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Thursday evening…. now the samples are gone. Thank you’ll for your interest. Thus who did not get one: I am sorry… but there is going to be another anniversary in a year from now ;-)
Ahhh… I forgot… a few samples of the orris scent are still left….

I had a thrilling meeting last week, a sniffing and exchange “rencontre” with Rashunda who happens to have blog since centuries. In light of her blogging experience I feel like a newborn, looking in the sun the first time. We met for the first time after exchanging some mails and the topic was: Perfumes, what else? We exchanged samples of what we created and I was lucky enough to have Rashunda share a scent with me that still makes me go WOW! Beforehand: Can you buy this scent: No. Will it ever be commercialized: I have not idea. What is it? It is remarkable, out of the ordinary, fully loaded with naturals, intense and very present. There is a gourmand quality in it that starts with something spicy, like a pepper over berries or ripe citrus fruits, a very balanced spice accord sitting on top of an equally balanced core with a somewhat powdery aspect (Ylang?), wonderful woody lines that are assembled in a very elegant way. Hints of flowers passing by, circling around a hint of vanilla and patchouli (in my nose). What I like most about it: It is well composed and the notes are interwoven to form something new. No note stands out for itself and I have a hard time detecting individual scents. Well, thank you Rashunda for sharing and congratulations!

Another meeting of a different kind: Bond no. 9 I was invited to the vernissage at Osswald’s perfumery in Zurich, officially launching the line, with lots of bubbling drinks (alcoholic version). Again: WOW. The scents are worth coming back again, taking time and sniff them quietly, a few of them I tried and got some samples, too. My favourite so far: Gramercy Park and Great Jones. I was there with Vero and we admired the packaging and the whole concept even more. Wonderful…. and then we were standing there, mouth open, champagne glass in the hand, watching the upper class, and we wondered how much silicon was in some lips and how those beautiful beings managed to eat. Well, maybe the just eat sushis and stuff at vernissages? Thus, lessons learnt: How to launch a scent (Champagne!, red carpet, lovely waiters), and whom to invite (lips!).
After quite some sniffing, we left, very grateful (Thank you Mr. Abt!), full of impressions and with the decision to come back to sniff some scents that are really remarkable, but this time…without inflatable boat carriers…

Pix: Stincky orchid, still blooming and emanating strange scents, since last year. I’d bet: This orchid attracts strange flies eating dead tapirs or so.

Time is over and the samples are gone…..

Thursday….6.15 local time… 12 samples left…..

Thus, it is time to celebrate my one year anniversary. I thought for a while how to share this moment with you and finally came to the conclusion that a perfumer should do so with a scent.

That is why I have prepared a limited number of my orris scent, final version 6.3, that I discussed epically on my blog, 40 pieces that I will be delighted to send out, on a first come first served basis. Unfortunately, the number of samples is limited, please apologize if all are gone. As soon as all are gone, the e-mail below will disappear.

What you have to do:
Send me an e-mail including all address data to send the sample: Sorry… now it is too late.

What you will get:
1 sample of the orris fragrance, hopefully intact, 2 ml in a glass sample vial, free of charge to any place in this world, priority mail shipped.

What you might consider:
Eventually you want to comment on the scent, here on this blog.

What I will do:
I will send the samples out, on Saturday at the latest.

What I will not do:
I will not collect your address for commercial reasons and I will not forward it or make it accessible to anybody. I will not resend samples that arrived broken or were lost or need a refill… I just do not have more of them.

Final question:
Can you buy the scent? No, not really. I still have not figured out what to do with it. Consider it just being there, filled up in 40 vials and in an excel sheet.

Enjoy and thank you for visiting!

So, this blog saw an interesting comment yesterday and I wanted to take the time to address the one point that I thought most interesting and challenging in Anya’s comment.
What do I want the rose, or linalool or whatever to do? I changed the question to include synthetics.
The starting point: When I create a fragrance I basically make a very complex chemical recipe. Add 1 gr of linalool into flask, add 2 gr of limonen…. , allow to react for 30 days at room temperature, ….add ethanol, mix, allow to ….When working with naturals, this recipe becomes very, very complicated, but at the end it still is a recipe containing a set of chemicals that are mixed in a certain order, allowed to react and find an equilibrium, diluted in ethanol, filtered, bottled, sold. A comment on the side: Our scent of smell is capable of quite some abstraction. Take phenylethylalcohol, add some citronellol, citral, damascenon eventually and people will recognize the rose. It is a similiar phenomenon like our visial sense: Draw a few lines and people will recognize the tree, the house, the dog… that’s the trick with pictograms. In this sense: Phenylethylalcohol is the pictogramm for the rose scent.
Now, what do I want? It depends… for a certain scent I want some molecules in this mix to be identifiable, to stand out and form a sensorial impression that is recognized by its closeness to something we know. Like the rose. Do I care to be as close as possible to the roses natural scent. Nope! I care for the concept of rose, eventually  I want the rose to become symbolic, to be lifted into an idea.

Some of the molecules are intended to be there to form a new sensorial impression that is also recognized but as something new. This new impression is sort of a holy grail… lucky us: There are lots of these grails around and just have to find them.

