Olfactive Flashback VII.

It was at my fellow perfumer's house.

She bought some alcohol for me from Italy - it wasn't a gift, it's a 1 liter bottle of pure (95%, ideal for perfumery) alcohol that independent perfumers are obliged to smuggle around with, because selling and buying pure alcohol is highly restricted in France.

She invited me over to her place to take it with me after spending a nice lunchtime on a terrace catching up with each others on-going projects.

We walked up to her door in the dark building that for some reason smelled like tomato leaf and not like amber or patchouli as any normal old dark building would smell like. We entered the small artsy apartment she rents. She showed me around and she invited me to the living room for a drink. There it hit me.

This time again, the memories were coming faster than my brain trying consciously make notes of the present olfactory notes.

I was young again, around 5, a few years after my grandfather died. We - My mum and a few cousin of mine - spent a few weeks in the summertime at my grandmother's house in a small village, "behind the back of God".

I was at my grandmother's kitchen.

I could clearly smell the dust on the shelf for glasses which were kept for guests only. I smelled the dark and bitter cacao powder in its soon-to-be rusty metallic container. I smelled the cheap light green paint and its uneven layers on the old month-eaten wood cupboard, where the dinner service was stored. I smelled these as if I was at grandmother's kitchen. Exactly the same proportions. Beautifully dosed. Round and alive.

Bringing me back all the carefreeness and greediness of my childhood in a blink of an nose.

How come a fortunate and rather rare alignment of some random fragrant molecules are powerful enough to take me back to a place so quickly, diffusing so many visual memories and emotions?

I never thought of that smell in the last 25 years! - In fact, I don't think I ever consciously thought of that smell at all...

I am not sure what it was. And it was only passing by lazily, and disappeared in a few minutes later. I will probably never really understand these flashbacks, but in this period of anxiety, extreme stress as well as creative/emotional roller - coasters; I don't think there could have been any scent more nurturing and cocooning to me.

Where is ScentTrek when I really need it?!

Brown butter

My skin smells like half cooked baby carrots on brown butter today. Sweet, rich, caramel-like, with a touch of earthy notes.

My Signature Scents

I create a lot of custom perfumes, and each and every client want The One Scent that would match their skin to perfection, their signature scent.

Everybody I know got into the eternel quest of finding their soul-mate perfume. Just like everybody wants to find their - normal - soul mate. The One. True Love.

I think your true love is The One you can fall in love many times during your life.

I personally cannot be loyal to just one perfume during my whole life. I also think that this expectation is irrealistic, by the way.

I need continous impulses again and again. It's in my blood.

Paralel to love affairs, in your life, you might have :

• bunch of perfume-crushes ( Chanel/Cristalline Eau Verte, Paco Rabanne/1 Million, etc)
• a few unreturned loves ( Casharel/Eden, YSL/Nude )
• a few of those that you admire from far but you know that it will never work between you and them ( Nina Ricci/Nina, DG/Light Blue, Guerlain/L'Heure Bleu )
• and some that turns from friendship to love slowly slowly ( Dior/Dolce Vita, Lutens/SMLR)

But you can only experience true love one or two times maximum during your life.

The perfumes I go home to are Hugo Boss/Boss Bottled and Viktoria Minya/Hedoist ...and they always welcome me with open arms.

Hedonist sometimes punishes me for wearing other stuff for a few days by adding a sour layer to the divine floral one, but we always get back together in less than a week time and than I promise I won't be unfaithfull ever again ...until an attractive little thing turns my head (recently Hermes/Jardin Sur Le Toit ).

I also often go back to my ex lovers; I sometimes crave the presence of Kenzo/Jungle, or I cannot wait to go home and put on Rive Gauche Pour Homme. I recently took another try with some exes with who I felt we have unfinished businesses (Laura Biagiotti/Sotto Voce ).

With JoMalone/Lime and Basil I had a bad liason, but there is something about her that drives me crazy and makes me do the same mistake again and again.

Im into orgies too every now and than, and I would put on just anything that looks a bit good from the outside. Than I have this urge to conquire, so if there are no perfumes around, I staisfy my ignoble desires with any showergels or hair sprays. My nostrils are always open for any new opportunities.

