Obsessed Interview: Yanick Chartrand-Kravitz's scents obsession

On the power of scents and a bank account-draining obsession

Courtesy: Yanick Chartrand-Kravitz

Welcome to another edition of Obsessed Interviews. This month’s guest is Yanick Chartrand-Kravitz. Yanick is a hairstylist and co-owner of Brossés, a hair salon in Montreal’s Mile-Ex neighbourhood.

Yanick is the only person in the world I trusted to transform my dark brown hair into platinum blonde locks back in 2018. I’d like to give a special shout-out to his life and business partner Alex, who was part of the seven-hour operation too. They performed a miracle. Becoming blonde had been a years-long obsession of mine. I was convinced the path to instant coolness and carefree living lied in the colour of my hair. Turns out blondes don’t have more fun, because this brunette spent most of her free time overthinking while getting her roots done.

Yanick is a great person, talented hairstylist and savvy businessman. It was such a pleasure to have a conversation about his obsession. It was also my first in-person interview, which was nice. The original conversation was in French, so I did my best to translate our conversation as authentically as possible. The interview was condensed for clarity too.

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Michelle Béland: Yanick! I’m so glad you agreed to be interviewed for my newsletter. I’m excited to talk about your obsession.

Yanick Chartrand-Kravitz: Every time you say obsession all I can think about is mental illness.

MB: Okay! So what does the word “obsession” mean to you?

YCK: Unhinged behaviour? I say this with a lot of kindness. I own this completely and if my obsession means I’m mentally ill, so be it. As long as it isn’t hurting anyone, I’m fine with it.

MB: I’m all ears.

YCK: I’m obsessed with scents. I can’t not smell things. I’m not just talking about smelling a bottle of perfume. It can be a piece of fabric in a store. Sometimes I’m walking outside and I’ll notice a lilac tree. I have to grab a branch and bring it to my nose. I’ll cross the street even though I have no business doing so just to smell a flower.

I lived in the country when I was a kid. My dad used to cut the grass in the evening, and when he was done, nothing brought me more joy than to lie in it. There was this patch of thick green grass at the front of the house, and I’d lie there, amongst the evening dew and the surrounding pines and lilac trees, inhaling these beautiful scents on a warm summer night. It’s one of my oldest olfactory memories.

Speaking of olfactory memories, they’re not always reminiscent of cute scents either. I still remember the smell of the plush toy I had as a baby. I still have it. When I was young my mom used to throw it in the washing machine from time to time because it smelled bad and was covered in slobber, and apparently I’d beg her not to. I wanted it to smell the same. The plush toy is over forty years old now, so it smells old and dusty, but I think the plush toy is at the root of my scent obsession.

MB: It’s interesting how some scents are related to positive memories like you lying in the grass as a child, but it doesn’t mean that all memories are related to typically nice scents, like your attachment to your plush toy. I was reading that scents activate the limbic system, which is the area in the brain that’s responsible for emotions and the formation of memories.

YCK: It’s funny you mention that. A couple of months ago, I went to visit a friend in NYC. I was at Bergdorf Goodman’s and I came across a perfume I really liked. I wanted to buy it right then and there, but then I told myself I should take a step back and think about it. I asked the girl at the counter to give me a sample. That way I could wear it and see if I still liked it at the end of the day. There was something so addictive in that scent, something familiar, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. But as the day went by, I realized I couldn’t wear that perfume. And that’s when I realized why… It was related to a memory that wasn’t exactly positive. It reminded me of the perfume my mother wore when I was young, mixed with the smell of her cigarettes. It reminded me of her clothes that smelled of tobacco, of her coat that reeked of perfume and smoke. She doesn’t smoke anymore and she’s healthy now, but I’ve seen the effects smoking can have on someone. I couldn’t buy that perfume.

MB: I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, but have you ever smelled someone’s signature perfume out of nowhere? For example, I was very close to my maternal grandmother. I rarely saw her because she lived in Scotland. But I remember how she smelled. I remember her perfume. She died when I was ten. I was in London this past March, and I walked into Selfridge’s with my son–not to shop but desperate to find a toilet–and on our way out we passed by the shoe department. I wasn’t even near a cosmetics’ counter or anything. It was just the two of us, no one was around. Then all of a sudden, completely out of nowhere, I smelled my grandmother’s perfume, mixed with the smell of her skin. Everything about the scent was her. I can’t even tell you what the name of her perfume is. I viewed it as a greeting from beyond from someone I loved very much.

YCK: Scents that are attached to memories are the most powerful ones. Scents can be truly meaningful. There are plenty of lovely scents around us. But a nice scent won’t necessarily carry meaning, or spark something inside us. I can appreciate the way something smells, but if it’s not reminiscent of a memory, I won’t be as attracted to it.

I was in Paris in 2014, and I met with a friend that worked at Guerlain. He introduced me to one of the noses of Guerlain–

MB: Wait, the nose?

