Christophe Laudamiel

A chemist

Born in 1969, Christophe Laudamiel studied chemistry in Strasbourg before teaching at Harvard and MIT. He trained in perfumery at Procter & Gamble, which awarded him his diploma as a creative perfumer in 1997 and named him senior perfumer. There he worked on flavors, masking the bitterness of syrups, and on fragrances for household products, including Lenor.

IFF: Polo Blue and Fierce

Since Procter & Gamble had no fine fragrance division, he joined IFF in New York. With Carlos Benaïm he won the Polo Blue brief for Ralph Lauren, launched in 2002 and crowned with a FiFi Award in 2003. He relates that the small Abercrombie & Fitch budget interested no senior perfumer; Fierce came out of it and became one of the best-selling perfumes in the United States.

He also co-created Happy Heart for Clinique with Olivier Polge, and has composed for Tom Ford, Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger.

DreamAir and the stage

In 2010, he founded DreamAir, a perfume start-up that relies on Firmenich for its raw materials. He created Dead of Night and Melt My Heart for Strangelove NYC and founded a nonprofit perfumery academy in the United States, to pass on the craft outside the major houses.