When I sat down with Francis Kurkdjian in New York, I asked him a question that sounds simple but is surprisingly difficult to answer: What makes a fragrance unforgettable? It’s the kind of question people in fragrance are constantly trying to solve. Is it performance?

Compliments? Longevity? Projection? Or something less measurable?

His answer immediately cut through all of that. “First of all, I don’t think there is a recipe, because otherwise, all the fragrances would be, they would be unforgettable.” And with that, the idea of a formula disappeared. What followed was a much more nuanced – and far more useful – way of thinking about perfume.