YCK: Yes, the nose. For example, Thierry Wasser is Guerlain’s principal nose, as in master perfumer. He’s at the head of all of the other perfumers who develop the perfumes. We call them noses. She did a little consultation with me, asked me all sorts of questions. The kind of questions your therapist would ask. She didn’t ask me if I liked the smell of vanilla. It was more personal than that. I shared memories. I was asked to imagine myself in certain situations. She collected all this information and established a scent profile. For example, I was asked how I felt about apple pie. I like apple pie. But there’s a difference between liking something and wanting to wear its scent. There’s so much nuance. Like I said, the scents you’ll want to wear are the ones that spark something in you.

MB: You talk about crossing the street just to smell lilacs. This obsession of yours, there’s a lot of beauty in it, as in observing beauty around you. When you’re kneeling down to smell a flower, you’re living in the present. Noticing and appreciating scents sounds like a mindfulness practice. Apart from living in the present, how else is this obsession affecting your life? You spoke about your love of perfumes…

YCK: It affects my finances.

MB: Really? Do you have a big collection?

YCK: Yes. I must have thirty bottles. There are a couple of staples that I like to repurchase.

MB: Can you give examples?

YCK: Vanille Insensée by Atelier Cologne. It isn’t sold in Canada, so next time I go to Paris, I’m going to pick one up. Might as well, right? I’m literally there. I don’t really need it, I have thirty bottles at home. But this is where the obsession comes in.

I love it. When people think of vanilla, they often think of cupcakes. Vanilla screams sweetness. But this vanilla isn’t sweet at all. It has notes of lime and coriander. It’s fresh and summery. It’s the kind of perfume you can wear when it’s really hot, like 35 degrees and up. The higher the temperature, the better it smells. It’s sexy. If I were to assign a colour to this perfume, it would be green.

Another perfume I love is Thé Matcha by Le Labo. It’s very different. Again, it smells green. It’s a little sweet and woodsy. I also love rose-scented perfumes. I know it might surprise some people that a man would want to wear floral fragrances… but there is no such thing as a perfume for women or perfume for men. Scents have no gender. I find rose mixed with dry wood notes incredibly sexy.

MB: That’s interesting because I’ve never thought about the sexiness level of scents.

YCK: I’ll be honest with you, I don’t usually wear perfumes that are meant for mass markets. There are definitely some perfumes for mass consumption that are interesting, I have a few of them. But mostly, I prefer the other ones.

MB: What’s the difference?

YCK: The cost. When you’re the least bit interested in the perfume world, you understand why some perfumes are so expensive. The ingredients that are used to create the perfumes are very costly to produce. Take neroli, for example. I can’t remember the exact numbers, so what I’m saying might not be 100% accurate, but I just want to give you an idea. It takes four football fields-worth of flowers to produce a kilogram of neroli essence. It’s the same thing for jasmin, sandalwood and rose. Iris essence is another one that’s tricky to produce. The essence is created using the plant’s rhizome. It looks a bit like ginger root. The iris rhizomes have to be sun dried for three years, then reduced to a powder. The powder is then mixed with oil. Once the powder has decanted to the bottom of the barrel, the iris-infused oil at the top is retrieved. And there you have your iris essence. It’s a long process. So that’s how and why certain perfumes are considered luxury products.

Of course, you can create synthetic versions of these essences. They won’t be as refined as the real thing, but at least they’ll be more accessible to mass markets for $100 a bottle. Whereas niche perfumes made with high-end ingredients will cost $300 a bottle.

MB: You’ve recently used your passion for scents to develop État d’esprit, the hair care line you created with Alex. Can you share your experience developing the fragrance aspect of the line?

YCK: We partnered with a lab to develop our line, and when the time came to decide how we wanted our products to smell, I was obviously quite involved in that process. I didn’t want our products to smell generic. I wanted a scent that was multi-faceted, reminiscent of the perfume world. We gave the lab our guidelines, and they came back to us with four samples. We retained one. All the other scents were nice, but there was one that we deeply connected to. We felt it represented us as a brand, it was gender neutral and it reminded us of Montreal.

MB: Montreal has a scent? What does Montreal smell like?

Behind the scenes of our Christmas card photoshoot in 2019. Montrealers know this bright, bizarre landmark on the side of the 15 South well. It’s Orange Julep!! AKA the best poutine in Montreal. Not pictured: my then-four-year-old being begged by his father to participate in the family photoshoot. You’ll understand this reference in a sec. Photographer: Geneviève Jacovella Rémillard.

YCK: Let me give you an example. We live in Canada. Our summers are hot and our winters are cold. We have four very distinct seasons. There’s a lot of land here, a lot of forests. One of the samples the lab proposed smelled citrusy. It smelled like orange juice. It was fresh, sunny and tropical-like. It was such a fun scent. But this isn’t California. This isn’t Florida either. We don’t have oranges here, except for Orange Julep. We picked the scent we liked the most and asked the lab to make three versions of it, one that was more floral, one that was woodsy, and one that was greener. We chose from one of those. Our final choice smelled comforting. We also found it soothing. It’s forest-like and fresh. One of my clients said it reminded them of a chic hotel lobby, or a fancy spa without the eucalyptus notes. And that’s what Montreal smells like to me: fancy.

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Montreal smells fancy? I like that.

You can find Yanick on Instagram.

Special shout-out to Yanick and Alex’s eco-friendly and gender-neutral hair care line, État d’esprit.

See you next week.