Judo

One of my best scent memories during my studies in Grasse Institute of Perfumery is probably the only one unrelated to perfumes and related to men.

I went to a Judo club with my men perfumer friends from school.
There were men, tons of men, and me as the only female participant. I was surrounded with 50 sweaty men. I could cut the concentrated testosterone in the air. I was in heaven! I enjoyed every single moment of that judo training. I recall one particular young men, with the biggest blue eyes I have ever seen, who smelled like a fine but masculine mixture of musks and lilies.
While he tried to explain me the essence of the excercise called "tai-otoshi" I secretly deeply inhaled the scent of his hair, skin and sweat.

Falling in love with the 16 years old, I was about to pay for the annual membership of the Judo Club of Grasse, but the "sensei" made us change partners and I got together with another guy smelling like cooked spinach...

Fragranced dreams

I have some pretty weird experiences since I jumped into the large swimming pool of perfumes.

One morning, already half awake, still half asleep, I said to myself that I have enough of waking up to the same smell every single morning. Getting bored of it. Should change it. Just a few seconds after, I realised that what I "smelled" was really my alarm. The same alarm I use to wake myself since I am in Grasse. My brain translated the noise into a smell for that minute. I remember it was airy, green fruity, foggy. This is how I smell "Harp" on Iphone...

One specific morning a while ago, I smelled the best fragrance ever. It was in a dream I had, and I sniffed softly but deeply keeping the pleasure to the maximum. And slowly, in the process of waking up, the fragrance faded away, and I desperately tried to analyse the marvelous scent so that I could recreate it later on, but against all my efforts, even the last trails have escaped my attempts for classification.
This perfect scent comes back from time to time in my dreams, it shows herself to me, wanting to be desired, preens herself for a while and before I could define what is so amazing about that scent, it runs away and leaves me longing for it in vain.

One day, I will catch her and coax her secret out.

It was meant to be

In the car, in the middle of Cabris (where Jean Claude Ellena lives), it hit me.

Is this really happening to me?
I am really working as a perfumer? Was my creation really sold today to a client in the Middle East? Am I really driving home passing through the most beautiful panoramic view I have ever seen?
Can somebody pinch me to make sure it is not just a dream?

Maybe it started when I was 5 years old, and in the garden of the family cottage I was thinking hard how could I conserve the divine scent of freshly mown lawn? I ended up squeezing the grass separated from its root into an old brown bottle that originally contained medicinal syrup.
Probably the same exact type of bottle I use nowadays for storing my creations...
Few of the perfumers can say that they made their first perfume at the age of 5!

Or perhaps it started all in the school canteen where I started to rub the peel of mandarine given to us as dessert onto my skin. Already at the age of 7 I knew what are the best places on my body to apply "perfume"!

Or maybe it was that great smelling boy that gave the first kiss to me, that marked my memory forever about the mysterious connections between feelings and fragrances.

At the age of 15, I announced to my parents that I will leave my home country and move to the South of France when I will be older. That kind of shocked my family, taken into consideration that I have never been there before, nor did I meet anybody who has been there. Seriously, until today I have no idea how did that come to my mind at that age?!

Was that me having a intuition about what will happen in the future, or was that me having a vision that determined my future?

Anyhow, now I am here. Living in the South of France. Working in perfumery.

It was meant to be.

I realized that every step I made in my life took me closer to where I am now.

When I sat next to that women on that drawing course back to 2003 who convinced me to learn first French instead of Spanish as a fourth language. ( Apparently, French gives better basis for learning other latin languages later on. Cannot confirm it yet. )

When my university announced that starting from that year students have the possibility to study abroad with the ERASMUS program.

When during my studies in Paris, I fell in love with a Lebanese who wanted to stay in France after finishing his master.

It was after finishing university that I asked myself the question what I really would enjoy to do in my life, irrelevant to my Bachealor of Art in Business Studies degree. I had many criteria that would define the perfect profession for me: I wanted to do something for which I have a talent. I wanted something in which I would be successful. I wanted something that would permit me to live in financially comfort. I wanted something challenging enough to keep my enthousiasm awake all the time.

