I bet he doesn't like attracting attention. At least not by his looks. Dressed in a black turtleneck, a light shirt, jeans and sneakers, Arnaud Poulain in a crowd is one of many inconspicuous thirty-somethings. He comes from northern France. Anyone who has been there or seen the film Even Further North knows it’s not only the granite coasts of Brittany and Normandy’s beaches, but also coal mines, industrial towns and villages that grew up nearby and are not as picturesque as those in Provence. Arnaud was born in Arras, the town famous for its tapestries. “Everyone in my family worked hard. My dad worked with mechanics and metalworking, my uncle was a carpenter, my grandparents were farmers,” he says at the premiere of the fragrance Vanille Supermassive. He came to Warsaw to present it and introduce us to his brand Les Eaux Primordiales. “When my family heard I was going to Poland, they were very excited. My aunt is from here,” he tells journalists and bloggers. He brightens up when he explains his original, patented scent maturation process: the finished composition rests for 6 to 24 months in special vats. In the room where they are kept, classical music is played because its sounds provide the best vibrations — necessary for the perfumes to acquire the desired depth. (It makes me think of the famous Kobe cows). He also speaks engagingly about the scents he has already created. What to do with rose to make it less obvious? Combine it with tea, cardamom and sugared rose petals. Saffron needs to be livened up with leather and raspberries. Give amber the company of apple pie and kitchen spices. It sounds good, but more importantly, it smells just as good.

Arnaud’s openness, his enthusiasm, the lack of a studied pose, but also the names of the fragrances, in which scientific nomenclature appears, e.g. “supermassive vanilla,” are something new to me in perfumery. Two hours after the press conference we meet in a crowded Warsaw café to talk calmly. Calm is out of the question — it’s as loud as a kindergarten, all tables are taken, it’s lunchtime. Arnaud finishes the previous interview; I hear him in passing talking about the ingredients of the newest scent and I think that before we get into the secrets of Vanille Supermassive, I’d like to get to know this guy from the French North a bit better.

^{ARNAUD DURING HIS VISIT TO GALILU IN WARSAW photo: Paulina Puchalska}

Can you tell us more about your Polish family?

My father’s brother’s wife comes from Poland. After the war many Poles who fought in Normandy stayed in France, hence that connection. This is my first time in Poland and although I’m only staying three days, tomorrow I’m going to Kraków because my family said it must be seen. It wasn’t destroyed, the old architecture has been preserved. But for example in Warsaw I like the brutalist buildings erected in the 1950s and later.

Many Poles hate them; they associate them with hard times.

Beautiful things are created even in hard times. I was in Germany in the summer — although I usually don’t take holidays, I prefer to work — there too, especially in the eastern part, they have fascinating architecture.

Are you interested in it, do you get inspired by it?

I’m inspired by the industrial architecture of northern France; you’ll notice it when you look at our bottles. I’m interested in architecture in general, but above all in construction itself, the skeleton.

And you don’t go on vacation because you don’t like it or because you can’t?

I hate heat. Besides, I was raised in a family where people worked hard all year, every day. My path to becoming a perfumer was unusual. As a five-year-old I worked with my grandparents in the fields and helped as much as I could, even by selling potatoes.

Do you have siblings?

A younger sister; she is a nurse. She became one because our mother was seriously ill — she had nasal cancer. When we were children and went to Paris, it wasn’t shopping at the luxury department store Le Bon Marché, but to the hospital. Mom died when I was 13. Since then I can’t stand the smell of hospitals or strong chemical odors at all.

Can that be noticed in your compositions?

Probably yes — I don’t use many synthetic ingredients, although they are exceptionally long-lasting and predictable in behavior. I don’t create monothematic compositions. Many people in our industry make showy, strong scents built around one main note to “sell themselves” quickly and advantageously to some cosmetics conglomerate. I don’t think like that; if anything, I’d rather buy such a conglomerate (laughs). I’m not racing anyone either. Or rather, I compete with myself. I want to be better and better at what I do.

^{ARNAUD DURING HIS VISIT TO GALILU IN WARSAW photo: Paulina Puchalska}

When did you decide you would become a perfumer? After all, you have a solid trade — you studied engineering.

I studied engineering, automation, mechanics and electromechanics, but I am not an engineer. School didn’t go well for me, I wasn’t the best student, so my dad decided I would train in a similar field to him, to have a trade. When I lost my mother I understood that I had nothing more important to lose. I started reading a lot of books. I decided to take a risk. Besides, even as a child I knew I wasn’t amused by what others liked. As an eight-year-old I was interested in quantum physics. I upgraded my electric train by installing a magnet — I wanted it to float above the tracks. Peers thought I was crazy and parents said I would achieve nothing because I was a dreamer. And look, precisely because I didn’t change, I fulfilled my father’s dream.

What was that?

He wanted to buy a wood near my grandparents’ farm. So I bought 22 hectares of forest, together with a palace in it. The very one in front of which I sold potatoes as a child.

Did you fulfill your own dreams too?

Yes, I completed my diploma, although my mother worried I wouldn’t finish my studies. Later I started my first company. I traded clothes, but I lacked business preparation, so it didn’t work out.

