Leave wonderland with Rosemary

Yesterday, after my friend has drive away with the leftover of the dinner, I decided it was time to empty my trash containing plastic bottles into the public container a bit up on my street. While doing it, my keys slipped out of my hand and fell into the container too. It was of course midnight, only one public light strictly winking every second, full moon, some dogs -wolves? - howling the moon and me scared as civet absolute... I opened my eyes as much I could and started to search for it, without success.

Luckily, a neighbor approached with car and though first she wanted to gas-spray me, after realizing that I am in the container with plastic bottles she believed I was not hunting for some garbage - fetishism. So I asked her to put her car in a way so that when I roll over the garbage, we would see what is inside, and hopefully find my keys. When rolling over the garbage container, I was really grateful to God for France's strict selective garbage collection because I wasn't in the container until my elbows full of some potato peel or rotten chicken bones - only plastic bottles. Found the keys, than sniffed Rosemary.

My mom's birthday is this weekend, so after long hours of research, I managed to get a sample of a perfume that was discontinued about 5 years ago already. That was her favorite perfume. So I got the sample and worked on recreating the scent for like a month already, when I realized that instead of the metallic smelling raspberry inspired raw material I should use a round, very naturalistic raspberry flavor to complete the creation. I made a huge bottle of perfume for her, a luxurious cream base mixed with 5 % of the concentrated perfume ( usually they are maximum at 2% ) plus scented shower gel and shampoo. Than sent everything to my brother to keep the surprise. Than I remembered that I don't remember writing the postcode, than hit my head purposefully into the wall a few times and only than, sniffed Rosemary.

Rosemary is one of the most popular essential oil used to improve concentration. Aids focus, concentration, strength of purpose and stability. ...And smells damn good too!

An emotional perfumer

While creating a perfume, I don't think in raw materials. Sometimes I am not thinking in accords or scents either. It the feeling you want this perfume to represent that I am constantly focused at.

When starting school, I realized that I am describing raw materials in the most weird ways, not once shocking my fellow students or make them laugh out loud. I always have instant feelings that are matched by raw materials which is really a reliable source for memorizing one scent, even though it is very not objective.

In many perfumery schools they are teaching young perfumers to identify a specific raw materials by describing them in no more but 3 words in a specific order. For example cis 3 hexenol would be grass, green, fresh. Students are asked memorize these 3 parameters and are asked to describe this raw material in the same way every time as well. I have to admit that this is a great way to create a common language that are used by perfumers, but it is also a bit like "formatting" young perfumers shepherding them into the same herd.

I knew it in the first day that I am not going to be able to do that. I know that I am going to take much more time with memorizing the raw materials, because my method is very subjective, but I couldn't help myself directly identify the feelings I have when smelling a specific raw material.

For me cis-3-hexenol takes me back to my childhood on a Sunday afternoon at our cottage, lawnmower working loudly close to me. That was the first time of my life I started to get consciously interested in odors. I was wondering the first time of my life, how can I preserve and put into bottle the scent of fresh but grass. When I smell cis-3-hexenol, I think of the feeling of discovery.

It works the same way with smelling finished products, perfumes. When smelling a composition, I first have a sentiment, a feeling, an ambiance that the perfume puts me into, and only identifying this feeling can I concentrate on identifying the major ingredients.

Perfume for me, is a magic translation of a feeling and you use a perfume in order to revive those feelings. It captures a moment better than photograph, a painting, better than diary and better than any tape.

Arriving to Grasse - A Retroactive tale

Woke up at 7:00 sharp. Packed everything into the car. Marked 48 avenue Riou Blanquet, Grasse into the GPS.

Route de soleil. This is the name of the highway you have to take if you go from the North of France - Paris to the South - Grasse. Route of Sun. Despite the poetic appellation, it rained cats and dogs during our 12 hours drive. One would say it was very French eating camambert and baguette in the car, but no, it was just sad, despite all the excitement.

As we got to Grasse, I started to be nervous. Not only cause I had my newest kitchen device falling on my head in average 5 times per hours, but cause I started to realize that from that night on, I am a permanent resident of the city referred often as the cradle of modern perfumery. I always thought that Grasse will smell like leather. I guess because I read that the modern perfumery was actually born due to the fact that the glove makers started to scent their goods.

To my biggest surprise, Grasse smelled like soft humid pine with a touch of cypress.

We got to the address, and the owner of my new apartment, a women in her 40s smelling like saw from a pencil-sharpener, was waiting for us already. She put the keys into the locker and before she turned the keys, I prayed that there won't be any cookbooks on the shelves, as the night before I had a dream that I was killed while reading about how to make tarte au citron in my new apartment.

No cook books, what so ever, neither plates, nor any dishes actually, but a complete series of BD and National Geographic from the 1970's to our days. Most importantly, nothing to do with the design of the apartment I was killed in my dream! I paid the caution and gave the bottle of white wine to my new landlady.