Few months later, on Christmas night, I was searching for something entertaining to read before I would go to bed.

On my bookshelf I found "Perfumes of 1997". I remembered to have begged for my parents to buy it for my 15th anniversary.
I took the book slowly into my hands and smiled. Though it only hit me somewhere between the 2nd and 3th pages... I was born to be a perfumer. This option haven't crossed my mind ever before. And still, I KNEW that this was the answer I had been waiting for. Suddenly I got very excited, filled with energy, my pulse got over a 150 easily. I wanted to shout, dance, sing - all in the same time. This being impossible taken into consideration my family was already asleep, I ended up crying. From happiness, from excitement. I knew that I have finally found my way.

But that was only the beginning... How little did I know about the difficulties of the next coming years, just until in 2009, on a particularly rainy day, I found myself in a car taking the Route de Soleil to Grasse to start my perfumery studies...

Raw material dictionnary

The following olfactory descriptions are some of my favorite ones concerning raw materials :

Dimethyl Benzyl Carbinol - basket ball

Ethyl Acetate - nail polish remover

Helional - ozonic watermelon

Hexalon -dryfood for cats

Indol - old men's breath

Irone V - baking flour

Isoraldeine 95 -walnut iris

Linalyl Acetate - algae compote

Methyl Iso Eugenol - dust of the road

Methyl Octine Carbonate - violet-vomit

Oakmoss Absolute, Macedonia - Jägermeister

Oregano Essential Oil - frozen pizza

Palmarosa Essential Oil - ash baked potatoes

Red Thyme Essential Oil, Spain - chicken liver cooked with oigions

Rose Oxyde - metallic green bean

Triplal - tomato leaves

Ylang Ylang Essential Oil - green tears with fuel

Cedarwood Essential Oil, Atlas Mountains - cat's ass

Perfumer in the theater

The last time I was in a theater was probably a few years ago. When I was still a non-perfumer.
I had no idea how much watching a show is a different experience with a trained nose.

I entered the theater and the first thing that caught my nose's attention was the smell of the old seats enwrapped by old red velvet, with traces of tabac in their olfactory DNA. Missed this smell. Though I didn't know it until just now.

Since I was late, I had to take one of the places nearest to the exit. I sat down next to a woman, who wore a very distinct fragrance. Within a split of a second, in my head hundreds of memories of perfumes were replayed trying to match the fragrance just in front of my nose right that time. I got it, Kenzo Jungle. I admired a bit the harmony of how she smelled in this perfume, taking into consideration that, as far as I remember, the juice gives dog-pee on my skin...
Thank to that lady I sat next to by chance, I was 17 again. Memories bursted out so quickly, as if somebody would opened a door of a fully packed wardrobe closed for a long time.

I remembered my purple pullover, on which I sprayed Jungle for the first time. I remembered my first real boyfriend, and how we met, how he asked for my number, how he called me directly the other day, how we stayed together for 5 years after that.

I remembered high school, classes, friends, enemies, professors, the attitude we had, the attitude they had.
I remembered the feelings that marked that period of my life. I remember being careless, I remember how I felt like a "mature woman" going to school the next day after having spent the night with loosing my virginity - 3 times. I remember thinking that the whole world is mine.

Then suddenly I got back to the theater and realized that the show is about to end soon. How much time I have spent under the Jungle-coma?!

They brought a birthday cake with candles on the stage. I couldn't wait until the candles are lit. I wanted to smell the matches catching fire. I wanted to smell smoke. I wanted them to light those candles directly. They seemed to take their time, it pissed me off, I got more and more impatient, was unable to tolerate more delay.
I felt that my blood filling with adrenalin, I felt my fist clenched, I needed that smell. Now. For a reason unrevealed to me, I was hungry for smelling smoke and I remember thinking that this is probably the way vampires are longing for fresh blood.