In fact, with perfumes, I am a total bisexual bitch.

Coffee, anyone?!

It is almost 5am in France. It's been exactly 197 minutes I am tossing and turning in my bed, but my eyes cannot close, I feel fresher than any mornings I remember in my entire life and I just cannot wash off the huge grin from my face. I am so pumped!

I received the best news a perfumer can ever get: My first creation is going to be on sale in the world's most famous luxury department store, in Harrods! I was told that their buyer was enchanted by the "sophisticated and tastefully original" perfume centered around mimosa and placed an order without any hesitation.

I still cannot believe it. My creation on the same shelves with Chanel's exclusives and Versace's special editions! I need somebody to pinch me to make sure it is not a dream!

Harrods is a reference I didn't even dare to dream of! If somebody told me at the time when I first visited the shopping center that my perfume will be on those shelves in a few years, I would have laughed so loud out that probably security would have escorted me out directly from the Egyptian interior...

I went to Harrods at age of 24. I was on a few months long mission in London, when I was still in HR, intensively collecting money for the Grasse Insitute of Perfumery. With my french colleagues, after visiting every possible monuments a tourist could visit, we went for a round in the famous mall just to add it to our "UK-done" list. At the end of our visit, we realized that we have spent more than double the bonus we were about to be paid for the UK mission.

No wonder. The changing rooms were bigger than my apartment in Ile St Louis, the carpet was the most fluffiest thing my feet ever touched. I still don't understand the trick with the mirrors inside the changing rooms, but they gave the most charming reflection I have ever seen. It was like I were instantly photoshopped in those mirrors. To the point that I looked at least 10 pounds less in them. ( ...which perhaps paid an important role to the fact that I bought an extremely expensive lingerie for myself on that occasion. )

And Harrods smelled like a coffee. Well before spending a ridiculous amount of money on lingerie, my nose was searching for the source of that beautifully round but strong coffee accord appeased with light ambery notes and a touch of salty ylang-ylang. They were introducing the new A*men Pure Coffee collection from Thierry Mugler on ground zero, hence Harrods' exclusive walls were impregnated with coffee, and I have kept for years the A*men fragrance paper strip they have given me.

I cannot wait to smell the combination of mimosa and coffee.

French

I prefer the french language when speaking about perfumes, it is much more expressive than english. My favorite term is used when describing the "chemistry" between two raw materials:

English would say, e.g. white pepper oil and osmanthus are smelling nice together or they are matching. French are using the expression "se marie bien", i.e. that white pepper oil and osmanthus are "well married".

Creation

Some of you are asking me if creation is a pleasure or rather suffering for me. It is kind of both, really.

The moments of inspiration are of course thrilling, but when despite hundreds of trials, the scent is not perfectly expressing the feelings it was created for, composing becomes frustrating.

In most of the cases, creating is therapy. Maybe not when I am asked to compose a very powerful smelling jasmine-pink pepper for a shower gel in India for X USD per kilograms, but it really is, when I transform my experiences, feelings and memories into scents.

It is therapy, when I create from this inner urge piling up in me during many days just to burst out with elementary forces to settle down into a pile of raw materials in a brown bottle. The urge is so strong that I usually get afraid of it and try ignoring for a few days, but I get more and more nervous, more and more disturbed, the stress coming directly from my stomach, which won't ease until I "weight it out" in essential oils on a balance.

It's been a few days I am feeling melancholic and the melody of "mad world" constantly playing in my head. I came home after work, tried to postpone creation, feeling uncertain about it's outcome. I started with cleaning all the shelves. Then, I noted all the quantity of lab supplies at home, starting from pipettes to bottles and spatulas. Then, when there was nothing else to be done, I started to sharpen my pencils that I use for formulation.

I smoked the last cigarette I found in my apartment, and was enjoying feeling guilty. I still think that blowing out thick smoke from my lips is one of the best things in life. I was ready to make the juice. Inspired by the smoke of the cigarette, I added quickly vertyver to the formula I have drafted in my head already a couple of days ago.

It's been a few nights I have been dreaming with grisambrol, no question what mad world smells like.
Grasse gave me another push for creating a deviant perfume with sending dark clouds to quickly take over the arrogantly smiling sun. I would have been happy to hear a few thunders but getting an impromptu rainstorm is probably the maximum one can ask in the middle of the sunniest week of may in the French Riviera.