I felt fresh, fun, new and adventurous. How cool is that I am finally starting studies in perfumery? How awesome I am doing this school from my own money? How supernatural is that I have decided this would happen almost 3 years ago within a fraction of a second when I opened that book? And it is to be realized now. This is my new apartment. This is the place I am about to live for the next few years (if not for the rest of my life!).

Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful scent-ship.

Post Boyfriend Blues

I see Him only every 2 weeks.

I just came back from the airport where I dropped him to take the flight to Paris. Like every second week. I just cannot get used to him going away. Every time, it is an emotional shock. I am going home, I eat everything I find in the fridge without actually feeling any tastes. I feel electrocuted for a few days after he is left. I am living in a mess until usually Wednesday, when I feel the force to wash the dishes from the weekend or actually meeting somebody.

It's been 1 year and a half that we are living in a distance relationship. With that, I am officially breaking the unofficial record of perfumer students who left their home to Grasse but decided not to give up their relationships.

Most of the relationships bond before Grasse Institute of Perfumery cannot handle Grasse and perfumery. Some of the students are getting drunk from the new way of existence, completed consciously with the fifth sense, with sensibility for beauty freshly opened up. Some of them are becoming too conscious about their partner's scent. Some just cannot handle the stress of facing so much difficulties in perfumery and living in France. Some couples are broken due to long distances. And of course, every year in GIP there are some more or less secret relationships created between students of the same year, but inter-promotion coupling is also very common.

I am just not sure I can deal with this emotional roller-coaster for a long time. He comes every 15 jours ( 15 days in French, which for them means 2 weeks = 14 days ), he is here for less than 48 hours and than he is off again for 2 weeks. And for one and a half year now, I get the Post Boyfriend Blues, every time he is gone. We kiss goodbye and hug for a short time, which are usually long minutes for those waiting in their car behind us in the 'kiss and fly' lane at Terminal 2, than I am fighting with my tears during 35 mins from the Airport to my place in the car, praying here and than between two tear attacks to be able to blow my nose and drive in the same time.

It is so bad, when he goes away that I found myself wanting him not to come at all. It is so bad when goes away that I found myself not being happy when he arrives, knowing than in 2 days it's about to hurt again. It hurts so bad when he goes away, that I find myself thinking of leaving my perfumer job here and go back to Paris and maybe get back to HR again...

I miss his neck smelling like deep amber and vanilla. I miss his reassuring voice. I miss his smile. I miss his brilliant ideas. I miss him gesticulating and using too much his hand when talking. I miss the scent of his shoulder when it gets slightly burned on the sun. I miss his eyes reflecting my feelings deeply from his heart.

I miss his philosopher hands, smelling like dry tobacco, caressing my face, my eyes, my lips, my nose.

Solutions

Taking my shower, I felt the right upper side of my right breast suddenly hurting a lot.

Within 1 second, I have decided who to give my vintage Le de Givenchy bottle in my testament. Until that moment, I was hesitating between my family ( they would get rich by selling it ) and my perfumer friends ( they would never sell it, cause its value cannot be measured in money )...

Just after making a first list of what scent I am going to wear for the occasion of the first chemotherapeutic session, I realized that today I was working on formulas with a lot of solutions, so I had to open the "solutions" drawer at least 20 times, and taken into consideration that they have a few hundred solutions in each drawer in small glass bottles, no wonder that I got muscle strain...

I am keeping Le de Givenchy a little more longer.

Least favorite perfumes

I recently phoned my perfumer friend at L'Oréal who told me about her new mission, a recreation the smell of a rich lavender honey for a new facial hydrating cream. She told me that before actually the cream will get into shops, it has to pass many consumer testing sessions all over the continent to make sure potential customers likes the scent and are willing to buy it.

When we hang up, I remembered when we used to both live in Paris and would go for some "olfactory gourmandism" into Sephora at the Champs-Elysées which has the widest selection of perfumes. We smelled everything tangible basically and criticized everything new on the market - criticizing institutional perfume is really a trend worthy to any educated nose! There was one particular perfume that my friend hated. Amarige from Givenchy. I wanted to know what she has against the composition which I didn't find either extraordinary or horrible. From her answer ( "It is a silly creation with cheap raw materials" ) I could see that her attitude towards the creation is more emotional than scientific. If Eva Herzigova had stepped out from the advertisement, my friend would just punch her on the face without any further explanation.

I started to think of the perfumes I hate.

Although I don't really dislike any fragrance, for a long time I was angry to the Chanel house for their creation called Chance. I thought that it is the purest manifestation of brands sacrificing their image for quick profit.

