is that kind of read.

The Ghost Perfumer

In a punchy and page-turning style with well-researched detail, Gabe Oppenheim gives credence to the rumours that have been swirling for years on online forums regarding Creed’s claims that the niche fragrance house has been producing fragrances since 1760 and for an impressive array of celebrities and dignitaries along the way, including King Alfonso XIII of Spain and Cary Grant.

The Ghost Perfumer - Gabe Oppenheim

But more importantly, the writer reveals how Olivier Creed, heir to the Creed clothing business, passed off many high-profile Creed releases as his own creations by taking advantage of the insecurities of a trio of perfumers.

Most of The Ghost Perfumer tells the story of Pierre Bourdon, creator of classics such as Yves Saint Laurent Kouros EDT, Davidoff Cool Water EDT, Montblanc Individuel EDT and Frédéric Malle French Lover EDP. And now acknowledged as the master behind several Creeds, including Fleurs de Bulgarie EDP, Green Irish Tweed EDP, Erolfa EDP, Millésime Impérial EDP, Silver Mountain Water EDP, Spring Flower EDP and Original Santal EDP.

And what of Creed Aventus, “the scent of the century”? Jean-Christophe Hérault gets long-last recognition for being the true talent behind this decade-defining and much-copied perfume. Julien Rasquinet also gets credit for creating Creed Royal Oud EDP and Creed Fleurs de Gardenia EDP, among others. Both these perfumers were students of Pierre Bourdon, which just adds to the intricacies and intrigues of the intertwined narratives explored by Gabe Oppenheim.

The Ghost Perfumer - Creed Aventus EDP

In what could have been a mere hatchet-job on a nasty character, Gabe Oppenheim places the behaviour of Olivier Creed and Pierre Bourdon in the context of an industry that’s built on fantasy, obfuscation and sometimes questionable business practises (for example, the rampant cloning of successful scents).

In this interview he chats about how The Ghost Perfumer come about, the workings of the industry and meeting Pierre Bourdon.

The Ghost Perfumer

You’re known as a contributor to various magazines and author of books. How was this Creed project different to your other writing projects?

In many ways, it felt very similar – when I covered boxing, there was always a narrative that promoters were trying to push about their fighters, about upcoming match-ups. This was often hype that had very little relation to the reality of the boxer’s preparation or the event itself.

And so it struck me as kind of familiar when I saw that in the scent industry, the stories told about the supposed perfumers and their inspirations were generally cant and utterly apart from the truth of how fragrance is created.

“The Ghost Perfumer was different from some of my sports coverage because there’s a degree of truth in sports that the arts just cannot provide.” 

That said, The Ghost Perfumer different from some of my sports coverage because there’s a degree of truth in sports that the arts just cannot provide. A baseball score, barring any cheating, is an objective measure of who was better on the day. A knockout is unimpeachably the triumph of one combatant over another.

And yet in fragrance, even compositions that win briefs can’t necessarily be said to be better formulas than those that lost. A scent wins in the eyes of an evaluator or creative director. Or even in a panel test. But all those judgments are subjective, and runner-up scents can end up on the market under another name and prove themselves superior to those frags they lost to in an initial brief.

Was there a particular event that sparked this project?

A lot of events. I was tired of covering combat sport, generally, and I was curious about the creators of scents. I had actually interviewed the duo behind the Imaginary Authors brand while I was still working on the fights. I wore their A City on Fire scent to Jay-Z’s office building once, back when his company was really trying to build up a boxing promotion.

IMAGE: Imaginary Authors.

But perhaps the final trigger was this zest I had for packing a new fragrance every time I travelled around the world to cover a fight. I was wearing these fascinating scents on press row in arenas the world over. And by 2019, I realised I was being somewhat myopic – why not figure out who had concocted these potions and why and what they were like beyond their laboratory orgues?

I knew there was good nonfiction to be found there, even if I didn’t yet have a clue as to what focus a book might take.

What were your thoughts on Creed fragrances before you started the book? Were you aware of the rumours about the dates of the releases and their supposed celebrity wearers?

I’d always found the celebrity claims a little preposterous. And I’d always liked the scents very much – I wore Green Irish Tweed, Bois du Portugal, Royal Oud and Aventus regularly. Over time I took a liking to Viking. I’d tried Tabarome and found it lacking as a tobacco scent.

