Vive interviews JEAN DE MOUY, Third chairman of the board of Jean Patou, grandnephew of the founder, Jean Patou and grandson of M. Raymond Barbas, the second chairman of the company and husband of Madeleine Barbas, Patou's sister.

Jean de Mouy is the third Chairman of the Board of Jean Patou, Paris, France. He is the grand-nephew of Jean Patou, founder of the company, and grandson of Mr. Raymond Barbas, the second Chairman of the company. For the third generation, the great couture house remains firmly guided by a member of the Patou family.

In his early years, Jean de Mouy demonstrated a keen interest in the arts - drawing, painting and wood sculpture. Yet, he also understood that one day he would inherit the family business of Jean Patou, eventually becoming the head of the company and assuming a responsibility to be taken with the utmost seriousness. He joined Jean Patou at the age of 19.

To prepare for what would be a challenging future, he studied business administration and obtained the knowledge and expertise required to direct the full spectrum of the company's couture and perfume departments. When he assumed the post of Chairman of the Board in 1980, he not only inherited a great company, but a great tradition - one that made the Jean Patou label synonymous with elegant couture designs and fabulous fragrances.

Under the guidance of Jean de Mouy, the high standards of quality for all Jean Patou products - fragrance and Haute Couture fashion - have been strictly maintained. His creative management and sharp instincts have insured that the unique inspiration and progressive sensibilities for which the House of Patou has always been recognized, continue to make a distinctive mark in the world of fashion and fragrance.

Vive interviews Jean de Mouy in his Paris office.

VIVE: You are the third chairman of Jean Patou following your grandfather and Jean Patou before him. Were you always aware that you would carry on the family company and history?

DE MOUY: My own story is completely tied in with the story of Patou. I represent the third generation of the company which began with my Grand-Uncle, Jean Patou in 1914 at the beginning of the First World War. I began in the business when I was nineteen years old and succeeded my grandfather when he was eighty and I was twenty-nine. For me there could be no better job than to take care of the woman al day, every day: the pleasure of giving seduction to people. I am completely fascinated by my job.

The original activities of the company were concerned with haute couture but Jean Patou was deprived of presenting his first show having joined the French army and spent all the war fighting with the French-English army. When he returned in 1918, he renewed his fashion house immediately. One must consider the position of the French at that time. It was the first time that the entire world was at war and France was the big winner: everyone was looking to France to see how we lived here. As such, Jean Patou was from the beginning, an international business. There was a lot of American interest in France where previously, the States was not too concerned with Europe. Fashion was one of the world's immediate pre-occupations because it concerned women and their appearance. Patou devoted his life to the seduction - with humour - of the woman. He was himself a great lover! I tell you this because it will give you an idea of that period, to explain why, for example, we were present in Japan in the Thirties and had opened a business in America already. The volume of the Patou fashion collection at that time was approximately 700 models and we employed 1500 people dealing only in haute couture. One of the conceptions of quality at Patou, established first by my grandfather and carried on now by both myself and my brother, is that to be absolutely sure of the quality of your product, you have to do everything yourself: that is, control everything yourself. Patou started his perfume business in 1925, but in his mind wanted to become a real perfumer.

VIVE: Why did he choose to become involved in perfume originally? Was it simply a logical extension to the business?

DE MOUY: Well, simply because perfume is the supreme weapon for seduction! In the first step of the seduction, one becomes undressed and what you have to suggest is your body and your fragrance.

Since 1925, we have always created our perfumes by ourselves. We have had our own "Nose', or creator who works exclusively for Patou and in fact today, there are only three houses who operate in this way: Chanel, Guerlain and us. This is very important because it means that we have complete control over the perfume formula and to make a comparison with cooking, the one who has the ingredients is the chef. The chef makes his selection from the finest ingredients, and then it is the methodology of his cooking that creates the perfect result. The House of Patou since its beginnings has always been very selective, very exclusive in its fragrances, with perfumes like JOY and 1000 and with its couture as well. We are very proud of what we do, we don't want to extend our business to the point that we cannot give the same satisfaction to a new customer who is shopping for our fragrance.

