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.