Nathalie Lorson

She joined IFF as a junior perfumer in 1987, spending over a decade building a portfolio there before Firmenich recruited her in 2000. She has remained at Firmenich (now dsm-firmenich) ever since, and in December 2016 the house named her one of its Master Perfumers, an internal circle that numbers only a handful of noses at any time.

Lorson's best-known creation is Yves Saint Laurent's Black Opium (2014), composed with a team of collaborators around a signature coffee-and-vanilla accord that became one of the decade's biggest fragrance launches; the scent earned her Fragrance Foundation honors and a Perfumer of the Year title from French trade press in 2015. Across a career she describes as prolific — she has put her name to well over a hundred fragrances — she has worked across mass and prestige fine fragrance for houses including Lalique, Gucci, Givenchy, Dolce & Gabbana, Chopard, Jil Sander, Le Labo, Amouage and Essential Parfums, alongside celebrity scents for figures such as Dita Von Teese and Lady Gaga.

In interviews she comes across as press-shy relative to her output, describing herself as a 'gold digger' sifting through raw materials for the rare 'nugget' worth building a fragrance around, and framing her job as an act of generosity aimed at moving the person wearing the scent rather than expressing herself.