Laurent Saint-Pierre
@scentwork

Laurent Saint-Pierre is a multidisciplinary Montreal artist, musician and independent perfumer. Under the entity SCNTWRK, he is dedicated to the composition of scents and olfactory experiences. His work is done mostly in collaboration with musical and visual artists, as well as artistic organizations. 

Perfumery is too often associated with consumer objects or tools of seduction. This discipline is however a form of artistic expression in its own right. In this sense, olfactory art has the power to transport and speak directly to the psyche without any cognitive filter. The emotion is pure and direct.

Whether it is the fresh resinous fragrance of the Laurentian forest where he spent his summers or the sweet scent of pipe tobacco mixed with his grandfather's Paco Rabanne, Laurent Saint-Pierre discovered the power of scent at a very young age. The happy moments of childhood that we associate with places or loved ones often pass through our nose, and this is true throughout our lives. For some obscure reason, olfactory memories of youth are often incredibly vivid. 

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For Laurent Saint-Pierre, an olfactory shock occurred around the age of five that - although it may seem insignificant - would change the course of his life. He was exposed to the singular and magnetic wake of a legendary perfume. When one smells a scent of this nature it is often already too late. Perfume being the art of evanescence, it is impossible to capture a trail, but the memory remains indelibly imprinted, even if it becomes an obsession. Indeed, this unknown smell will remain in the background of his mind and will be the subject of an endless quest. 

It was only in early adulthood that he finally discovered that it was the mythical Fahrenheit by Christian Dior - Incidentally composed the year he was born - a revolutionary perfume because of its daring use of certain materials and new contrasts. He understood then that this quest would become a passion and that this passion would be at the center of his life. At the age of nineteen, his vocation as a composer of scents was born. 

Fragrance Institut 
Ancestral rituals involving the burning of resins, precious woods and noble materials, the traditions of perfume by smoke (per fumare) have for millennia had the function of drawing closer to the divine and sanctifying a place. In this fragrance specially created for Institut National, traditional liturgical resins give way to sandalwood, amber, resinous cedar and black pepper sublimated into a sacred smoke. An olfactory experience in homage to the past, to the ephemeral and to what is beyond us.

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