Of the many ingredients in a master perfumer’s repertoire, few represent the craft better than orris. One of perfumery’s most luxurious ingredients, the substance is prized for its powdery, floral scent and laborious provenance: extracted from the pulverized bulbs of the iris flower, dried at 40 degrees Celsius over two years, then crushed into a fine powder and distilled by hand. The product of carefully orchestrated transmutation—one ton of iris bulbs produces about two kilograms of essential oil—orris is an exercise in patience.
“There is a specific link between matter and time,” observes Nicolas Bonneville of the craft of perfumery. “You cannot rush it. The process reveals the scent.” That reverence for time is a driving force behind the French perfumer’s work. Bonneville fell in love with the discipline as a teenager during a family holiday in Grasse, which he describes as “the cradle of perfumery in France.” After studying under masters including Jacques Maurel and Francis Kurkdjian, Bonneville ventured out on his own to create fragrances for brands such as Givenchy, Jo Malone, and Dries Van Noten. The perfumer’s love for sourcing and combining rare ingredients earned him an award in the Niche category from the Fragrance Foundation of France this year.
It’s also what brought him to the attention of Jaeger-LeCoultre. This fall, the Swiss watchmaker tapped Bonneville to be the next face of its Made of Makers program. Launched in 2022, the initiative was born of what Matthieu Le Voyer, the maison’s Chief Marketing Officer, describes as a “desire to extend the dialogue between horology and art.”
Past collaborators have included not only visual artists and performers, but also a mixologist and a pastry chef. Each expert created something different inspired by the watchmaker’s reputation for precision and obsession with craft. But while previous partners developed works in response to the maison’s ethos—an original musical composition rooted in the Golden Ratio, for example, or a cocktail inspired by astronomical timekeeping—Bonneville may be the first to help define it. “We probably gave Nicolas the hardest challenge we have ever given to one of these makers,” muses Le Voyer. “We asked him to create the olfactory identity of Jaeger-LeCoultre.”
The synergy between Jaeger-LeCoultre’s craftsmanship and Bonneville’s nose is evident: “Watchmakers are looking for accuracy—they want to be as close as possible to time,” says Bonneville. “I want honesty—to be as close as possible to my raw materials.”
After immersing himself in the brand’s ethos and history, Bonneville produced three distinct fragrances: Timeless Stories, Celestial Odyssey, and Precision Pioneer. Timeless Stories pays homage to Jaeger-LeCoultre’s iconic Reverso watch, a timepiece designed to withstand the tumult of a polo match. It opens with fresh violet leaves (evoking fresh-cut grass) before settling into deeper notes of orris and leather (stables and sad-dles). Celestial Odyssey—a warm, spicy fragrance threaded with patchouli, ambergris accords, and vanilla—conjures the astrological origins of timekeeping. Finally, Precision Pioneer encapsulates the nearly 200-year-old brand’s tireless pursuit of perfection by interweaving ancient essences of oud (an earthy scent derived from the heartwood of the Aquilaria tree after a years-long infection by a rare fungus) and cedar with cutting-edge “vibrant wood” accords to create something entirely novel.