Grisambrol is a very animalic and ambery, dark and earthy. I put into the juice 500 over 1000. This would scare away any potent perfumer, and they are right, in theory, but I softened down the animalic part with bergamot and angelica root, which makes the perfume still dark but clean, deep but soft, earthy but fresh. The structure is very unusual, so it is more of a sillage than a typical mainstream perfume with well defined top/heart/base notes, but I prefer it this way.

Rain just stopped when I was done with my first trial. I still have a few hundreds to go and no more cigarettes.

Jasmine

It is worth it to be separated from my family and most of my beloved ones.

It is worth it to work in a field where competition is the highest within your own team.

It is worth it to live in a small city where during off-season, there are only you and stray dogs on the street after 7pm.

I have been waiting for smelling jasmine for 9 months now. . I haven't seen it coming, because the flowers that are the closest and hence visible on my balcony are only burgeoning still.

I came home from a long day of work ( If I have to do another caviar-accord, I resign! ) and as I was putting my clothes to the washing machine, my hand started trembling. She didn't come harsh on me, she is not a vulgar flower, she first started caressing my nostrils and only after a few seconds foreplay did she entered my nose which instantly filled my head with morphine.

It was like the most intense multiple orgasm ever, the one that you have after not being with your lover for months. Like an inside-firework, as big as the one that they made for the year 2000 behind the Eiffel-tower.

I stayed outside, standing still and keep on inhaling the best composition ever created by God. I closed my eyes, as if I were at the opera. I wanted to drink out the cup of joy until the last drops and I want to concentrate on the intense euphoria it gives me. I want to live this moment to the fullest.

The moment became a few hours and I am writing these lines outside as well. I tried to go back to my apartment and work, I have plenty of stuff to do, but I couldn't think of anything else.

Some people are alcoholic, some are on drugs, I am on jasmine.

Time

Perfume creation takes time, though in a multinational company where we have daily request to work on a perfume with shorter and shorter deadlines, the creation time is really reduced to its maximum.

I see more and more of my colleagues working in the following way: based on the client's request, they take an already existing perfume from the perfume library and work around it according to the brief. Also, the majority of the clients are already coming to us with examples in their mind, which perfume's atmosphere they would like to be recreated in their product.

Despite the very tempting perfume briefs, I already have refused to work on projects where the clients set an unrealistically short deadline. The tendency have been unfortunately set already, by other perfumers who claim that they are ready to come up with a finished product within just 5 days.

A totally different approach is, when a perfumer is creating a juice just to express feelings, manifest his own inspirations. I have many perfume samples that are always in the process of creation, whenever I have an hour free I continue to work on them, for years now. I am not sure I could sell these ever to any brands, they are so personal and representing important moments of my life. Unless I come up with my own series, they are going to be sitting on my desk and evolving until I still feel the need of changing them. Commercializing was never the reason I created them anyways.

I remember Alain Astori telling me how one of his colleague ( who wish to remain anonymous ) worked on the perfect scent for his wife. Estée Lauder came to the perfumers office and since she didn't like anything they were proposing her, she took random bottles from perfumer's desks. ( According to the anecdote, she always tested the perfumes on her skin, but usually sprayed more than one product to the same spot... )

Lauder took by chance the only bottle which the perfumer didn't want to sell and insisted to have that one as her next launch. And hence, Estée Lauder's next perfume turned instantly into an all time classic.

This is how all perfumes should be created. With love, passion, sincerity and pure intentions. And with the decent amount of time.

Caraway - Soup

Caraway essence is one of the raw materials that are widely used to create sparkling top notes for perfumes. Although it's characteristic scent is considered too herbal and sharp to create a perfume only dedicated to this spice, you could find it very often at a mild dose in most of the new perfume releases. We usually work with it in 10 % solution, and only add 0,03 grams over 1 kg of perfume concentration. The distinct scent matches really nicely Hay absolute, White Pepper oil and Ginger essence among others.

The herb ( carum carvi ) originated in Asia, but now is cultivated mainly in Africa, Norther and Eastern Europe.

