French

I prefer the french language when speaking about perfumes, it is much more expressive than english. My favorite term is used when describing the "chemistry" between two raw materials:

English would say, e.g. white pepper oil and osmanthus are smelling nice together or they are matching. French are using the expression "se marie bien", i.e. that white pepper oil and osmanthus are "well married".

Creation

Some of you are asking me if creation is a pleasure or rather suffering for me. It is kind of both, really.

The moments of inspiration are of course thrilling, but when despite hundreds of trials, the scent is not perfectly expressing the feelings it was created for, composing becomes frustrating.

In most of the cases, creating is therapy. Maybe not when I am asked to compose a very powerful smelling jasmine-pink pepper for a shower gel in India for X USD per kilograms, but it really is, when I transform my experiences, feelings and memories into scents.

It is therapy, when I create from this inner urge piling up in me during many days just to burst out with elementary forces to settle down into a pile of raw materials in a brown bottle. The urge is so strong that I usually get afraid of it and try ignoring for a few days, but I get more and more nervous, more and more disturbed, the stress coming directly from my stomach, which won't ease until I "weight it out" in essential oils on a balance.

It's been a few days I am feeling melancholic and the melody of "mad world" constantly playing in my head. I came home after work, tried to postpone creation, feeling uncertain about it's outcome. I started with cleaning all the shelves. Then, I noted all the quantity of lab supplies at home, starting from pipettes to bottles and spatulas. Then, when there was nothing else to be done, I started to sharpen my pencils that I use for formulation.

I smoked the last cigarette I found in my apartment, and was enjoying feeling guilty. I still think that blowing out thick smoke from my lips is one of the best things in life. I was ready to make the juice. Inspired by the smoke of the cigarette, I added quickly vertyver to the formula I have drafted in my head already a couple of days ago.

It's been a few nights I have been dreaming with grisambrol, no question what mad world smells like.
Grasse gave me another push for creating a deviant perfume with sending dark clouds to quickly take over the arrogantly smiling sun. I would have been happy to hear a few thunders but getting an impromptu rainstorm is probably the maximum one can ask in the middle of the sunniest week of may in the French Riviera.

Grisambrol is a very animalic and ambery, dark and earthy. I put into the juice 500 over 1000. This would scare away any potent perfumer, and they are right, in theory, but I softened down the animalic part with bergamot and angelica root, which makes the perfume still dark but clean, deep but soft, earthy but fresh. The structure is very unusual, so it is more of a sillage than a typical mainstream perfume with well defined top/heart/base notes, but I prefer it this way.

Rain just stopped when I was done with my first trial. I still have a few hundreds to go and no more cigarettes.

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.

Caraway - Soup

Caraway essence is one of the raw materials that are widely used to create sparkling top notes for perfumes. Although it's characteristic scent is considered too herbal and sharp to create a perfume only dedicated to this spice, you could find it very often at a mild dose in most of the new perfume releases. We usually work with it in 10 % solution, and only add 0,03 grams over 1 kg of perfume concentration. The distinct scent matches really nicely Hay absolute, White Pepper oil and Ginger essence among others.

The herb ( carum carvi ) originated in Asia, but now is cultivated mainly in Africa, Norther and Eastern Europe.

Also known as Meadow Cumin, it is a very old and well known spice, commonly used as early as Stone Age. Caraway Seeds are very popular in our days as well, particularly in Eastern Europe and in the Indian subcontinent. On research, so many medicinal properties of the seeds have been narrated that it is said to be the cure for nearly all diseases!

The greatest benefit of Caraway oil lie in its calming and soothing effect on the nerves and the digestive system, it also helps with respiratory problems, in fighting urinary infections and about a dozen skin-related problems. On the top of that, it makes the skin bright and fair if added to your body lotion!

You can benefit from its healing properties by inhaling caraway oil with the help of a vaporizer or a burner, or even by just simply diluting a few drops in the bath. In order to keep your stomach healthy, and maximize the miraculous advantages of caraway, it is the best to eat it either raw, on scrambled eggs e.g. or by preparing the following traditional Hungarian soup, which softens the taste of caraway seeds, and is a great idea to serve as an entrée with crunchy bread pieces.

Ingredients:

- 3 table spoon of oil

- 4 table spoon of flour

- 2 coffee spoon of caraway seeds

- 2 coffee spoon of paprika

- 1 onion

- 1 liter of water

- salt, according to your taste ( I usually put 2 coffee spoon. )

You make the "roux" from the oil and flower, when it is of golden color already, you add the caraway seeds and you stir the whole mix for a minute or two. Then, you take the cooking-pot away from the stove, leaving it to cool for ca. 2 mins. Once it is cooled, you add the paprika, you place the cooking-pot back to the fire only when paprika is mixed already well with the roux and the seeds. You pour 1 liter of water, then add salt and a peeled onion inside the soup in full, no need to cut it in, you will take this out at the end, before serving. Starting from boiling, you will need 15 mins for your soup to be ready to eat.

Enjoy the unique taste and its marvelous medicinal effects!

I heart Mate absolute

I am working on a tea composition series that will be applied in candles, a Japanese client ordered 10 different tea notes, such as black tea, green tea, red tea, white tea, fruit tea, tea with rose and a few infusions with tea notes, like mint and thyme, etc.

To start with a nice and stable tea note in a candle, you need mate absolute, which is though extremely expensive, enough to dose it small to have the effect ( and the greenish color ) of tea.

So I took a massive amount of mate, placed it in a glass jar and put all that into a hot water bath for a few minutes to be able to use it in a more liquid form. You are only supposed to heat it a little bit and always at very moderate temperature ( 50 degree Celsius at max ), it is the common rule for all the natural raw materials that are waxy, creamy or solid on room temperature.

In the meantime I went to my Maître to show him my passion fruit accord ( passion fruit is apparently the new big hit! ). Discussing the perfect passion fruit scent got brutally interrupted by me smelling burned mate from 3 offices away ( mine ).

I forgot that yesterday I left the perfumer stove on its maximum ( 200 degree Celsius ) for sterilizing my metallic spatulas.

I tried to save some of the mate, but as I touched the boiling material with a wooden stick, a splash of it directly landed on my shoulder. I was really shocked  (= I was swearing in all languages possible... ) but simultaneously felt grateful due to the fact that it didn't come on my face.

Just recently I am thinking on getting a perfumery-related tattoo, the expression of "nice ink" keeps echoing in my head. I was more into Latin names of raw materials, but the little rose heart-shaped burn on my shoulder, caused by mate overheat, will do just for now...

Olfactive Flashback VI.

Chestnut squash, after you took out its seeds, smells exactly like my father's skin. It is earthy, somewhat sweet and there is a tiny fruity note hiding right "behind" the earty note.