Why have people been so drawn to perfume down the ages? Is it because of the belief that we can make people desire us if we smell a certain way?

Perfume literally means “through the smoke”, from the Latin per fumus. As practised by the ancient Egyptians, perfume was initially religious and ritualistic in nature. It was burned in temples as an offering to the Gods. The resins that made up perfume – rare flower essences, myrrh and frankincense – were very expensive. In the Bible, the three wise men brought gifts of frankincense and myrrh to Jesus. They were on a par with gold. To burn these precious unguents and offer them to the Gods was one of the highest sacrifices and offerings that you could make. Paradoxically, in addition to being a religious offering perfume was also considered an aphrodisiac. There were perfumes made to attract the opposite sex, to make people fall in love with you. So from ancient times perfume has had a dual function.

I think that in ancient times – perhaps when our sense of smell was more important – perfume had a place of higher honour in society. Today, smell is probably the least appreciated and used of all our five senses. Perfume had its heyday in the early 20th century, when big firms like Guerlain, Caron and Chanel were making perfumes that were widely sought after and very expensive. The importance of perfume in society has diminished. But now artisanal, niche, independent perfumers are picking up where the classic French noses left off in the mid-20th century. They are bringing perfume into a post-modern era. They’re using the skills that the early perfumers used, to create perfumes that use a classic base but are also very modernistic.

I’m surprised to hear you say it has diminished in importance. Isn’t this a $10bn industry, and don’t most women nowadays wear perfume?

A lot of people do wear perfume. There has been a rise in drugstore and department store perfumes, many of which use chemicals and synthetics. There has been a backlash against that, because more and more people are allergic. Many workplaces are now fragrance free. But there are now people who are rediscovering the lost art of perfumery, both as creators and as consumers of perfume. There’s a huge online world of perfume blogs. There are sites where you can buy tiny sample vials of 80-year-old perfumes – Chanels or Guerlains that don’t even exist anymore.

Many people don’t know that if perfume is stored properly, away from heat and light, an 80-year-old perfume can be completely intact and absolutely stunning. Perfume has to interact with warm skin and your skin oils. If you smell a bottle of old perfume you may think, “Oh my god, this is rancid, it’s gone, I have to dump it.” The reality is it might still be good. There have been times that I’ve put on a perfume which I bought at an antique shop and thought “Ughh, this smells like vinegar.” Then I go to bed, wake up at two in the morning and think “What is that amazing smell?” It’s the perfume that I thought was no good which has bloomed on my skin, as it moves into the middle and the basenotes. That is when substances like ambergris, musk, vanilla and civet bloom. Some of those substances are very hard to find in nature today.

Ambergris, for example, comes from whales. It’s the secretion of a [sperm] whale’s stomach when it has swallowed something that it cannot digest. It vomits this stuff up, which then floats on the ocean water for years and years, baked by the sun, before it washes up on shore. It’s gelatinous and grey and looks like jellyfish, and it’s worth thousands and thousands of dollars. The problem today is there are very few whales, so there is little natural ambergris. It’s the same with musk, which originally came from Tibetan musk deer. They’re endangered, almost extinct. You’re not allowed to kill them and extract the musk pod, which is located near the anal gland. That’s a good thing. Nonetheless, when you smell these 80-year-old perfumes there is a depth and a resonance to them. When they bloom on your skin, it’s like a genie coming out of a bottle. It’s this glamorous woman from a bygone era who takes shape slowly out of the smoke before you, and it’s absolutely intoxicating.

OK, I’m beginning to see what you mean by the lost art of perfumery.

I do think of perfume as an art form. It’s as eminently worthy of being studied and appreciated as painting, music or sculpture. This is a relatively new idea, but some niche perfumers have become almost like rock stars. When the French perfumer Frederic Malle appears at Barneys [luxury department store], people come. They buy bottles of his perfume – which can be over $200 (£130) – and they have him sign the bottle. There’s a growing recognition that the perfumers really are artists. When I interview perfumers that work today, they talk not about making a perfume but about composing it. They talk about seeing the perfume in their mind’s eye. Then they have to hold that image in their brain and start mixing the ingredients.

A lot of them seek inspiration around the world. Olivia Giacobetti, for example, is a very well known modernistic French perfumer. She talks about going to Japan and taking a piece of incense from a Japanese temple, because she wants to recreate the smell of the wood that was burning. She talks of going to West Africa and picking up bark from a tree and smelling it. Inspiration is everywhere. There are so many mediocre perfumes out there that when you smell one that really knocks your socks off, there’s an intelligence behind it that one can grasp. It’s like following a musical score. It makes sense on an intellectual as well as a creative and artistic level. The one person who has done more than anyone else to create this renaissance of awareness about perfume and perfumers, and to get people to look at it as a true art form, is a man called Luca Turin.