Also known as Meadow Cumin, it is a very old and well known spice, commonly used as early as Stone Age. Caraway Seeds are very popular in our days as well, particularly in Eastern Europe and in the Indian subcontinent. On research, so many medicinal properties of the seeds have been narrated that it is said to be the cure for nearly all diseases!

The greatest benefit of Caraway oil lie in its calming and soothing effect on the nerves and the digestive system, it also helps with respiratory problems, in fighting urinary infections and about a dozen skin-related problems. On the top of that, it makes the skin bright and fair if added to your body lotion!

You can benefit from its healing properties by inhaling caraway oil with the help of a vaporizer or a burner, or even by just simply diluting a few drops in the bath. In order to keep your stomach healthy, and maximize the miraculous advantages of caraway, it is the best to eat it either raw, on scrambled eggs e.g. or by preparing the following traditional Hungarian soup, which softens the taste of caraway seeds, and is a great idea to serve as an entrée with crunchy bread pieces.

Ingredients:

- 3 table spoon of oil

- 4 table spoon of flour

- 2 coffee spoon of caraway seeds

- 2 coffee spoon of paprika

- 1 onion

- 1 liter of water

- salt, according to your taste ( I usually put 2 coffee spoon. )

You make the "roux" from the oil and flower, when it is of golden color already, you add the caraway seeds and you stir the whole mix for a minute or two. Then, you take the cooking-pot away from the stove, leaving it to cool for ca. 2 mins. Once it is cooled, you add the paprika, you place the cooking-pot back to the fire only when paprika is mixed already well with the roux and the seeds. You pour 1 liter of water, then add salt and a peeled onion inside the soup in full, no need to cut it in, you will take this out at the end, before serving. Starting from boiling, you will need 15 mins for your soup to be ready to eat.

Enjoy the unique taste and its marvelous medicinal effects!

I heart Mate absolute

I am working on a tea composition series that will be applied in candles, a Japanese client ordered 10 different tea notes, such as black tea, green tea, red tea, white tea, fruit tea, tea with rose and a few infusions with tea notes, like mint and thyme, etc.

To start with a nice and stable tea note in a candle, you need mate absolute, which is though extremely expensive, enough to dose it small to have the effect ( and the greenish color ) of tea.

So I took a massive amount of mate, placed it in a glass jar and put all that into a hot water bath for a few minutes to be able to use it in a more liquid form. You are only supposed to heat it a little bit and always at very moderate temperature ( 50 degree Celsius at max ), it is the common rule for all the natural raw materials that are waxy, creamy or solid on room temperature.

In the meantime I went to my Maître to show him my passion fruit accord ( passion fruit is apparently the new big hit! ). Discussing the perfect passion fruit scent got brutally interrupted by me smelling burned mate from 3 offices away ( mine ).

I forgot that yesterday I left the perfumer stove on its maximum ( 200 degree Celsius ) for sterilizing my metallic spatulas.

I tried to save some of the mate, but as I touched the boiling material with a wooden stick, a splash of it directly landed on my shoulder. I was really shocked  (= I was swearing in all languages possible... ) but simultaneously felt grateful due to the fact that it didn't come on my face.

Just recently I am thinking on getting a perfumery-related tattoo, the expression of "nice ink" keeps echoing in my head. I was more into Latin names of raw materials, but the little rose heart-shaped burn on my shoulder, caused by mate overheat, will do just for now...

Olfactive Flashback VI.

Chestnut squash, after you took out its seeds, smells exactly like my father's skin. It is earthy, somewhat sweet and there is a tiny fruity note hiding right "behind" the earty note.

Olfactive Flashback V.

I arrived home after a long day of work. In my head, there are still thousands of variations of raw materials chasing each other, I need to find the perfect balance between blackberry absolute and osmanthus oil, in oder to recreate the scent of "apricot jam made by grandma" as one of the clients requested. Although I am wearing gloves for making samples, the common "perfumery laboratory" scent is ingrained to my hair and clothes. I am trying to put my car to the middle of the tiny parking place, takes me more than 4 trials to get it right. I hate raining. I hate umbrellas.

