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.