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?