I step out of my car, hoping this time there won't be any dog poor around. Before the door would close behind me, I have a vision of me at the age of 6 with my family, sitting on the stairs of the veranda of my grandmother's house. It takes a bit of time, until I realize that it is a scent that my brain reacts to. I smell aquatic. Sure, it is the rain. But I also smell sweet. I smell light red too, if it makes any sense at all. No, not pink, it's light red. And I feel exactly how I felt back on the veranda surrounded with my family. Security. Careless. Playful. Eager. Greedy.

My brain is quicker than my nose, and the answer comes in a form of a picture again, I see myself spitting little black tear-shaped seeds around the stairs. Watermelon.

I can smell a wonderfully ripe, juicy watermelon around at 7 pm in my open air parking lot, in the middle of March.

I want to find the source. A big part of the juicy-green scent would come from the rain, but there is something extra to it. Something that just turns a natural early spring shower to a perfect imitation of a real fruit that is not available in this region until mid-May earliest.

I sniff around like a hunting dog, hoping that no neighbors are coming by and that cute fellow perfumer guy, who lives across the parking, wouldn't look out of his window accidentally. Just a few meters away, around the corner, opposite to the direction of the entrance door, here she is, the ripe watermelon.... in the form of a Mimosa tree. In full bloom. It's aquatic scent multiplied by a thousand due to the raining. As I get close to it the watermelon fades away and it gives it's place to the concentrated powderiness. It's fragile branches are bending over me as if golden rain would fall on me at any time. The watermelon scent is like an aura around the tree, from 5 to 15 meters. I wish I could just take notes. I wish my nose would automatically translate all the isolates and aromatic compounds into a formula and I could have access to this scent anytime, anywhere. I miss my family. Plus I am craving watermelon now.

Before I could note anything in my head apart from helional, the wind takes away the scent leaving only my memories and my sweet-sour mood.

A few things perfumers should avoid

It is a continuous debate if perfumers should avoid smoking or not necessarily.

Some say that in order to keep your olfactory system at its best, you have to restrain yourself from not only smoking, but eating fatty or spicy things too. Also, everybody living in Grasse heard already about a certain perfumer who refuses to fill her car's tank because -allegedly- she is afraid that the fuel vapor would damage her olfactory capabilities.

As for me, I am no regular smoker. Not a social one, either. A few times per week, I feel like having a cigarette. It's not its taste. It's not the movement. It's not the nicotine.

Call me stuck in the oral-stage fixation, but I enjoy the thick smoke pressed out from my mouth just to blend unhurriedly with air.

(I think, I do have a blending fetish thing going on: I can look for hours to the concentrated perfume mixing up lazily with the alcohol. I love to see my tea merging with milk, etc )

That blending really worths the risks. And so far, my olfactory capabilities are just getting better and better with time. On the top of that, my Maître Parfumeur is a chain-smoker but he could smell a single drop of the faintest musk from 10 meters far. So, I am not worried about that.

On the other hand, I did realize that eating spicy food alters temporarily my nose's senses. It's more about sharp spices, like cumin and thyme. Any forms of pepper passes perfectly, I even think it actually wakes up my nose a bit!

I was trying to make a research about the alleged harmfulness of fuel on smelling, but so far I didn't find anything scientific, apart from the fact that gasoline vapor -generally speaking- is quite dangerous. If anybody have access to a credible source of information concerning the topic, please let me know.

Illuminated

I am not a big drinker, I don't really like the taste of alcohol, it is more its effect that keeps me having it from time to time.

We started with red wines, and he was updating me on the different projects he has worked on recently.

I met him last year on the World Perfumery Congress, where I asked him for a job. Instead of hiring me as a perfumer, I was more or less his escort for the rest of the exhibition. Although he is quite a bit older than me, we got on really well. He introduced me to the right people, invited me for private parties of the congress and for exchange I would listen to his childhood memories in Eastern Europe. After the congress, we would meet up for a drink, every few months, when he comes from NYC to Grasse for work. I think of him as my mentor, and he thinks of me as a refreshing distraction from those "New York perfumers" or those "old school Grasse perfumers".

When I got to the bar, he was already there waiting for me. I thought his look had changed a lot. He aged a few years in the last few months I haven't seen him. He tells me how he misses Grasse and how he has a huge stress on working on a numerous important briefs on the same time. He nags a bit about good old times of perfumery, when legislation didn't count each drops of Italian Bergamot in the creations and the use of Yugoslavian Oakmoss wasn't banned for good.