I think the only info I had about the reality of their creation was what Michael Edwards and Luca Turin had discovered prior to my breaking into the field – that somehow Pierre Bourdon had had a hand in making Green Irish Tweed. But that was all I knew.

The Ghost Perfumer - Creed Green Irish Tweed EDP

And so I just kept trying to reach out to Bourdon, despite his self-imposed exile from Parisian perfumer society and resultant residence up in Normandy. It’s why Pierre should get so much credit for my own reportage – if he hadn’t decided one day, many months into the project, to open up to me, I may not have dug too deeply into just how Creed had ostensibly generated those aforementioned scents I so enjoyed wearing.

What were you most surprised to discover in your research?

That Pierre Bourdon’s compensation for creating Creed’s scents consisted almost entirely (if not entirely-entirely) of bespoke suits from Olivier.

“Pierre Bourdon’s compensation for creating Creed’s scents consisted almost entirely (if not entirely-entirely) of bespoke suits from Olivier.” 

What has the official Creed response been to the book since publication?

The new management team that BlackRock [the private equity fund which bought a majority stake in Creed in 2020] installed, a c-suite based in London, was so kind to me when I reached out to them pre-publication, particularly the head of marketing, Giles Gordon. We had a brief email correspondence during which Giles first offered to help me with my research and later retracted the offer, but my impression was that the company wanted to be authentic to its actual roots and not just fantasy.

The Ghost Perfumer - Creed Original Santal EDP

And whether I forced Giles’ hand or not, that assessment has been born out – Creed has published two large magazine volumes since The Ghost Perfumer’s release that update the Creed family’s tale, align it with my own – the first said Olivier began trying to make the haberdashery into a perfumery beginning with fits and starts in the 1960s and the second revised the dates to the 1970s.

Which is truthful: the Creeds were not in the business of fragrance creation before then – and until Pierre became ghost-writer in the early 1980s, Creed’s small-batch scents were insignificant efforts, secondary to tailoring, and retailed primarily in small nooks, like the perfume shop Soleil d’Or in Lille, France.

“Until Pierre became ghost-writer in the early 1980s, Creed’s small-batch scents were insignificant efforts, secondary to tailoring.” 

When I finished the book, I envisioned public smashings of Creed fragrances. But that’s just me being childish. What was your intention with it?

Oh, gosh, I had no such vision. I still own Creed scents. I had no intent except to tell a remarkable story – of a man who owned a company and desperately wanted to be a perfumer and of the diffident genius he used to unfairly snatch that mantle.

I wanted people to be fascinated by the interaction of Olivier and Pierre’s careers. A boycott of the company resembling Disco Demolition night was never a consideration for me.

The Ghost Perfumer - Creed Erolfa EDP

Olivier Creed comes across as, let’s be frank, quite predatorial and a nasty piece of work. Did you approach him for comment? And did you ever have any doubts about your characterisation of him?

I approached Creed’s North American arm early in 2020 and they wouldn’t let me speak to Olivier; tentatively, they scheduled me to talk to Erwin [his son] instead. I figured if I did pose real questions to Erwin, however, I might prove my seriousness as a journalist and earn some time with Olivier.

However, someone rather rude in the Creed North America office cancelled my Erwin email-chat last minute, and after that, no matter who I asked at Creed about talking to Olivier or getting clarification on his actual status as a “perfumer” I got no response at all.

“No matter who I asked at Creed about talking to Olivier or getting clarification on his actual status as a ‘perfumer’ I got no response at all.” 

Partly, I don’t think the company, prior to its takeover by BlackRock, believed I had the cojones or skill to depict the company’s actual workings. And after the takeover, I think those newly in charge felt the revelations were inevitable but didn’t want to hasten their release.

The book isn’t only an exposé of Creed, it also reveals the workings of the industry and its incestuous nature. How did you get people to talk to you about what really goes on behind the scenes?

I wrote long and impassioned emails about the need for perfume folks and general readers to get a better sense of who actually formulated the scents they so loved (and sometimes deplored).

It took a long time to convince perfumers – International Fragrance & Flavours didn’t okay my interviews with their folks for many, many months, before Judith Gross [Vice-President Communication & Branding, Scent], whom I love, ultimately realized I was quite serious about creative nonfiction and not just a shill or a parasite.

