If you're looking for a fragrance that drives FOF men crazy--who better to ask than an FOF man? "I was in touch with my sense of smell since I was young," says Christophe Jouany, the FOF perfumer behind Jouany Fragrances, a collection that launched this fall at Henri Bendel and is already turning heads...er...noses.

Christophe spent most his life as a fashion photographer, snapping shots for Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire and Glamour. (He was even the official photographer for the royal family of Jordan.) A few years ago, while on a photo shoot in Miami, Christophe wandered into a store that sold essential oils. "I was like a kid in a candy store," he says.

Right then and there, Christophe created the prototype of his first scent. "Everyone kept asking me what it was and where they could get it--even my cab driver," he says. A long-time perfumer friend confirmed the scent was extremely well structured, and Christophe got to work manufacturing it for mass market. "It was like building a machine engine," he says. "So many moving parts." The biggest obstacle, according to Christophe, was finding an inexpensive source for essential oils. "When you use essential oils in a fragrances, it's like the difference between an expensive wine and a cheap wine," he says.

Christophe believes that the sense of smell is the most underrated. "When people come back from a trip, they talk about what they did, but not the smell of the air," he says. Christophe's collection aims to bottle the "scent memories," a person has when they visit exotic destinations. He is creating one scent per city and started with St. Barthélemy, his hometown. "It's a very hippie-chic place, so I used Jasmine and Patchouli for that one," he says. "In my second fragrance, Marrakech, I used orange blossom. Marrakech is the biggest producer of oranges."

Christophe presented his line at Sniffapalooza, a major perfume industry event, this past April. A Henri Bendel buyer got a whiff of it, and before Christophe knew it, his perfumes were being stocked in their store. "Henri Bendel is very chichi and they only carry about ten fragrance lines. They thought mine was beautiful enough in presentation and in smell to carry at their store."