After the first bottle of wine, I asked what inspires him to create perfumes. I could see I touched a nerve there. He wouldn't mind sharing wild gossips with me "straight from the White House of Perfumery" or even showing his creations without their appearance for the public, but asking him about inspiration to make perfumes clearly got him uncomfortable. He changed the topic to quickly and I didn't insist. After a few glasses of wine though, he went back to the topic by himself.

His first brief winning perfume was based on the memory of his first girlfriend. The taste of his first kiss is now immortalized as raspberry top notes of one of the 90's bestselling perfumes. And the examples went on and on. He was always a ladies' man, but little did I know about his creations being directly linked with his actual partners.

After the second bottle of wine, he told me about realizing that most of his colleagues are "creating" strictly based on already existing perfume's formulas. He first despised it, but soon, he realized that he is running out of inspirations, in spite of his lifestyle as a playboy. He needed continuous stimulation. He told me how the hunt for inspiration ruined all his relationships. He told me how he went on drugs, from being a social marijuana smoker to a cocaine addict, when women were not fulfilling anymore his desire to experience new flashes.

However, he would often come up with unusual perfume ideas, while being high. He admitted creating some of his famous creations under the effect of drugs.

After years of self destruction, finally his company would oblige him to go to rehab, not long after he talked to the national television about his newest fragrance release with dilated pupils.

I wish he didn't share. I wish I didn't know about that. Is one of the idols of modern perfumery completely lacks inspiration for a over a decade now? His latest creations are clearly flankers of his early works and the frustration blocks his creativity.

I took him home. He tried to kiss me at least 3 times, while I helped him up to the hall of his building. Expected, turned it off with a smile. While I was still in Paris, working my ass of to get enough money for the perfumery school, I did fantasize about him kissing me. The only thing I felt now was sorry. Perfumers are pushed by the business to create olfactory innovations all the time, although the majority of the possible combinations of the present accords have been already played by now.

I needed a cigarette. In front of his fancy house on the Croisette in Cannes, alone in the dark, foggy, wet night, I wondered if being alcoholic is better than being on drugs.

Obsession

I have heard about him well before he was announced to join our company; he is one of the most celebrated perfumer specialized in custom made fragrances. He left one of the biggest perfume creation house to join us, partly for the rumoured "times 50" salary increase he was about to get here, and partly the rumoured take-over of our Maître Perfumer's position, who takes his retirement soon.

He was recently referred in the press as the "enfant terrible" of niche perfumery, he literally has fans, there is a big hype around him. He is truly talented, his creations that went public were real game-changers, but he is also so obviously full of himself that I have decided that unlike every women at work, I am not going to be charmed by the less than average looking, openly egocentric man in his early 40s.

Though I was excited to start working with him, I didn't join the others in welcoming him collectively during the first coffee break. Mostly, because I am still working on those delicious sweets projects, and partly because I just really doesn't want to be among my female colleagues in their 50s behaving like teenagers.

This whole mess about his arrival, which turned into a extreme high level of excitement in the company got me overdosed before even meeting him for the first time.

(It's like the movie 'Titanic'. I refused to see that movie just cause all my friends were whining about Leonardo DiCaprio for months before the premiere, extensive promotion usually has inverse effect on me. )

Little did I know about him turning my world upside down starting just about hearing him talking to me the first time.

I have seen him passing by at lunch break, and he caught me looking at him. Great, now he thinks I am stupefied by him, but really I was just wondering how weirdly is his nose shaped, how small his lips are and that I expected somebody with less wrinkles and less sick looking eyes.

As I went back from lunch to my office, he was already outside smoking with some of the raw material buyers. I looked at his worn-out clothes, and wondered if he was really so much underpaid or simply doesn't have a taste for apparels.

I was in the middle of adding the final cristallized sugar scent to my crumble accord, when he came into my office with the Maître Parfumeur. My boss introduced us to each other, and while shaking my hand, he casually said 'how are you, love'? I knew I was lost. It took him not less than 4 words to have me among his fans. He had the sexiest English accent I have ever heard in my life. Not the posh one from Oxford, but more of the Southern London, hooligan-style.

