Sophie Labbe loves the smell of Hong Kong. It's not the first thing you would expect her to say when you sit down for an interview - but then again, for a woman who relies on smell more than any other sense, her statement isn't all that surprising.
'Smell is my first contact with a city. Every city has a different smell and a different culture, and they are all inspiring,' says Labbe. 'I really love the smell of Hong Kong. When I arrived at the airport, there was this woodiness from the smell of the sea, so strong and powerful because of the humidity. And then I reached the city, and there was this contrast between nature and modernity, the sea breeze and the skyscrapers.'
As one of the world's preeminent perfumers, Labbe has been stirring up scents for almost 20 years, working with a wide spectrum of brands that stretch from the uber-luxe (Yves Saint Laurent, Versace) to the ultra-modern (Ted Baker, Joop!). Her latest is Signorina for Italian label Salvatore Ferragamo, a scent made for elegant women that mixes common jasmine and rose flowers ('the flower queens of the perfume world', she says) with the more milky aroma of Italian dessert, panna cotta.
The blending of both - the ordinary with the obscure - is a bold departure for the French perfumer, who is often known for her more subtle creations, but she doesn't want to be pegged as a specific scent creator. 'I want all my creations to be distinct,' she says. 'It's interesting as a creator to always do different things. Each scent I've created has always been important at different points in my life, from my first perfume right through to this one.'
Born and raised in Cognac in the west of France, Labbe grew up with a variety of smells at her disposal - her father grew grapes that were used for the region's eponymous spirit - and it was her early surrounding scents that shaped her career.
'I was always very curious, and always smelling things around me,' she says. 'But I never knew there was such a job as 'perfumer' until I read a magazine article about it, and then I found this whole new world. I always knew my passion was related to smell, and you have this intuition that you're going to be good at it, but you're never quite sure if you're going to succeed.'