Perfumer

Olivier Polge

Chanel's in-house perfumer and the nose behind Bleu de Chanel Parfum and CHANEL No. 5 L'Eau

Nationality: French
Born: 1974 · Grasse, France
House: Chanel

In our database
31
fragrances
Active since
1998
Houses
4
worked with
Recognition
1
award

Olivier Polge was born in Grasse, France, in 1974, the heart of the French perfume industry and the town where his father, Jacques Polge, built a decades-long career as Chanel's in-house perfumer. He initially leaned toward music rather than scent, but his early exposure to the raw-materials trade in Grasse and a stint as a young intern at Chanel eventually pulled him into the family craft. He studied art history before committing to perfumery, training through practical work at ingredient houses in Grasse and Geneva rather than a single formal academy.

Polge cut his teeth as a perfumer at International Flavors & Fragrances starting in the late 1990s, working first out of New York and later back in France. During this stretch he built a name for himself well outside the Chanel orbit, co-creating Dior Homme in 2005 and Viktor & Rolf's Flowerbomb, two fragrances that helped define mainstream fresh-woody and gourmand-oriental perfumery in the 2000s. He also had a hand in Lancôme's La Vie Est Belle, one of the best-selling women's fragrances of the following decade.

In 2013 he moved in-house at Chanel, working alongside his father before formally succeeding him as the house's chief perfumer when Jacques retired in 2015 — making the Polges a rare father-to-son succession at one of the industry's most closely watched fragrance labs. Since taking over, Olivier has produced new entries in the Les Exclusifs line, reworked CHANEL No. 5 as No. 5 L'Eau, and released Bleu de Chanel Parfum, alongside other men's and women's editions for the house.

In interviews he describes his approach as instinctive and deliberately unshowy, favoring restraint over maximalism and often building compositions around a single raw material — musk in particular is a note he returns to often, aiming for what he calls a comfortable, skin-close effect rather than anything sharp or overtly synthetic.