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What can be better than waking up in the morning and smelling freshly brewed coffee before even getting out of bed? Waking up in the morning and smelling freshly brewed coffee with more than 4 hours sleep squeezed in somewhen between 2 and 6. This line of thought followed my tumbling towards the freshly brewed coffee this morning.

The rest of the day followed this scheme; jumping from coffee mug to coffee mug and hoping for a revival. Today I am not getting there, somehow.

In search for comfort and balance I grab for my precious little sample of Great Jones, by Bond No. 9. Well, me and Mr Jones ….My first encounter was like meeting in Köln. Kölnisch Wasser, 4711, as Mr Jones immediately evoked pictures of this scent that was in heavy use by elder ladies that I used to know. Great Jones is very classy, and a rich head note full of citrus and green herbal lines renders it uplifting and is the perfect treat after a short night.

But there is more, there are elegant woods hidden (vetiver?, cedarwood?) behind this green citrus pleasures, with lily and a  powdery line that is very well done, as it is not too sweet and never cloying, sticking. It is just there and allows a fougère like oakmoss line to develop within a wood-ambergris story that I find amazing.

Thus, me and Mr Jones sit here, I am enjoying the pleasure of a modern, yet classical scent. The perfect choice for a day like this.

“Poly” is cool, like in polyvalent or polyglott (I do not know whether this translates), it definetively is less cool in form of Polystyrene foam, electrically loaden, sticking to everything except the trash bag. W. hates it. I take it as it is and see that I can forward it with other parcels…hehehe.
Thus, as always in life there is a little dark cloud when there is sunshine and I fought with the poly-stuff when unpacking my parcels. I figured out that I needed to earth myself, thus touching the water tub helped to get rid of these annoying white flakes. The sunny side to it: I got lots of cool stuff. And samples. And even more cool stuff. I finally could get my hand again on Jasmine absolute from Morocco that was sold out and not available in reasonable quantities at reasonable quality. The future for Le Maroc pour elle seems to be safed for a while.

Talking about Poly… there is Polyester, too. A great movie by John Waters, with Divine, in one of her/his best roles ever, hard at the limit of what you want to watch sometimes, not for kids, art for sure, B-movie for some with this aura of watching something forbidden. Here you find a short description and further details. Warning….some of this content is explicitely sex-related. I love it.
Which brings me-naturally-to the final remark on today’s post. There is a thin line between trash and cult, between beautiful and ugly and between fun and misery. I wonder sometimes where this limit is in perfumes. Is a single molecule perfume cult or trash?

So there was time to work on the provencal summer, the fragrance which features lavender as one key theme, with this wonderful prototype name given by Prince Barry. A name that is promise on one hand and challenge on the other. A previous version was the starting point. Not the most previous version, though, as this latest rough sketch looked more like a provencal thunderstorm, too heavy and to rough (too much cistus), a hailstorm over a sultry summer heated sky.
So I worked on it and encountered a premix that I made a while ago, and I was amazed how good it is, I almost forgot about it. I labelled it Rose&Thyme, Version 2 (as it is the second trial). It features bulgarian rose, damascenone, lemongrass, thyme (red), Benzylsalicylate, Bay, and some more stuff I can not remember right now. And, blessed with my goldfish memory, it was a truly  exciting discovery again.
To have a goldfish memory has advantages, sometimes. You swim happily in your glass bowl and about every 5 min you start your tour again inside your bowl, discovering these great things around you once again. Thus, I rediscoverd this mix which is truly lovely. Not as a stand-alone perfume, but as a rose with a hint of thyme. It is so good, that one day (if I still remember back then) I might try to build a fragrance on it…..
Thus, I went back to this trial and used my rose and thyme, version 2, and wanted to make it greener in the start, add a kick more of a spicy pine note, increase the lavender, reduce the too dominant body note (dominated by okoumal). Well, I did so (Galbanum resinoid, more bergamot and grapefruit for the green touch, increasing the proportional amount of lavender, adding some fir cone essential oil, vetiverol enhancing the vetiverylacetat, increasing kephalis, reducing okoumal) and it took me quite a while (hours, to be specific) to come up with this trial , let us call it version 120806. It is in Excel now and waits to mature. Impatient as I am (comes as side effect with the goldfish memory…) I made a 15% dilution to aks for my favourite guinea pig’s expertise. And….W. likes it, with a “but”…He said, and he is getting better in it and more demanding; “Very good, but you need to round it off”. That’s the problem with guinea pigs after a while: They get better in dealing with the stuff you put on them and come up with comments that start to sound professional. Like…”hmmm, nice citrus, but a little bit too edgy”…or “oh…that smells like one you can buy”….
Unfortunately, my guinea pig is not that evolved yet, that he could tell me how exactly to round things off….