And then there is also a supportive class of molecules in a sense. These molecules are there to bring others up but never bring themselves into the game. Helpful servers, modest but indispensable.

Driving with my bike trough town this morning, the fragrance of fresh linden blossom woke my nose up. It is a true delight, precious and so far, I have not smelled anything synthetic that could replace it. There are some molecules that come close, some eventually might be combined to give this impression, but replace it? No. The natural linden blossom absolute that you can get does not have this wonderful elegance and freshness, sweetness, the airy neroli, the sexyness of jasmine and the lightness of lily-of-the-valley. It is a greenish scent with rather “wet-wood” undertones… thus: We have to enjoy the season and sniff as much as we can of this natural delight.

The same is true for my petunia, flowering in little pots, on the veranda. Deep, rich, vanilla, oakmoss and a sensual powder fills the surrounding in later afternoon. A true delight and the only reason why I have planted them anyway.

Besides sniffing these naturals… I look forward to sniff and learn some synthetics, like decahydro beta naphtylacetate (I hope I got it right), I love it but haven’t mastered it, yet… this week will see me continuing the work started on the lavender, complementing what has been done over the weekend (more about it tomorrow), sending out some parcels, tell you more about a most astonishing meeting last Friday and talk about some business ideas….

Things are getting in place for the blog on the other, non-blogspot, domain. I haven’t done the blogroll there, yet but will do it in the coming days. I have, I must admit, neglected my blogroll on the blogspot-blog, too…. Thus, whenever you feel like your blog should be there on my blogroll….just mail me…
What else: Some secret stuff is going on in Zurich (hehehe…what I do is also secret )…. for all those who do not understand this little joke… please visit madebyblog. This secret mission kept me busy yesterday and I could write long, epic posts about my pain and my joy in doing this…hehehe… but it is a secret. Thus… wait and see.

After an epic fooling around with Excel, trying to get an overview about postage paid, cash in and cash out, I treated myself for 2 hours with working right away on the skeleton of yesterday. Lines of actions: Add some flesh to the base with tonka beans (replacing coumarin), vetiverol, a hint patchouli and vanillin, some ambrein to the cistus and oakmoss, up to the IFRA allowed limit. Adding hair and skin by addition of ionone, beta, phenylethylalcohol and iso-amylsalicylate to the orris line, and blood and nervous tissue by the addition of some methyl-pamplemouse (guessed right: brings in a citrus, green, vetiver line), linalool, linalylpropionate.

Humbly begging for attention, the preliminary result landed under W.’s nose, while Germany-Italy was still playing at 0:0. The comment was something like:” Hmmm ..that’s new and interesting….move it and play that ball!…..it smells like…..ohhhh, again they can’t keep the ball…..something….ahhh, what a chance….. something familiar, like a classic….go,go,go…. a little bit old fashioned”.

Humbly returning to my computer, the formula changes were entered in excel and the perfumer entered in a thinking loop: Are my compositions old fashioned? Grummel-grübel-studier (no translation…). Well, looking back at last Saturday’s sniffing meeting with Vero, old fashioned might turn out to be a compliment. We sniffed Que sais je?, by Caron. This, after scents that seem to have been created by Mr. 666, the bad beast, you name it, with the purpose to send our noses to a frozen universe, expanded endlessly, with not much more left than 0.1 degree Kelvin background noise. And then there came Que sais je. Tuberose, vanilla, civet, oakmoss, so fine, so rich, so yummy, with this wonderful orris story, powdery and lasting. A dream!

Now, coming back today to yesterday’s trial: Somewhat too hairy: I have to shave this barbarian thing. It could need a little bit more vibrance energy at the beginning, it does not seem to know how to use its muscles yet, and I have give it a little bit more of a green powdery make-up.

Happy 4th of July to all my readers in the US, enjoy and celebrate! In todays post we will visit together the skeleton of a scent. I worked for quite a while on the scent with Lavender. hmmm…I need a project/category name for it, because my new blog that will soon go live and replace my blogspot.com blog, allows me to easily create categories….hmmm… how about ….hmmm…can’t think of anything clever as working title for this project of mine… I will have to ask Barry ;-)

Well, I worked on it, with the goal to come up with a sketch that is good enough to be followed further, approaching at least schematically the picture I have in mind. Looking back at it, I can clearly see how this draft might work; it will need much more to become wearable, but the basic lines might fit. The next step: Do it again and move on by decorating things out. I will leave the skeleton mix for maturation just to see how it develops over time. Starting with what I had already (Okoumal, with a hint coumarin, kephalis, cistus, and castoreum, decatone) I moved on, carefully not to mess things up again. I added a fir line with bergamot to the top, an orris line (which will need careful fine tuning later, right now it is just a line) and sandalwood to the base.

And finally: The lavender…I have a large selection of various qualities at hand, not to miss the synthetic lavender boosters; I decided for a mix of my French lavender with the Bulgarian quality. The synthetic boosters will come later, when I work on the flesh for this skeleton. Like testosterone doses added to your daily vitamine intake brings about muscles, reduces fat and makes you look like a handsome guy, boosters like linalool add volume to a lavender, bring down the sweetness and excessive flowery aspects. As with all things in live, it is just a matter of dose, too much and your lavender looses its natural appearance and looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his days as actor, before his botox time as governor…