PROPOS & PARFUMS

By Edmond Roudnitska, Perfume Creator

W.W.W - Dominique Viot - 27/06/96

DEAR FRIENDS, I address all of you who blend, make, direct and decide in the field of perfumery products. For you are all part of an indissociable whole, together we are perfume, and you all depend on one another.

In the interests of everyone, and of the industry as a whole, you need to work closely together, to combine your efforts rather than to fight, so that the perfumery trade can benefit from your varied and unique contributions.

So before thinking in terms of profit, glory and power, think of perfume. If you subordinate everything else to what is - let's not forget it - the raison d'être of our profession, perfumery will go so well that the other requisites will follow as bonuses, whitout wounding anyone's honour or pride.

Do not restrict yourselves simply to your own particular task. Broaden your horizons, initially so as to understand what the person next to you does, so that you can unite with that person in producing the finished, shared product. Then broaden your view to take in the whole universe, to those things wich you can only benefit from if you return to the deeps roots of authentic values, those which inspire all great works, both in the past and the future.

True culture, which is far more than mere erudition, is the only foundation on which anything solid can ever be built. The long-lasting nature of the works that result from it is the only value which never disappoints. It is because man is mortal, and because he is man, that he aspires to immortality. So be men ; work for the temporal or the ephemeral. Think about leaving something behind you, so you can depart with the conforting feeling of having been useful. Vanity can only leave on embittered, because it is never satisfied.