A self test this morning brought up a clear picture of….-somewhat nice, -needs maturation, -needs less myrrh, - needs more okoumal (just a hint more),- a touch ambergris might help, too and jasmin, to round things off. I will visit it tomorrow again, a goldfish hoping for new discoveries….

I have just finished writing finally my short review of version 2 on the quest of Marina’s Holy Grail on MadebyBlog

A project and discussion place that I like to visit and highly recommend to go from time to time (not because I comment there….). Thus, I still have the grail in my nose, and remember the scent of a one month old lavender trial that I sniffed yesterday on my hand. The holy grail and my lavender trial versions share some aspects, which is funny. Both are somewhat too synthetic. My lavender thing being a trial from a month ago has aged well, with a lot of “buts”. One “but” being that the dry down note sticked to my skin much too long and intense. I like my perfumes being strong and I like them to last, but after 12 hours it is enough. This little baby of mine (one puff of a dilution only) still sticks on my skin after 14 hours and keeps on going strong.

Thus, that’s no good and it’s a danger of working with stuff like Okoumal or Ambergris synthetics…they are so lasting and may easily become too dominant in the dry down. I also realized that (subconsciously) there is one line in it that I put in there based on my experience with the Orris fragrance: An interesting aspect ….with every trial that one makes, one advances and the next trial will build on a lesson learnt. Hopefully. Thus, my admiration for the two perfumers on madebyblog, too. I would not dare going public with my first trials. These two perfumers are brave as they expose themselves and allow us to get an insight into perfumery work like we all usually never get to witness.

With this in mind, I look forward to the coming days that will see me hopefully bringing in a greener line into the lavender trial and more woods with less synthi-dry-down.
But the priorities for the upcoming days are: Samples, emptying mail boxes, getting labels and cardboard boxes, checking perfume batches that sit and mature peacefully in a dark, cool place, waiting for x-mas.

So I read yesterday on one of my regularly visited and very liked blog (Scented Salamander)  that Ms famous Lopez will launch a new perfume. Of course, she will not do much herself, except for being there, I guess, and her new perfume features stuff like … I quote: “The juice opens on notes of pear and peach, leading to an exotic heart of amethyst freesia and muguet petals. The base is a blend of diamond musk and soft amber.”

Honestly, I became quite immune towards JL’s and Beckam’s and similar perfume descriptions and related marketing hickups. But this time, I just couldn’t hold it anymore. Lily-of-the-valley petals….and diamond musk. The next thing to come will probably be Opal Amber and Pearl Sandalwood or Platin Rose. It is simply rediculous. If I was JL, I would flush (turn red) and then use the flush to wash away the marketing blabla proposal, and hire another agency. The analytical mind comes in and I start wondering if there is a correlation. The more famous the figurehead is, the more exclusive the ingredients of her/his perfumes seem to be, diamonds and petals from the most exclusive flowers, and you start to wonder how many diamonds Ms Lopez dedicated from her gigantic private collection to create this diamond musk thing. Well, thank you Ms Lopez for sharing your stones. Unfortunately, I am afraid, your composition sounds as dead as your diamonds or Mr. unknown on the picture… seen in the cathedral in Narbonne, a memento mori on the grave of a bishop.

On the other hand, it looks as if the perfumes get better, the simpler the ingredients list is: I have a sample under my nose, and a smile on my face, going all the way up to my ears. The description of this sample simply says: “Agresic, sweet, herbal, woody - Goat hair, cedar, Seville lavender, hay, patchouli, beeswax, musk, white lotus. ” It is an all natural perfume and what Ms Lopez does not put into her soup, you will find here: Love.

It is the love for scents and natural ingredients that you can feel. It is the care of composing and the passion for fragrances. I have the paper strip under my nose and think of … wow. What a sexy scent. A brave perfumer to make such a scent. For sure not the average blabla fragrance. A scent that will shock a few, for sure, others will go with it on a journey to new land and will make exciting discoveries. I find a slightly green blend, with lots of Patchouli, blended in a way that brings out the best of patchouli… this animalic, soft powder, that so often hides behind mountains of wood. Top quality patchouli, too! And the fragrance is musky, for sure, but I have no clue how this effect was reached. Maybe it is Angelica Seeds or Abdelmoschus seeds. Or is it the goat hair. I have no clue, but who cares. There is an earthyness going with it that reminds me of oakmoss. It is an animalic (of course!) musk blended into a soft base, with hints of floral woods, never really sweet. As always with good blends, the individual notes merge into something new. What I like most about this scent on my paper strip: It is unlike many things I have sniffed lately. It is original. You can feel the creative hand aiming at creating something new.