I felt lust climbing up on my spine to my brain. What the heck is going on? Since when I am dreadfully attracted to this accent?!

He asked me something which I had hardly understood, and than a few seconds later, my Maître asked me to show on what I am working on right now. I was going to take the sample's bottle from my desk, but he got my hand, and said he could smell it on me. I like to try my creations on my skin, so I have put on my wrist a few drops from Crumble, but how would he know that?! Seconds later, he was smelling my wrist as if that was the most natural thing on an average Monday afternoon. He mentioned the few ingredients, corrected my formula orally and added that my skin smells like sweet pea.

Then he left. My Maitre after him, with a rather confused look.

I needed to sit down. How did he enchanted me in less than 3 mins? I am addicted to this man. I am back to 13 when I was painfully in love with some movie stars. Why he has to have that beautiful voice and why he has to talk me with his green eyes sparkling? Why he had to touch me? Why his touch felt like the pleasantest thunder striking me? How on earth I am supposed to concentrate on my job now?

Scent Trek

In many of my earlier posts I have already mentioned the magic machine that captures a trail of scent and analyses it.

Perfumers are using them mostly to create natural identical perfumes, the machine is capable of analyzing the faintest hint of aromatic molecules in a given space. Before I give you Givaudan's description of their Scent Trek, I want to share with you the story of perfumer Alain Astori on how this technical evolution helped him in one of his creation.

Astori was working on a flanker of Hugo Boss that was "briefed" to be inspired by NYC. He decided to literally put a sample of New York into his creation. With his team, they went to a hill nearby and collected a sample of the air of the city. Later, while analyzing the results, they have found that it contained quite a few variants of aldehyde, which he later added to his composition. They have won the brief due to their creativity and indirectly to the Headspace technique too.

(I miss Astori. The morning before our meeting, I have decided to finally open up the sample of Aromatics Elixir that was laying around in my room for quite a long time. Later, towards the end of our meeting, I asked him which perfume he wish he had created. He said that Aromatics Elixir from Clinique is such a well balanced chypré, that he really wish he had made it. )

Anyways, get a more of a less personal introduction of the Headspace techinque from answers.com:

Givaudan Roure developed its revolutionary technology Scent Trek in 1996, earning the Fragrance Foundation's first Fifi Innovation Technology of the Year Award. Scent Trek expanded the capabilities of the older Headspace technology by allowing perfume scientists to gather scents from plants and flowers outside the laboratory. The new technology was a boon for perfumers and ecologists alike.

A much wider variety of scents was now available, as scientists could now extract scent from plants that could not be grown in a laboratory. Scent Trek extracted the essence of a plant without killing it, allowing for the capture of endangered rain forest scents. Scent Trek could also reproduce non-plant-based scents and undetected compounds of scents, called "notes," to add complexity to perfumes. For example, when Givaudan created the Michael Jordan cologne Bijan, it used Scent Trek to sample notes from Jordan's favorite golf course, a leather baseball glove, and a Costa Rican beach.

Gourmand perfumes

Today one of the Italian client came in to the company with a huge plate of colorful cakes and fine bonbons.

At first I thought I again forgot my boss' birthday, but later le Maître Parfumeur came to introduce me to Signor Manzini-Giordano and told me that the desserts were brought directly from the most celebrated pâtisserie in Italy.

At this point my mouth started intensive slobbering and after a tiny hesitation I have chose the raspberry tiramisú with marzipan in the middle of the plate.

I have to say I was rather disappointed to hear that they had asked me to work on making a series of perfume based on the scent of each dessert. My mind started working at 1000% in order to find alternative ways to create those damn perfumes and still being able to take a few bite from each of the delicious looking sweets. But really, I had no time to find out any solutions, I had to start working, because apparently the scent of the desserts are at peak only for the next coming 10-15 hours, therefore I needed to start analyzing them and taking notes immediately.

The whole day I was sniffing the wildest variation of candies, tarts, pies, cookies, creams and chocolates. There were two times in the afternoon when I seriously considered giving my resignation. And there were several times I thought of going to the pâtisserie next door in order to exchange the caramel au beurre sallée. My famous work morale gave me enough force to restrain myself. ( That, and the fact that my office has transparent walls. )

After the longest day of work EVER, I managed to take notes of all the main olfactive accords I would create and carefully grouped them to each planned perfume.

