Dana El Masri

"In Grasse, my favourite spot to go, right by the cathedral, and you could see the whole town!"

Dana El Masri is a 24 year old, half Lebanese, half Egyptian who grew up in Dubai, living in Montreal. She was born in Hungary, but hasn’t lived in Egypt or Lebanon. She spent a year studying perfumery in Grasse and aptly describes herself as a citizen of the world!

Her dream at 18 was to go into the music industry, that was the one and only dream at the time. Following her graduation she did a two month internship at L’Artisan Parfumeur. It was then that she realised she was far more interested in what was in the perfume more than anything else.

I came across Dana through her her blog. She has a great passion for music and all things scented, and I’ve come to rely on this blog for a source of inspiration and reading.

Hi Dana, thanks for taking the time out of your studies. Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me a little about your smell experiences growing up.

After I completed my time with L’Artisan Perfumer, I read Jitterbug Perfume and The Alchemist, in that order and everything just fell into place.

I looked back on my life when I was younger and realized that I had a perfume for each season, and a scent memory for almost everything. My grandmother wafting through her house, wearing Poison and Dune (she is a massive Dior fan, and appreciates good perfumes, including the Estee Lauder Private Collection back in the day). I remember my mother wearing Opium in the winter, and the smell of her lipstick when she went out too. I think being Middle Eastern has also been imperative in my journey, the smell of mangoes in my grandfather’s garden, the scent of jasmine as you walk in the streets in Egypt. All the attars in Dubai, heavy, opulent, spices.

I can only imagine Dubai being a real melting-pot of experiences and smells. What did you do after working with L’Artisan Perfumer?

I worked at a restaurant for the year after that, all the while researching how to make perfume. My mom thought I was nuts that I wanted to create a lab in my kitchen, but I just kept reading and learning about the industry. I would study it, full on.

In early 2009, I found the Institute of Perfumery in Grasse. I had checked out the Givaudan school first and even contemplated going to back to university so I could do a Bachelors in Chemistry just so I could go to ISIPCA.

I applied in June and waited for an answer until October. There was a call for an interview, in New York, on this side of the world thankfully. I ended up going to IFF and I met Clement Gavarry, which was kismet because I had been reading The Perfect Scent by Chandler Burr. It was my first time in New York City and I was alone, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

An interview that was supposed to last 25 mins ended up going on for more than 2 hours. We talked about our love for perfume, and how small Grasse would be for me if I ended up going, he even talked about his father, my future professor and wonderful mentor. He even took me into their lab which was incredible. We smelled so many things, and he tested me throughout. What got me in was my passion. I didn’t even know how to pronounce Chypre, I said it like ‘kaiper’. Everything I knew, was from reading, so this was my chance to learn it by doing. I found out I was accepted at the end of the month, and the rest as they say is history!

I admire your self-study approach, it seems that the subject, textually, got you interested. I read over perfume-recipe books and dip in and out of training exercises when the time is available.

You say you were more interested in what was in the perfume more than anything else. What was your first experience of that like? Was it one of curiosity or are you naturally inquisitive?

When I researched the ingredients, especially in the L’Artisan fragrances, most of them I did not know. All I could was imagine what they could possibly smell like based on vague descriptions, and you know how hard it is to articulate scent! I think it was a bit of both, curiosity and being naturally inquisitive, which was a direct result of how much I loved the craft.

I’ve always wanted to be knowledgeable about something, so much that someone would look at me and know that I knew my shit, so to speak. I was tired of being a jack of all trades and a master of none.

So it was then that you moved to Grasse in the new year. Tell everything.

It was scary to go into a foreign country, my French was ok, but not good enough, luckily the courses were in English. There were 12 of us, 11 girls, 1 boy.

The first few months were dedicated to understanding and memorizing raw materials, both natural and synthetic. It was a lot of hard work, but my ideas of certain ingredients weren’t correct, but I was almost always pleasantly surprised.

We had wonderful professors who taught us the history of how these materials came to be, where they were from, and how they are used now. It was riveting, still is. It takes determination and a good nose to know these materials. Also, association really helps.

