EVEN with her extraordinary olfactory capabilities, Ann Gottlieb’s nose isn’t insured. “There is nobody that will insure my nose. There is no way to objectively know that I can not smell,” she says, just with slight exasperation. Gottlieb is the world-renowned fragrance designer who has created scents for Calvin Klein, Carolina Herrera, Elizabeth Arden, Dior and Sarah Jessica Parker, fueling the billion-dollar industry with her unparalleled expertise in knowing the smell of success.

Gottlieb was in the country recently to discuss (sometimes technically, sometimes poetically) her work for Axe, a brand of male grooming products by Unilever. Its range includes deodorant body sprays, sticks, antiperspirants, aftershaves and shower gels.

THE NOSE. Ann Gottlieb, who created the landmark Calvin Klein Obsession fragrance.

In an intimate chat at the chi-chi bar Martini’s of the Mandarin Oriental Manila, Gottlieb related her beginnings as the “nose extraordinaire.” She started working at Revlon but considers it a “big honor” to have the legendary Estee Lauder as her mentor. It was inevitable that she would be introduced to Calvin Klein.

“It was this little tiny company with $9 million in sales as well as debt,” she said of the then-struggling, soon-to-be empire. For Calvin Klein, she developed what would eventually become a landmark perfume, Obsession.

“It is a milestone for me to be responsible for major trends in the market,” she said. Obsession was sex in a bottle, with the ad campaign daringly featuring a ménage a trois. “It was animalistic, delicious and sexy. Calvin Klein was the first company to have a master brand, a men’s and women’s fragrance with the same name.”

While doing ckOne, Gottlieb also started working with the Axe people as Calvin Klein fragrances became part of the Unilever family. She also remembers Dior’s J’Adore for changing the trend for sheer unisex fragrances, concocting a scent that “smelled like a beautiful cleavage.”

Gottlieb finds developing fragrances for celebrities “easy.” She matches a star’s public persona and thinks about it when designing a perfume. For Sarah Jessica Parker, “who is irreverent and fun,” she translated that image into a scent: Covet.

“I am not a perfumer who mixes fragrances and creates them,” she underscored. “I direct perfumers sort of like an orchestra director to work with 3,000 palettes of 200 ingredients” to make a scent.

“Fragrance is embellishment for the senses,” she continued, adding that it’s something that you can not see, that you just let wander. In smelling a favorite and familiar scent on someone, “it makes you happier to be with that person.”

Her signature remains the “lickable factor,” that inscrutable ingredient that makes you bite someone’s neck or nuzzle on other sprayed-on body parts for hours on end if possible. That’s why when she developed the Axe range, sex, sensuality and arousal came contained into bottle.

“Axe is a premium fragrance available in a body spray that can be used all over. It evolved from a body deodorant to fragrance. It also has the best commercials. They stick to you,” said Gottlieb. Indeed, currently on TV is that of a man alone in an island (spraying Axe, of course) where throngs of bikini-clad women are scurrying to have a bite of him.

Gottlieb was The Nose who orchestrated the making of the Axe variants Vice, Pulse, Dimension, Touch and Click. Each aims to entice the Lothario wannabes to try the fragrances to improve their chances of getting the women they fancy.

Click is a cocktail with watery freshness, cranberry-orange, pepper, kumquat, musks and sandalwood; oriental citrus notes with aromatic herbal verbena, Italian bergamot, mandarin, lavender and thyme are in Dimension; Pulse has citrus, basil and pear mixed with jasmine and geranium with the sensual spices of cardamom and black pepper, and the clean and sensuous lines of clear woods and sheer musk; while Touch has an arousing base of precious white woods, rich patchouli, golden amber and sheer musk.

“Pulse is doing quite well in the region, because it is sparkly and light,” Gottlieb dished. For the tropics, she also suggests CK Euphoria Blossom and ckin2u.

“I love Axe. It is terrific to try. It is exciting to get into the head of the target consumer on what he wants to wear,” Gottlieb said of her recent blockbuster collection. “Axe has the energy. It has that risk-taking [quality] the brand embodies, which others don’t have. From teenage to death, there is no end to how people can use it.”

A Sweet Seduction

EVEN with her extraordinary olfactory capabilities, Ann Gottlieb’s nose isn’t insured. “There is nobody that will insure my nose. There is no way to objectively know that I can not smell,” she says, just with slight exasperation.

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