Tomorrow, I will have to start creating the accords and compare them with the desserts. This burdening thought called for a prayer in which originally I wanted to ask for divine strength, but I just ended up begging for one bite from the amaretti mousse. At this moment, Signor Manzini-Giordani (or should I say, the DEVIL itself?!) came to my office and promised to get me another plate of sweets - stricly for eating purposes - once the project is finished.

...Hence I became sure of the existence of God.

Olfactive Flashback IV.

I just bought lamb leather insoles. The boots I have fallen in love with in Cannes was onlyavailable in one size bigger than my actual size.

Hardly opened the packaging, when still from far, it hit me right on the nose. The lamb leather insoles smells like concentrated hot milk in aluminium vessel. I was backto 5 (I think so far this is the earliest olfactive flashback I have ever had! Smells like aGuinness record!:). In the small village outside the map where my mum was born, we used to go to take milk from the producing factory near my grandmother's house. My mum'sgrandmother, who used to work there, always smelled like hot creamy milk, and I justrealized why when I entered the production site in mind.

Vapor of boiling milk everywhere,the steam was hot and suffocatingly intense. The lactic aromas in the air mixed with thesterilizing products used to clean the aluminium / tin vessels for the clients, before filling it with freshly pasteurized milk.

Get back in time took less than 1 second, but I spent the whole day on trying to recreate thehot milky scent in my head.

Bon A Nez!

May 2011 fulfill your wildest olfactive dreams; I wish you plenty of olfactory orgasms and beautiful scented moments!

I started the year with a small disappointment: Serge Lutens was again quicker than me, and he launched a very similar hyacinth based perfume ( Bas de Soie ) than the one I am working on for a few months now. On the other side of the balance there are amazing news on my perfume being sold in the USA, the customers are going crazy for it and contrarily to every rational expectations, around 85% of the target audience rates it 10 over 10!

...And even better than that, I just ate a dessert in Beirut, made of rose ice-cream and crystallized musk.

Happy New Year, Dear Readers!

Guilt

Every decent perfumer feels guilty from time to time... For serving luxury, for satisfying vanity, for creating the unnecessary.

I heard Cresp in a conference about how he likes to think of himself as a sort of a doctor. I read various interviews given by perfumers trying to convince dear readers ( and themselves ) about the magic role perfume plays in our well-being.

If you work in perfumery, sooner or later you will have to face the fact that perfume is rarely a question of life or death. ...And basically, all the exceptions are already listed in the book of Patrick Süskind.

Having been born with an overdose of justice-sensitivity, the feeling of guilt uncomfortably started to grow in me during one of the first classes of Natural Raw Materials while still in school. We studied the "dark chocolate coated cigar" smelling patchouli essential oil and by chance I got to know also about the exploitation of patchouli farmers in Indonesia. After that, for a long time I wanted to become a natural raw material expert, and turn the whole perfumery business into one big fair-trade family where all the big creation companies are buying directly from local producers thanks to me, the future Indiana Jones of Essential Oils.

When my inner need to compose perfumes became as strong and frustrating that I had to give up on saving the world of natural raw materials and those poor patchouli farmers in Indonesia, I reasoned myself with reading a lot about how really our mood is affected by smells. It is true, we all know that by now, smelling is the only sense directly linked with a specific part of the brain responsible of euphoria. Therefore it can engolden your day, it can fill you with happiness, love and peace ( along with some Hedione and Musks, of course ).

I managed to persuade myself that all the energy and money being spent by Chemical Engineers creating new fragrant molecules couldn't have already led to finding the antidote of cancer anyways.

Guilt came back just after winning a perfume competition based on a given brief. Am I really taking raw materials of mother nature and put them into bottles so that somewhat rich women all around the world could complete their daily seduction with higher chances?

After a long frustration and hesitation to give up my perfumer, now I think I calmed my tiring consciousness for good now: The first commission payment I have received - from sales of my creation overseas - is going directly to an organisation that offers education and a familial environment for orphans and children with difficult financial background.