It was really interesting to see what the scent of Jasmine conjured up in each of us. The more you associate a smell with something, the easier it is for you to remember it, and practice of course!

What do you associate Jasmine with? Did the other students have something interesting to say?

Jasmine reminds me of Egypt, of the Middle East in general actually. It is instantly recognized, street markets are full of them. It also reminds me of my mother and my grandmother. It seems that most people enjoy jasmine. Some of the students preferred Indian jasmine than the Egyptian because it is sweeter and has less indol (the smell of moth balls).

Your experience in Grasse sounds invaluable. It’s influenced you, on a learning level. How else would you describe your experience there? Was it inspirational?

Yes, my time there was well worth it. It was difficult to say the least, in terms of living in a small village and being in completely foreign territory. Your nose gets a beating with the constant practicing, but you just have to learn how to pace yourself. I had never been so creatively challenged in my life!

A few months into the course, we started learning how to make accords with the wonderful Max Gavarry. He’s a kooky character to say the least! We started with florals, then ambers, fresh accords and so on. From then on, we had the liberty of making our stuff, and I made it a point to make something everyday. The formulas became more complicated and we became more knowledgeable as the months went by. Then came our brief. Our theme was luxury, and man oh man did we have our work cut out for us! My perfume was chosen and it meant a lot to me especially because I never thought it would.

That’s fantastic your perfume got chosen from the other students. You must have felt a great sense of achievement. So you’re home now, back in Canada, what do you hope to do now that you’ve got some experience behind you? Where does a citizen of the world go from here?

Well, I’ve been in Montreal since just before New Year’s and it’s been a difficult transition since there isn’t much of a perfume industry here. So I started my blog, just so I could get myself out there. I’ve been exploring lots of options, so I’m sure I will eventually move on to New York.

And the all those perfume skills you learned? Where will you apply them and what do you hope to do with them?

I started making custom-made fragrances for friends and the word is starting to go around. Finally, and I really hope this works out, I would like to have my own collection.

Your own collection is a fantastic goal to set. How would yours stand out from what is becoming a real active industry?

Since music has been such a huge part of my life, and the correlation between music and scent is abundant, I have decided to merge the two. I would like to find the musicality in scent. So for example, I have created a Curtis Mayfield inspired perfume, I took inspiration from the lyrics, the genre and Curtis himself, and made a musky, sorta dirty, apricot scent, turned out pretty well.

So now I’m working on my classic collection: Led Zeppelin’s ‘Going to California’, Tom Waits’ ‘Circus’ (here the line that struck me was: “the music was like electric sugar”, so I recreated just that, electric sugar) and Billie Holiday’s ‘Crazy for You’ which has been a bit of a challenge but it’s getting better, the general notes for now are gardenia, marshmallows and dark dark coffee.

Oooh also, I’m collaborating with my darling friend Ashley Kessler who was my teammate throughout the last few months of our course, she lives in New York and now works for Drom. We are working on an Otis Redding, night and day and I just received her day, and it’s so different and so fantastic, there’s a whiskey base in it.

I’m trying to find the funds for my project, but it’s really tough, so it may take a while, but I’m not giving up! Both music and scent bring you back to a time you had forgotten, and conjure up undeniable feelings, so bridging the two just seemed logical. More importantly, I hope it hasn’t been done, and it’s a good way to learn about new things. Like a collective database of sorts, if you didn’t know the artist, you can listen to them, and if you are curious about the scent, then you can smell it, so it becomes universal. As long as people can smell the love, the passion and the dedication, that’s all that matters to me.

Dana, thank you so much for taking part. It’s clear you have a genuine passion for fragrance and an interesting vision to take it forward. It’s been great getting to know more about you, your experiences and where you hope to go from here. I hope some day to see a musical perfume with your name on it.

Remember, if you’re interested in joining in this series of discussions you can get in touch with me on the Impersonal Odour page.

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Do you have any questions for Dana?

Have you been inspired by Dana’s experiences? Have you smelled Egyptian Jasmine? What do you think of her musical and perfume inspirations?

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