I began with the Nose when I was nineteen and I spent a long time in the factories helping to select substances with the Nose and this experience left me with a vocabulary that enables me to communicate with the perfume designer. I love fragrance and am fascinated by perfume as well. Each month our Nose provides me with 10-20 new formulas and I smell them, I wear them and I compare each. Sometimes I am seduced by a fragrance initially and then after two or three weeks, I am bored with it. Other times, I am not immediately attracted to the fragrance but after using it for a period, I discover a new and exciting facet of the perfume.

VIVE: Why was JOY marketed as the world's costliest fragrance?

DE MOUY: The reason for this was due to the original idea of its invention. It was created along the same lines as Patou's haute couture with the same attitude. In haute couture, you produce wonderful dresses that are perfectly adapted to the customer. When you spend a great deal of money on labour, you must then immediately use the best materials. In the Thirties when they were creating JOY, Patou told the Nose not to worry about the price of the materials but asked him simply to create the best fragrance possible.

The Nose is a very special job: anyone can select ingredients and understand the properties involved but to be able to mix them in the correct proportions, to create something original is like creating music - you need the notes but you also need the inspiration and the instinct.

There have been many comparisons made between the creation of cognac or champagne and perfume. The first analogy lies in the fact that France is the best place to produce the flowers to create the perfume, like the grape in Champagne for example. Some exotic ingredients have been developed to copy the French standard of quality but the best aromatic flowers are produced in Grasse in the South of France.

VIVE: Obviously when one creates a perfume there is a basic chemistry and balance that must be taken into consideration, but given that each woman has a different body chemistry, how can you predict the reaction of the fragrance on the skin?

DE MOUY: The most important consideration is that the woman must create the effect of the fragrance herself. If you use natural products, they will react beautifully on the skin, but if you use synthetic ingredients, then of course they will not have the desired reaction on contact with the skin. At Patou, we work only with natural products which means that the composition is 90% natural. The specialised chemist product is used as the remaining 10%. The reasons behind this are that until the beginning of this century all perfumes used entirely natural products. Then, in the early part of the century, chemists found that aldehyde reacted with the natural products as an enhancer in much the same way perhaps as salt might enhance the flavours of food. JOY does not smell the same on white, black or yellow skins because it is a natural product and it will react slightly differently with the natural body chemistries of each woman. The fragrance then becomes that woman and her personality. We test the fragrance on women and if there is no marked change in the reaction with the body then we will proceed with it but if it reacts badly with the skin, then we forget the formula. This is why I am always interested in the PH balance of the skin of a woman on whom perfume smells very strong. Sometimes the acid/PH reaction produces a fantastic result, at others, it is disastrous.

VIVE: How do you maintain the freshness of the natural products in perfume?

DE MOUY: For example, each year we use jasmine and rose in JOY. Jasmine is very costly, particularly jasmine from Grasse, because you need seven million flowers of the night-blooming jasmine that is picked only in the few short hours that the petals are open, to produce a kilo of jasmine oil. When the flower is cut and brought to the factory in Grasse, the odour and principle is extracted from the flower and we obtain the wax. That wax is then washed with alcohol and we derive a liquid that is the natural substance or absolute. To be certain of the freshness of the product we purchase wax. The washing procedure is of course, executed in Grasse but from our factory in Paris, we monitor the production in Grasse and carefully watch over the quality.

After the wax has been distilled and cleaned it is refrigerated and then mixed with other products to create the perfume. Once the produce has been mixed to create what is known as the coeur, or heart of the formula, we put in an alcohol because it is the best product with which to blend the elements. The alcohol also allows the fragrance to expand. One creates a different fragrance by using different ingredients but the long lasting element of the fragrance is determined by the rate of evaporation of the product away from the alcohol. Some products are very quick in the evaporation process and others are slower.

