Jean-Claude Gigodot
A French perfumer who trained at De Laire and later composed Cuir Erindil for Maison Incens.
About Jean-Claude Gigodot
Jean-Claude Gigodot was a French perfumer whose path ran from the laboratories of the fragrance-materials trade to small independent niche houses. His later work includes a series of perfumes for Maison Incens.
Career
He began as a chemist at De Laire, learning the craft under Edgard de Laire and Monique Schlienger, before moving to Givaudan in Switzerland. There he worked with his friends Jean-Claude Ellena and Lucien Ferrero in an olfactory research team, where the three experimented with co-signed formulas, and in the 1970s their work together continued at Lautier Fils. Through that work he met Jean Laporte. Their collaboration lasted more than three decades and carried on at Maître Parfumeur et Gantier, which Laporte founded in 1988. In the 1990s he set up Sentaromatique, and he went on to compose for independent houses such as Maison Incens and Au Pays de la Fleur d'Oranger.
Creative Style & Philosophy
His perfumes for Maison Incens show a clear taste for contrast. A leather composition sets fizzy mandarin, bergamot and aromatic notes against incense, musk and leather, so that freshness and shadow share one composition. In both his leather and fig compositions, accords evoking Tonkin musk, civet and castoreum lend animal warmth to natural materials, from benzoin and cistus in the first to galbanum and tuberose in the second.
Signature Works
- *Cuir Erindil* — a leather fragrance built on the idea that opposites attract, presented by the house as a scent of duality
- *Fig Eleii* — fig, green and citrus notes open onto tuberose, orris, cedar and sandalwood, like a journey from unknown valleys into unexplored forest
- *Neroli Animalis* — a clair-obscur neroli in which a burst of citrus gives way to a grey amber accord and an animalic finish