Who: Bruno Jovanovic, senior perfumer at Firmenich. A much admired perfumer of the last few decades, Bruno Jovanovic has an exemplary pedigree. Having studied physics and chemistry in France followed by graduating with top honours from the French perfume school ISIPCA, where Dominique Ropion was his formulation teacher, he worked with Sophia Grossman at IFF in New York.
Currently at Firmenich, he is the creator of a long list of many modern classics including Monsieur for Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle, Giorgio Armani’s My Way and most recently the newest fragrance Fanfare for relaunched Thameen London. We caught up with him to talk about this latest project.
Today I’m wearing Fanfare by Thameen London. Fanfare is a very special project for me because it’s done in collaboration with a very dear friend of mine, artistic director Christopher Chong, who I admire for his completely crazy and creative freedom. It’s not really work but a co-creation. We share a passion for musicals so with Fanfare it was all about being as creative as possible. We decided to reinvent a cologne into what we call Britologne.
It’s a cologne with a British twist. It starts with a nod to the classic structure of an eau de cologne but it brings it ten steps up. In this case we want to have a cologne that lingers and be extremely long lasting, be very powerful. It’s not a regular cologne that you spray every two hours to have a refresher but something that you can wear the whole day.
It makes me feel very energised and extremely sophisticated and classy. It’s refreshing, it’s also adding a sophisticated layering.
Most of the time I wear fragrance it’s to follow the performance of a fragrance, to see what needs to be done in the creative process and what needs to be modified. When I’m on vacation I sometimes allow myself to wear a very nice modification, if it’s something I really love and think is really great. For example, if I’m in Miami I might wear a very refreshing orange flower with a lot of musky notes so that I can accommodate the heat of Miami. You could also wear Fanfare in Miami!
I scent my home, it’s almost like I’m redecorating my home by changing the scent. During Christmas I created a scent that included my own Christmas tree, fresh orange flower and beautiful fresh jasmine. When you have not only a very nice fragrance but you change the mood of your home it creates a very positive energy and we all need that all the time!
Every smell is like a colour in the palette, like a paint palette, they’re tools for me so I love them all. Petrol, ink, record vinyl, they’re all interesting but I really love when I go in to my home office and it smells like comic books.