VIVE: How do you decide which of the samples you will choose to be the next Patou perfume?

DE MOUY: Well, I try many, many fragrances until I find the one that I fall absolutely in love with. I do not have the pretension to say, 'That is a good perfume and that is not'. I can only say that 'I believe in that perfume, I find it attractive'. But, you know, if you find a particular dress or a particular lady beautiful, you generally find that you are not alone in your judgement. I don't think that there is any good perfume or bad perfume, there is only successful perfume and unsuccessful perfume and therein lies the problem of creating a perfume. When you create a fragrance, there are several dangers; the first being that you will create a fragrance badly, one that absolutely no-one will like. This is a comparatively small danger but the big danger is to create something that is very much like another perfume because your first reaction to new fragrance is always by reference to something else. You must feel your time, the people around you, the mind of your customer and then surprise them by producing something new, then seduce them with something everlasting. To my mind, it is more important to surprise and hopefully please, than to please without the element of surprise at all. You have the same phenomenon in choosing the bottle - people speak about bottles. For example, if you have five bottles lined up on the table and you say, 'O.K., which one?' The test people might point to one and say, 'I like this because the lines are sharp' or whatever, but the real test is to which bottle the hand will go. The important thing is the physical attraction towards the shape.

VIVE: What is the procedure in designing the bottle today?

DE MOUY: There are different methods: there are certain companies that do the job entirely themselves and others give the job to a designer. I think that the best process is to have an idea and then provide that designer with a solid basis which he can then work on himself. He can create and provide us with options and then afterwards, we can select and correct. To be sure of a positive evolution, you need fresh blood, fresh impressions, reactions and imagination.

One such development in JOY was the 'bath line'. The containers for the linewere made from a new material which is a plastic derivative that has exactly the same characteristics as glass but will not break and does not react to the fragrance but protects it.

VIVE: Can you tell me a little about the design of the famous JOY bottle?

DE MOUY: The design is based on a Chinese snuff bottle from the eighteenth century. Patou used to work with an architect who designed many things for him from the furniture here to the advertising to Patou's house, and the JOY bottle. I think that he was looking for something strong and proud in the design - a classic.

VIVE: How long will a perfume last once the bottle has been opened?

DE MOUY: It depends very much on the way it is stored. If you protect your perfume from sun and large variations in temperature, it will keep for a long time. For example, the JOY bottle with its black Baccarat crystal is especially good in preventing the sun from effecting the perfume inside.

VIVE: In your opinion, what makes JOY so remarkable?

DE MOUY: My beautiful customers... it is also a question of taste: the fragrance is very original, the ingredients themselves inspired nearly everyone to copy it. For instance, now that companies exist that make copies of famous fragrances any journals that make comparisons between the originals and the copies always find that the copy of JOY is the worst, the least like the original than any other. JOY is protected by the materials that we use and the way that we produce it.

If in a business, you wish to progress very quickly using very high profile advertising and little else, it is impossible to put a good product in your bottle. If you put a good product in your bottle you must be extremely selective. You know, small is beautiful, exclusive is beautiful - you cannot prepare a lunch for 100 people like you can for ten people.

VIVE: There are several ways in which to purchase perfume today. What are the differences between the atomiser and the eau de toilette?

DE MOUY: The difference stems essentially from the concentration. The essence that we call the extract has the highest concentration and requires just a few touches at certain points on the body or clothes. The atomiser might be used for both an extract or an eau de toilette. The eau de toilette is lighter, for the woman who likes to use a lot of fragrance or to splash on their perfume. It is essentially the same fragrance but it is a different way to use it.

VIVE: One final question, how do you characterise Patou's fragrance for men?

DE MOUY: Our men's fragrance is extremely exclusive and quite powerful. It's composition is a little spicy - very macho, I think - yet very sophisticated in composition. Of course, in creating a male fragrance we are still talking about seduction...