Thus, if you like to cover yourself with Lopez diamonds and like to look like pink “my little pony” with lots of glittering stones: Forget this all natural musky adventure. If you want to find out what can be done, all naturally, with love and top quality naturals as ingredient, visit Anya’s garden, meet Pan and engage into a sexy adventure.  

There was a time in my life when I was dealing on the side with combinatorial chemistry…. here is another combinatorial approach that I have-I must admit- never tried so far. Please visit Luccia’s indieperfume.com blog to see what’s happening when combining Moroccan impressions. Enjoy.

 Contrary to my vacation’s excitement of new things appearing behind every corner and enjoying the easy part of life, yesterday and the coming days are somewhat routine days. Routine means for instance making sure those stocks are allright, stocks of raw materials and of perfumes and bottles. Right now I am preparing for our fashion vernissage event, jointly organised with Menachem Basman, a truly exciting trial for us, happening in less than a month.

Paper is probably one of the best inventions by man/women. (I would guess it was a woman inventing it… not for the shopping lists ….hehehe…but just because I feel that making paper is somewhat related to weaving or knitting.) Paper is a great thing having around you, allowing externalizing part of your brain, and amazingly enough, it is even in our days not replaced by electronic means. It will, sooner or later, though. And you can create a lot with paper. Making little air planes, write love letters, shopping lists, or produce thousands of pages of regulation and legislation text. This use of paper is inflationary and you find paper printed with black letters on it telling you what when not to do everywhere, unfortunately also in Russia.
It is such a pity, but I learnt yesterday that it is not that easy to import perfumes to Russia. Pascal from Medieval art&vie has contacts to a nice Swiss man, living in Russia, engaged in export/import/sales, and we aimed at bringing our perfumes to Russia together, to Moscow as a matter of fact. Imagine: Tauer Perfumes in Zurich, Bruchsal, Upingham, Hollywood and Moscow. Cool, ain’t it? Obviously there is an alcohol regulation that makes things difficult. We continue working on it, but it will need some more time. Therefore, for all my Russian friends and perfume lovers: Patience, please ….and you can always get your perfumes from Switzerland directly, this works.
Talking marketing today: The sample flyers for the L’air du désert marocain and the Le Maroc pour elle arrived. Two heavy parcels with thousands of flyers that are styled in the same line as is the Lonestar Memories flyer. I look forward to sending out lots of samples now, easily prepared and all styled through following one line. What we see coming up here is something like a corporate identity. Which is somewhat twofold; one line for the web, the letters, the business card and then a clear line for the perfumes, each with an individual note, fitting its theme. Bottom line: Two more boxes filled with paper.

Back home again, and after a couple of hundred funny spam mails successfully put into the delete folder, there is light on the horizon. Being home feels good too; the comfort of one’s one few meters square and the smell of home. You need to be away for a while to sense your home’s scent. Returning home after a week or two gives you this scentorama that strangers get when entering your home. A favorite theme of mine: You need to go far away  to see things close by…..
Thus, what was it like, the tauer scentorama? I was able to sniff some Okoumal from the left (the lab… I spilled some of it once….it is truly remarkable lasting!), then there was the stinky orchid from the right (blooming since January and stinking a little bit like rotten vanilla pudding with a touch of cistus), then there was some leather from the shoe department, and a soft cloud of what makes my home my beloved scent castle. A scent that makes me feel home. How to describe it? Difficult…it is somehow the scent of the past ten years, cooking, living, sleeping, cleaning, ….
In the sense of going far to see things close by: I had a short whiff of my last lavender version and did not like it that much anymore. It may rest in peace. I will try something else the coming days. Also to follow in the coming days: Samples, getting back to routine things again, finally deciding about the Orris.
A last word here: Thank you all for your truly exciting comments on the Orris. I had never anticipated such passion and joy. Reading these comments was like…like getting a new perfume and going downtown and people come by and make compliments. Thank you all!

Dear readers
It is my pleasure to announce another interview appearing tomorrow on Jenny’s perfume making blog; I was told it is a nice interview with a perfumer and a picture or two ;-)
I am on my way home and if everything goes write I shall have pizza in my living room in about 4 hours. I can’t wait to sit on my perfumery desk again and start playing with scents.
Greetings from somewhere in the train, approaching Zurich in the rain.