Then you decided to switch from fashion to cosmetics?

I learned about perfumery from an acquaintance who had been a professional soldier but had an accident and had to leave the army. During his convalescence he read Jean-Claude Ellena’s book Perfume, which fascinated him so much that he began to educate himself in that direction and eventually became commercial director at Alter Perfumes. It intrigued me. I was 21, my business had failed, and I was sure it was the end. I also read Ellena’s book, although I had never even used perfume before. It gave me hope; a new goal, a dream appeared in my head to one day become as good a perfumer as Ellena. I started a new life, full of discipline. Every morning I woke at 4:00, went to bed at 20:00, didn’t drink, didn’t party. I invested my savings in essential oils, which I bought online. I then understood that they differ from essences or absolutes used in perfumery. I decided I would continue to learn. In Lens, in northern France, I went to a school that trained salespeople for the perfume business. I was the only man among 50 women! I finished that school in first place. The sales director at Chanel offered me a job, but I said: “No, thank you, I’m not interested.”

Why didn’t you want to work for one of the best French brands?

I was looking for something… more real, less focused on marketing. I received an offer from Byredo and thought it was a good direction: a niche brand, an aesthetic I liked; it seemed interesting. I started in December 2009, I was responsible for the brand’s counter at Le Bon Marché. Six months later I became commercial director in France. When Ben Gorham sold Byredo in 2015, I decided it was time to start making perfumes myself. At first I wanted to do it at one of the famous firms that employ noses: Givaudan, IFF, Firmenich. But everywhere they said: “You’re not a perfumer, you’re a salesperson.” So I had to gain experience to have the right point on my CV. I composed perfumes, then went from shop to shop to sell them. The first place that bought them was the now-defunct concept store Colette.

^{VANILLE SUPERMASSIVE photo: Paulina Puchalska}

Not a bad start, one of the best niche boutiques in Paris. Were you happy to be able to put that on your CV?

I thought I wouldn’t have to work for any of those shitty corporations and I would start my own brand. I had 5,000 euros. On the online store Alibaba I bought a perfume-mixing machine and improved it. That’s how my garage lab was born.

Did you work alone?

Amélie Bourgeois helped me. I met her at the school in Lens, she was in charge of perfumery courses there. She is my mentor and we still collaborate. I remember asking her: “When will we finally learn how to actually make a scent, not just how to recognize top, heart and base notes?” She answered: “In that school? Never.” And she offered to teach me outside the curriculum.

How do you divide the work with Amélie?

We are like an architect and an engineer. I design, she constructs. I know how the perfumes should smell and which ingredients to choose for the composition. Amélie assembles it.

You understand each other perfectly and complement one another.

Exactly. She is also my best friend.

Do you know which perfumes she likes most?

Mimosa Supercritique and Couleur Primaire.

The name Les Eaux Primordiales comes from Jules Verne’s book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Is it particularly important to you?

I like it, but that’s not the whole point. The perfume industry doesn’t particularly evoke intellectualism. You have all those “roses in Paris,” “some atelier,” names. The cliché. I decided on a little provocation, introducing concepts derived from quantum physics into the world of scents: superfluide, supermassive, supercritique (superfluid, supermassive, supercritical state). Les Eaux Primordiales (primordial waters) is a good name for the brand because it is both scientific and poetic. And Jules Verne, like me, came from northern France. He described fascinating fantastic worlds in his books. While working on Vanille Supermassive, I imagined white flowers floating in the ocean depths. I hope that is perceptible. Vanilla is dry, ambiguous; I added white musk, cinnamon, fir resin to it.

^{SANTAL & ROSEWOOD SUPERFLUIDE photo: Paulina Puchalska}

Do you always have such poetic visions when you create perfumes?

It varies. When we were putting together Mimosa Supercritique, I thought of my mother’s wedding bouquet made of mimosa and lightly dusted with snow, because she and my father got married in March. In the scent the role of snow is played by the aroma of powdered sugar. But six months ago I had the idea to work with iris. I wanted a creamy, soft character, I added Australian sandalwood. The premiere is next year.

Is there a scent you have in your head that you’d like to create but don’t know how?

I once thought about perfumes that would recreate the smell of outer space. I met Thomas Pesquet, the French astronaut, in a bar and asked him to tell me how space smells, but he refused. I also wrote to Elon Musk about it, I sent him Musk Superfluide, but I didn’t get a response.

What do you want to achieve in perfumery with the Les Eaux Primordiales brand?

I care about preserving the tradition of classical French perfumery. I don’t like simplifying everything and reducing a scent to one dominant ingredient. I want to show how beautiful ambiguity, contrast and surprise can be. But my biggest dreams are not related to perfumery.

What do you dream about?

In the future I would like to work on scientific research.

On what?

On electrostatics, electromagnetism, magnetism, to solve the problem of fuels and pollution. Imagine vehicles that move by levitating and don’t need an engine, and therefore no gasoline, oil or gas. I’ll show you videos of such experiments, you’ll understand exactly what I mean.

Such research must be expensive…

Very. I give myself 20 years. That’s how long I want to create beautiful, surprising perfumes, and then we’ll see.