After some torturing seconds, they finally got to their senses and lit the candles. I saw first the smoke slowly taking its territory in the air, and I started sniffing so deeply that the Kenzo lady turned to me to check if I am all right.
Then it arrived to me. Smoke. Not anything so multi-faceted like smoke out of the chimneys in winter time, nothing like a fat cigar of patchouli leaves eaten up by fire, just plain smoke. But enough to make me happy. I got my dose.

That night at the theater made me realize how I am blessed and doomed with scents forever.

It is not a passion anymore. It's a must.

Side effects of being a perfumer

Some might think that it is a gift to have a sensitive nose, smelling all the layers of those amazing perfumes, getting to differentiate more than a 2000 raw materials, etc etc.
Having a sensitve nose during the blooming of jasmin, or in a forest just after rain, or next to the sea is really providing a more intense joy, but there are some occasions when I would rather have just a normal nose...

I think I was around 18 when I first experienced that I would rather suffocate than taking breath from a specially bad quality of air.
It was in a stable that according to my estimation haven't been cleaned for ages before I entered. I remember the harsh piercing smell that entered my lungs in its fullest power, stinging me from inside, slowly giving me its taste in my throat too. I stopped breathing instantly and was running outside madly to take some breath.

Since then there used to be some little inconveniences, but starting perfumery and with the daily practice my nose have reached its best performance which chaged a few things in my life.

First of all, I smell garbage more than anybody else do. I am obliged to put the trash out to the balcony, because I cannot bear it's smell if it is inside the appartment anymore. I used to take it out 3 times a day, but that wasn't enough. The balcony is only the second best solution, since it still ruins my activities outside.

I smell people more intensely too. This, as much as it is a pleasure sometimes, it could be very unpleasant too. And I even smell myself more intensly that before. When taking courses in perfumery, I also started to use 3 times more soap than before, because for the first month I couldn't stop smelling myself dirty. I also ended up washing my clothes twice as often as I did so far.

But the worse is when buying meat. There is only a few worse smell existing on earth than stale chicken ( maybe the essential oil of estragon... ). Having spent my summer vacation in a small village, I know well how the freshly prepared chicken meat is supposed to smell.
Not anything close in any supermarket.

Working girl 1.

Yes. I am working. I am a perfumer for a small perfume creating company in Grasse. Been a pleasure so far...

Within the first 2 weeks:

1) I managed to pour on myself/on the floor/ on my perfumer organ a huge amount of exaltolide ( run to the legislation department directly after the incident to ask how exactly irritant that is, taken into consideration that I had it all over my hand and nose. )

2) I managed to inform my boss that I am sexually aroused ( A rather embarassing language mistake : I wanted to say that I am excited about the job... Don't ever use the word excitée in french unless you are naked in bed with your lover... )

3) I managed to get into a fight with a senior perfumer if x or z perfume has more IBQ. (Obviously he was wrong and I was right, in school they called me the "IBQ detector", but no one will ever find that out... ) ( IBQ is a leather scented raw sythetic raw material. )

It could be worse, hein?
But to have a balance rather positive takes a hell lot of my energy. First of all, I don't speak a lot. The first week, I was so afraid of saying something stupid that even if after half an hour of hestitation I have finally decided to speak, it was hardly hearable to anybody without a powerfull spy hearing equipment... Nowadays I get to talk in a normal voice, but still restraining a lot the quantity of talk I allow myself per a day.
I always wear make-up. I like to think of it as a sign of professionalism, hope the others don't think that I want to hook up with the director.....
I always clean my laboratory if I am going for lunch or leaving in the evening. ( And by evening, I really mean afternoon, we are in the South of France after all!!! ) I am surprised about how tidy I got it every time. I hope this effort doesn't stay without attention. After all, I am not doing it for myself. Or at least not at the first place.
I also hoped that being a tidyness freak at work will have a postive effect on how I treat my own appartment, but I cannot report any improvement until present.

Ah yes, so I have my own laboratory.
What I really mean is that I am alone in a laboratory, but that sounds more lonely and less glamour than the first version... Whatever way I put it, it is very very rare that a young perfumer can work on it's own! I am lucky. And the fact that there is no one to talk to just reduces my chances to make other silly mistakes by talking faster than thinking.

I am happy.