Jean-Claude Delville

Born in Paris, Jean-Claude Delville took up perfumery at 17 and worked at Quest, Créations Aromatiques, IFF, Firmenich, Symrise and drom. He is behind Cabotine for Grès in 1990 and Happy for Clinique, inducted into the Fragrance Foundation Hall of Fame in 2014. Based in New York, he co-founded The Society of Scent in 2017.

A Career Across the Fragrance Houses

Jean-Claude Delville grew up in Paris and began studying perfumery at 17. He worked at Quest, Créations Aromatiques, IFF, Firmenich, Symrise and drom, composing in Paris, Tokyo and New York. He joined drom's creative team at its Tribeca studio, for fine fragrance as well as personal care.

He lives in Manhattan, and says that walking and running through the city stimulate his imagination.

Signatures

He is behind Cabotine for Grès in 1990, Organza Indécence for Givenchy in 1999, Vera Wang, and Happy for Clinique, inducted into the Fragrance Foundation Hall of Fame in 2014. He also created Curve for Liz Claiborne, Gem for Van Cleef & Arpels in 1987 and Cabotine Rose in 2003, and has composed for Kenzo, Marc Jacobs and Jo Malone.

He once had the chance to recreate a two-hundred-year-old perfume, found in a sealed bottle at the bottom of a shipwreck off Bermuda, which became Mary Celestia for Lili Bermuda in 2014.

The Society of Scent

In 2017 he co-founded The Society of Scent in New York, a platform devoted to perfume culture, with its own laboratory in the South Bronx. There he passes on a practice shaped by three decades of creation for fashion and beauty houses, from Grès and Givenchy to Kenzo, Marc Jacobs, Jo Malone and Vera Wang.