Dubbed the ‘King of Gourmands’ Olivier Cresp is a living legend in the perfume world. With the launch of his own line AKRO, the perfumer speaks to Femina about growing up in France, his trysts with India - and more.
You grew up in Grasse walking through fields of flowers with your father, and your family has traded in raw materials for generations. How much of that childhood — smelling the day's blooms instead of hearing a bedtime story — do you think you can still trace in the way you build a fragrance today?
I had a happy childhood. It is true that, from an early age, I was surrounded by beautiful scents and beautiful natural raw materials that came from the fields around Grasse: rose, jasmine, tuberose, iris… I have kept this instinct, almost unconsciously, to always add natural and pure ingredients to my fragrances. Instinctively, I always favour the raw materials that really make a difference. I also work a lot with very natural fruit notes, such as raspberry, strawberry, blackcurrant and pear. For example, for Smile, we worked with raspberry using a microwave technique to achieve the most natural result possible.
You've been called the "King of Gourmands" . After a career built on scents made for mass appeal, what does it feel like to now create something with no brief or a house signature?
I like to trust my own instincts and feelings, to anticipate my inspirations and to sense the trends. When it comes to gourmand fragrances, I still have many things to say about desserts, cereals and cocktails… When I create for Akro, I am completely free and I embrace taking risks. Because to succeed, you always have to take risks.
You've said AKRO let you "let your hair down" outside the confines of the corporate world. What specifically had you been holding back all these years — was there a scent or an idea you'd wanted to make but never could?
After so many years, I still have some frustrations as a perfumer. There are still some scents that I would like to be able to recreate, such as the smell of warm sand on a beach, or even incorporating the true smell of red wine as a top note. There are always new things to explore and new scents to try to recreate.
AKRO started with your daughter Anais coming to you with a concept "nobody has used before." Tell us how that shaped and worked with her? Was it harder because you could push your daughter or easy because of the shared DNA.
It came naturally. We have quite similar personalities, while also being very complementary. I am more focused on the invisible, on scent and creation, whereas Anaïs is more focused on the visible, with an approach that is more oriented towards marketing, design and architecture. I believe you should always build a business with someone who complements you. And for me, that person was naturally my daughter Anaïs.
You describe the industry as saturated with fragrances and knock-offs. What does AKRO do differently that you couldn't have done inside a bigger house?
What makes us different is that we are a niche brand. We try to innovate, to take risks and to offer something new. Our goal is to stay true to the brand while positioning ourselves among the leading names in a market that is now highly saturated.
Haze is built on cannabis, Dark on 85% cocoa chocolate, Ink on tattoo parlours, Night on what you've called "a good memory" of a quickie — these are addictions and moments most fragrance houses would never touch. Was there ever a scent Anais proposed that you pushed back on, or found genuinely difficult to translate into perfume?
There have been, for example, requests from Anaïs around the addiction to gambling. To me, that seems almost impossible to translate into a fragrance. It is the same with an addiction to work: I don’t necessarily have all the raw materials and molecules that would allow me to execute and respond to every request. And in a way, I am also lucky to be able to work on and create what I love. When I don’t like something, I simply cannot do it.
You mention landing in cities like London, Milan or New York early in the morning, jet-lagged, and always catching the smell of cannabis being smoked somewhere. Is that how most of these scents started — with a real, specific memory — or did some come from imagination first?
I am always inspired by the scents I encounter around me. For Awake, for example, the coffee is, for me, the coffee of Sicily. Every time, I tell a true story, a story that I have experienced myself. Then, the consumer makes it their own through their personal memories. Everyone can create their own story around the fragrance and experience it differently. This is exactly the principle of Proust’s madeleine.
Tell us about your relationship with India - how has Indian origin notes/ingredients translated into fragrances.
I already knew Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and I had been in contact with their raw materials and beautiful flowers for a long time. Northern India, particularly Mumbai and Delhi, allowed me to discover another world: connecting with buyers, perfume enthusiasts, journalists and influencers. I was amazed by their knowledge of perfumery, which reminded me a lot of what you find in the Middle East. I also discovered an incredible richness around spices and desserts, such as kulfi, the cardamom-flavoured ice cream. All of this resonates with their approach to raw materials: desserts, spicy dishes, chilli… It is a culture that offers an absolutely incredible olfactory and gustatory richness.
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