ALL OKAY: It took many months to get Judith Gross to approve interviews with IFF’s perfumers for research for The Ghost Perfumer. IMAGE: IFF.

And once I had access, I just pressed the perfumers to tell me what they were like, how they had gotten into the business, what they did in their free time. I wanted them to know I saw them as full humans, as artisans of the highest order whose stories could hold as much fascination as painters’ or musicians’ or boxers’.

Still, there are perfumers whose entourages still never let me get close enough to prove any of that – [Jacques] Cavallier, [Alberto] Morillas, [Michel] Almairac. Those are perhaps the top three who didn’t care for such an examination by this American interloper (or maybe Almairac’s son Benjamin never even put the request to his Pops – dunno quite why that never came together).

The part where you meet Pierre Bourdon at his home is particularly touching. Although he was certainly exploited by Oliver Creed, you’re careful not to paint him as a hapless victim…

Bourdon doesn’t view himself as a victim, really. The man got to practice an art whose ideas and concepts he treasures. Maybe he always detested some of the business practices. But the man took his love of Proust and applied the author’s passion for creation – for showing the work of creation in the creation itself – to perfumery. What could have satisfied such a scholarly and thoughtful reader more?

The Ghost Perfumer - Meeting Pierre Bourdon

NORMANDY RENDEZVOUS: Pierre Bourdon in the second Cabinet of Curiosities Room in his home. IMAGE: THE GHOST PERFUMER.

How did you earn Pierre Bourdon’s trust to get him to reveal so much to you?

Through many emails sent to the address he shared with his wife, Kathy, who always seemed to think me a decent sort – but really, through the imploring of Jean-Claude Ellena, who convinced Pierre first that I was serious about my own craft, writing, and could perhaps do justice to Pierre’s.

Let’s talk about Jean-Christophe Hérault and his role in the creation of the mega-hit Creed Aventus. He was very forthcoming at first and then the shutters came down. Why the change in behaviour?

Probably a sense that he had revealed enough to hurt his career and didn’t want to exacerbate things further – I say, probably, because Hérault might dismiss that without offering a better answer.

Gabe Oppenheim - Jean-Christophe Hérault

Regardless, he seems glad now that The Ghost Perfumer was written, that he’s being credited finally with the massive success he engineered. We text each other every now and again, and we’re certainly on friendly terms, for which I’m grateful. He has a signed copy of the book, and I own a good deal of his fragrant output. He has been nothing but kind to me of late.

I don’t blame him for not quite getting at first that my intentions, in terms of attributing work to its rightful creators, were more pure than not, and that I had the gumption to follow this process through to the end.

The Ghost Perfumer - Creed Aventus EDP

You also delve into the Julien Rasquinet creations that were passed off as Olivier Creed’s. Did he actually create any of the other Creed releases that are attributed to him on sites such as Fragrantica?

Olivier was a great creative director – he knew what sort of scent would beguile men (or, at least, he picked up in the 1960s and 1970s these notions). So Olivier can be credited with choosing the best scents, mostly, of those perfumers who did the actual technical work.

Olivier, however, not doing that technical work, cannot fairly be called a perfumer-creator, the definition of which perfumers such as [Christophe] Laudamiel and Calice Becker make rather clear not infrequently. I admire their devotion to getting the bylines in this messy industry cleaned up.

The Ghost Perfumer - Julien Rasquinet

The subtitle of the book is Part 1: Creed, Lies, & The Scent of the Century. What’s the next one about?

The next one could involve a certain Berlin-based perfumer who’s a masterful raconteur and a well-known figure to the fragcomm. But it could also be about the pirates of the Dubai clone market or the bizarre way in which Caron has survived several strange owners (it’s now a property of a Rothschild).

Or perhaps it will be about none of these things. I’ve made a good many false starts in the last few months. But they aren’t all for naught – at least one will hopefully become a full-length book.

IMAGE: Caron.

And I would tell perfume-prose fans, if you like my nonfiction, I think you’ll like my inventions, too – and in fact, I’ve been working also on a novel and perhaps that will come out in between perfume-focused books, first. I’ve written about 4 000 compelling words so far for that project. Maybe I’ll never see it to the end, but for now, I’m just thinking, 96 000 equally satisfying words to go…

The Ghost Perfumer: Creed, Lies, & The Scent of the Century is available worldwide on Amazon.

Gabe Oppenheim - The Ghost Perfumer Cover