Jean-Claude Ellena (born 1947) is a French perfumer and writer. He served as the in-house perfumer at Hermès from 2004 to 2016, prior to the appointment of incumbent Christine Nagel. He has collaborated with other major brands such as Van Cleef & Arpels, Acqua di Parma, Bulgari, Sisley, Cartier, Frédéric Malle, The Different Company, and Le Couvent - Maison de Parfum.
Career
At an early age, Ellena picked jasmine with his grandmother in Grasse to sell to perfumers. Beginning with menial jobs, he became an apprentice at the factory of the essential oils maker Antoine Chiris in Grasse at the age 16 working on the night shift. He has reminisced, "Among other essential oils, we made a lot of oakmoss, and after I’d put the distiller on, I’d lie down on a bed of it and sleep".[1]
In 1968, he became the first student at what was at the time the newly formed perfumery school of Givaudan, one of the oldest perfume factories, in Geneva, Switzerland. He left Givaudan in 1976 with two others perfumers for Lautier in Grasse where he created his first fragrance of note—"First" for Van Cleef & Arpels. In 1983, he joined Givaudan Paris as chief perfumer and Roure-Givandan and then he worked at Haarmaan & Reimer in Paris (which merged in 2003 with Dragoco to form