Pierre Montale: I Feel How Much Montale Is Loved Here
Interviews

The head of the Montale and Mancera brands spent three busy days in Moscow last week. He was starring in the opening of the Montale corner in the trendy Russian department store TSUM, had a photo and autograph session in Moscow's hipster Mecca "Tsvetnoy Central Market", and opened the biggest Montale shop in Russia in one of the capital's shopping malls. Considering his busy agenda and the number of people who wanted to see Pierre Montale in person and to talk to him, the interview time was strictly limited and I tried to ask my questions and to take a couple of photos in the given time.

So, I'm happy to introduce — Pierre Montale!

[The very man whom Juliette talked to last year (but that time he did not let us publish a photo), and the one we saw this year at the Esxence event in Milan]

EVGENIYA: A year ago we published your first ever interview. It was my colleague Juliette who talked to you then. Today I would like to continue the conversation.

PIERRE: Sure! That was a great interview by the way!

[In the interview "M is for Montale", read about Pierre Montale's carrier in perfumery, about the regulation of a story with fake Montal fragrances and monsieur Montale's desire to be more productive.]

EVGENIYA: To become a perfumer did you study somewhere or was somebody your teacher?

PIERRE: Yes, I did. It was at a factory in Grasse. This factory was Comptoire Sud Pacifique's supplier. Unfortunately I don't remember its name now, it doesn't exist anymore.

I spent a year there, working on perfume creation. It was a very important experience. Actually, at that time I was less interested in fragrances. They all seemed quite similar to me. Everything changed when I got to Saudi Arabia and tried oud, meeting an absolutely different fragrant universe. Oud seemed too mighty to me at first, but I was interested in the fact that people there were so enchanted with it. I started to study this material, to observe the audience and finally I came to adapt it to the European market. We were the first in it.

EVGENIYA: Who are your oud suppliers?

PIERRE: They are from Indonesia and Malaysia.

EVGENIYA: So, you mean that in all Montale and Mancera fragrances there is natural oud?

PIERRE: Yes, natural.

EVGENIYA: That is strange, since actually I compared different natural oud oils with synthetic materials and the oud accords in your fragrances that I've tried smell rather like this synthetic raw material.

PIERRE: Yeah, sometimes we use synthetics. It depends on the fragrance. In Aoud Night, for example, there is natural agarwood. Actually, at the beginning I was afraid that oud would be too much for Europeans as even a minor dose of oud smells very strong in a composition. It has a very characteristic animalic smell. And now that people have grown accustomed to oud, we launch a lot of fragrances (Oudmazing, Aoud Night and others) with natural oud.

EVGENIYA: So you have made a sort of transition from synthetics to natural material?

PIERRE: In the fragrance Black Oud, which will appear soon, there will be a lot of natural oud. And step by step we try to use more of it.

EVGENIYA: You have been working with oud for more than ten years already. Aren't you tired of it yet? It must be hard to be creative while focusing for so many years on the same field. [By the way, even some fans of the brand say that their fragrances started to copy one another].

PIERRE: The world's number one isn't oud, it's Roses Musc. Then — Black Aoud. After those, there are oud- and vanilla-based perfumes. But we have started to launch more fragrances with other components, especially since we are very interested in the Russian market where oud isn't very popular. Which is why now we work more with floral and gourmand accords. The Russian market accepts gourmands very well. But I still love oud anyway. In Saudi Arabia we are in the top-5 or top-6 with our oud fragrances...and Arabs have a very specific sense of smell. They easily discover if there is bad agar in a fragrance. Though even in their market, Roses Musc is a leader. They combine it with oud fragrances.

EVGENIYA: Continuing the subject of the Russian market... For so many years you preferred not to go in public. Why have you decided to do it now and here (in Moscow)?

PIERRE: I'm a very sensitive person. I feel how much I'm appreciated in Russia. When I started working with Luxury World Production [Montale's distribution company in Russia], the head of the company told me that people here loved my fragrances even when they were quite expensive (which wasn't my fault but the previous distributor's) and they'd be pleased to meet me. We decided to change our distributor in Russia as Luxury World Production was ready to adapt our prices to the local market in order to make our fragrances more affordable for the local clients. I was very pleased and now I'm here — to help reach our goals. By the way, we are opening a very beautiful corner in TSUM. Very beautiful! So, maybe I will even move here [laughs].

Instead of a conclusion: Each time when you re-read an interview you just had with some one, you think that you could have asked different questions, that you should have gone deeper...but this time I feel that I discovered exactly what I needed to know about the hero of out today's conversation. You get to know things not only from words that were said — sometimes it's more telling how they are said or even what wasn't said at all.

Of course, there will always be a lot of controversy around monsieur Montale's personality. It's a business (a successful one) and that comes with the territory. We all can have our own ideas about this man, his words and what he does. But I think we must remember one important thing — he is the head of a brand that produces fragrances that make a lot of people happier. And this is one of the highest points a business can reach, I believe.

Photo: Monsieur Montale portraits — Evgeniya Chudakova; Oudmazing poster — Montale.