It is a typical example of a perfume that though smells rich, has no character on purpose. It is liked by everybody and hence not really liked by anybody. Institutional brands are not taking anymore risks with really strong olfactory directions so that the profit will be ensured to the maximum as well. They never launch a new product without many consumer testing beforehand. Apparently, Chance tested really well basically in every country where testing were organised - all over the world.

Therefore I think of Chance as a neutral, very average perfume that would be more or less liked everywhere, would please everyone to a certain extent. As so, I refuse it in the name of individualism!

Until... One night in New York, I went out for dinner with some friends, and a Japanese girl joined us, who I thought smelled really really nice. I guessed her perfume, and while I recognized the signature of Chanel, I thought of those names that I actually like. When she told me she is wearing Chance, I was really shocked that I would find it so pleasant. I justified myself with the fact that I liked Chance on her skin only, but I had to admit that the most average perfume became extraordinary on that Japanese girl.

It's all about the money!

I had 2 really good friends in school. Tank and Blanket. We would do everything together, we would be together in a group for working during classes, we would create together, we would eat lunch together, we would watch TV together and we would study together.

We had maximum trust towards each other and though we often had rows, especially me and Blanket, we did care for each other a lot.

There was a school day when our task was to create a liquid soap. We had the idea to get inspiration from one of the "Les Jardins" collection of Hermes. Me and Tank went to the nearest Sephora and get a sample of Le Jardin Mediterranée and I quickly looked also on the note on the bottom of the perfume which listed the irritant ingredients, it can also give you hints! So we got back to the school and we sarted to create our liquid soap, sort of trying to reconsitute the Hermes perfume but adding our own ideas to the juice.

We always made very expensive perfumes, so we put a maximum amount of naturals into creation, rose oil from Bulgary, pine needle oil from Siberia, Lavender from France, Thyme oil from Spain, the finest musks and some green fig and citruses to the top surrounded with a decent amount of those synthetic raw materials marked on the original perfume's bottle. The result was mind-blowing. It was a very clean fragrance, definitely suitable for liquid-soaps, but with a huge potential of becoming the new clean fragrance. Good energy was radiating from the scent, it was uniquely refreshing while remaining very flowery very sophisticated. Everybody loved it, and we were really proud.

Blanket is an American girl from Brooklyn. The first day she was asked what she would like to do she went, I want to open my company. We all thought she is crazy, doesn't she know that one needs 10 years of experience to become a perfumer? Not even waiting for the school to finish, she did it! She already created her company. I really admired her self-confidence and secretly wished I were American too, they definitely have a superiority-complex, but it is really much better than the French with their inferiority-complex in spite of their wide general knowledge.

Blanket got married just a few weeks ago, and I went to her wedding. We both wished that Tank was there too, but she ended up having troubles getting stucked in Guadeloupe with adminstrational issues. The wedding party took place in the bride's appartment. I had the chance to smell her perfumes and I was truly happy for her and again got confirmed that my perfumer friend is very talented, and though her perfumes are not always as round and technically well built as most of the fragrances in the market, they were very likable and absolutely showing creativity.

She showed me all of her perfumes proudly, except the one called Garden. Which was according to her blog, inspired by a NY farming association. I asked her to make me smell that one too, and she answered that in fact it is not ready yet, she made a few trials but it was all a mess, so she just abandoned the whole idea of that perfume. What a pity - I said. But I thought that her tonality was exactly the same as one year back when she lied to us about why she was demanded to leave our creation class to meet the Director of the school.

Recently I wanted to say hi to her on Facebook, and I read somebody's note about smelling her fragrances and especially liking the one called "Garden". I saw on the post that she liked Garden so much well before the wedding took place.

Took me a bit of time, but I got it finally. Revelation smelled like cat pee. The one that is around the corner for a long time now, you just don't go there often, but when you got closer, it hits you. Makes your face frown. Makes you decide that you rather die than take one more sniff from this contaminated air.

I don't mind that she is lying about the inspiration of our perfume. I don't mind that she doesn't mention us as creating partners. I don't mind my share of the revenue as creator of that fragrance.

It is mostly about lying that I am sad. The preparation of lying. The fact that she prepared a showroom for her fragrances for the wedding with all perfumes except Garden, knowing that I would come as well. That she told without a blink or a second of hesitation that there is no such perfume. The fact that when she lied to the whole class about taking raw materials, I was the first one to defend her, along with Tank we were behind her even though we knew that she is far from being innocent. The fact that I traveled 6000 km to be present at her wedding, for months preparing a special dance show for the wedding guests on her request.

So hence, I lost a friend. I am not sure anymore if I ever had this one at all. And the disappointment just stinks around me. It is in my nose. It's acidity bites my skin, and makes a whole in my stomach. I really wish her from the bottom of my heart that one day she would be so rich by selling our perfume that she wouldn't need to lie to / steal from her real friends.