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.