One part of my training is to weigh formulas for the Senior Perfumers, to actually realize their ideas. This allows me to see evolutions of their creations, which is very useful, because all young perfumers have the tendency to create "unfinished" perfumes.
Moreover, of the Senior Perfumer is an expert of Oriental perfumes, his creations are sold all over the Middle East, and believe me, it has nothing to do with Western type of formulation, I am lucky to have an insight into the tricks and the trades of these perfumes' world.
I also do evaluation, which is partly about guiding the perfumers to "add more of this and take off that" and give them regularly my opinion about their creations. The other part of an evaluator is e.g. a client of the Philippines sending a visibly used soap bar and demand the recreation of its scent - and it is me to decide where we take off the formulation of the recreation.
Often these request concerns creams, shower gels, shampoos, etc. I sniff the "subject" sometimes for 30 mins, making notes of all my impressions and guesses, and than spend the rest of the day in the "fragrance library" smelling the possible matches, which could be a base, an accord or a well known perfume ( which the functional products are quite often inspired by ), etc. Sometimes, when even after extensive research I don't find the perfect match, I recreat the smell by making up a new formula.
You might think it is no fun trying to catch the scent of a used soap, but I think of it as an investigation, during which I am the Detective Chief Inspector.
And this also taught me a lot about "trickle downs". Very often functional products follow the trend of fine fragrances, this is why we could meet the scent of Chanel's Allure and CK's Eternity very often in shampoos or hair sprays, Summer by Kenzo in shower gels, and of course the mother of all creams in the 80s : Chanel 5!
I actually made my first discovery well before starting to work as a perfumer, my fabric softener reminded me of Lolita Lempicka and Tony & Guy hair care gave me the impression I am washing my hair with Gucci Rush...
I also do recreation of perfumes. Make no mistake, every company does it! From IFF to Robertet, every single company, should it be in Grasse, New York, Paris or Shanghai.
But nobody talks about it. I remember I found recreation derogating when I was still at school, but since than I have changed my mind. I think of it as playing Bach or Mozart on the piano.
This gives me the chance of studying the style of Jean Claude Ellena, Edmound Routnitzka and Olivier Cresp; which honestly is at first too much information, pretty confusing, but it finally calms down into adding to my formulating culture without influencing me too much.
I am also working as a creator. Just a few days ago, I made an eau de toilette from a 100 % natural raw materials perfume that contains no allergic molecules ( which was a tough one, taken into consideration that most naturals contain allergic molecules in high percentages! ), and handed in another creation for an eye cream of a well known international brand too.
If the day is not over yet, I take olfactory tests with 5 natural and 5 synthetic raw materials that has to be recognized within 10 seconds.
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