Welcome to a perfumer's blog on perfumery

Sooner or later things come back in life. I never had typewriting classes in school and no teacher ever watched my fingers while typing on qwertz -like arranged plastic things. Which is kind of strange: My fingers type daily for uncounted hours many building blocks into a machine, allowing me to make a living, to transform thoughts and decisions into readable information.
Sometimes school just wouldn’t teach what you really need; the degree to which my being capable of reading and understanding (well… the last is a thing of the past) Cesar’s “de bello gallico” in latin helps me survive in the digital age may be disputed. Well, I guess it is -on historical perspective- remarkable anyhow that we know to read and have something to read. Being born 200 years ago or even worse: at the wrong place on this planet today, chances are high we all wouldn’t know how to read. This is a troubling fact and I am the longer the more convinced that the only effective way to change this world is by enabling its inhabitants to read. Preferrably something modern, like the declaration of the human rights.
I learned typing myself, following the instructions from a book that would tell me which fingers to use, and then typing, copying by hand endless pages from a variety of books that I needed to understand for school tests and exams. I learned by typing and copying, in a way opening a second input line, extending the flow of letters coming in from the eyes, which -by the way- are just a prolongation of the brain, kind of a telescope allowing our grey fatty wobbly matter to check what is happening outside.

Things come back….That’s what I thought at 10 pm yesterday, when finally finishing the last mail. If I hadn’t copied that one page from this “learn to typewrite” book, hadn’t trained myself for years before, I would still be typing this very morning….. I love it!

A while ago was the buy nothing day which brought me back a line of thinking that I read in a newspaper lately. I do not remember who it was but I remember the line of thinking. The culmination point basically was that modern citizens in a society like ours got important and hence valuable to society because they became consumers. This is true for a materialistic society that builds on the production and consumption of materials. Consumers, buying, using and throwing things ultimately away again just to buy more, are a paradigm change compared. Compare the value of a citizen in previous ages: Close to zero. Bottomline: As long as we buy we are safe.
This , of course, is a rather simplistic view of things, but there is some truth in it, and one can start thinking about many side aspects, such as how many consumers this planet may stand, how the shift to a non-materialistic society may happen,….

Besides sharing such strange thoughts: Here is another one, much more perfume related….W. discovered Le Maroc pour elle for himself and joined to club of men wearing this flowerbomb made with tons of rose and jasmine absolue (and thus providing some income for Moroccan women, picking the flowers. Hard work indeed, but better paid than working on a farm).  Thus, coming back from my mandarine tree, nose buds still filled up to the very top with indoles and salicylates, slightly narcotized, entering a cloud of rose and jasmine on a woody bed from the Le Maroc pour elle sprayed recklessly, I wondered…one of these days I have to make a Le Maroc pour lui. Lighter, woodier, but still a hippie-dirty-flower-power kind of pleasure. Not today and not tomorrow, but one of these days this might be an adventure.

Thinking about rosy adventures I left the house entering streets in grey, foggy clouds in the city, soaking up all noise, remembering us of winter ante portas.

This year’s November was breathtakingly wonderful. Warm like in early summer, sunny and colourful. Nevertheless, I decided about two, three weeks ago that it is time for my Mandarine tree to come home, into the house again, and wait there for next year’s spring.

Frequent readers of this blog may still remember the joy of my discovery of a single flower on this Mandarin tree about a year ago. Now, I must tell you: A miracle has happened, transforming my little Mandarin bush into a super-power like flowering tree. It is full with buds and flowers from the very top to the bottom, clouds of sweet scent are in the air, a mixture between the clear green softness of lily of the valley and jasmine’s sensuality, it is wonderful…but I have no clue what happened to the bush during the summer months. Is it a desperate trial to pass on its genes before the winter comes? We will see…story unfolding in a sense.
Another story unfolding is the Lavender fragrance. I still have my latest version. Some find it is finished and ask me not to change anything anymore. A few perfume lovers gave me feedback so far. I had to learn that Provencal Summer might be a nice name for the development phase, but as I never intended to create a scented picture of Southern France’s landscape, it is somewhat misleading.

I want to correct this expectation right away:
The fragrance is green, with a Lavender top note, a rose line, some spices, a musky, flowery resionous fir note with a hint of a tobacco line, a Frankincense airiness and woods in the background. Lavender is my picture of a fragrance built on Lavender sitting somewhere up in the hills of Southern France, but stretching far out into unknown landscapes and exotic forests, an airy and crisp, classy scent….
(pix: One of many mandarine tree flowers, seen in Zurich 2006)

Ethanol. Dream stuff when taken in the right amount, nightmare liquid when taken too much, transporter of fragrant goodies. And…highly regulated, which translates into: Not easy to get in pure form, needs to be denaturated (like using bitrex to make it undrinkable) and even then it stays regulated and not easy to get.
Except if you have friendly, customer oriented people like the folks from AlcoSuisse, the profit center of the Swiss ethanol administration, dealing with your ethanol requests. So far, I could always just call them, tell them I need more and got it. No questions asked once they knew I make perfumes.

Today, things got even better. As I have ordered the longer the more, I will get an official authorization in the next few days that will allow me to buy, and buy more, and even more….hurray! And thank you to the friendly folks from AlcoSuisse and the Swiss Ethanol Administration.

On the picture at the bottom of this post: The sky over Zurich, seen last Friday, from below, in the evening, a few minutes before it got dark.
Tomorrow I will see about the same thing but from above, on my way to Brussels, lovely headquarter of so many commissions and briefing organisations (that’s what they call lobby offices up there), where Europe’s visions meet reality.
I will have to meet reality soon, too. At the latest when deciding what to do with the lavender theme, and how to move on there. But for the next few days, I allow myself to watch the sky and dream of pink clouds and green lavender….
Fragrant dreams for your day

The mystery park in Switzerland is closing these days. It was a theme park, featuring mysteries, from the pyramids to aliens landing somewhere in south america. It highlights one aspect of modern life: Mysteries vanish. Our ancestors could watch the moon and wonder what is happening on the other side. We happen to have seen the back side of our yellow companion. At least some representants of our species flew around there. And thanks to google earth we get a clearer view what is happening in our neighbour’s garden than ever. The last mysteries that remain are somewhere in New Mexico where the a few aliens are waiting for their relatives, soaked in ethanol, hidden by an unknown US agency, and …hands on perfume bottles. I came across this mystery while surfing and got this question by a few clients.
Now, contrary to the aliens in New Mexico, this mystery is solved easily. The hand is a cut-out of the picture that you find on the flyer front page (the flyer used for the samples and for packaging Orris). It is the hand in the upper left corner, slightly modified to better bring out the shape of it on the glass bottle.

In order to pay full tribute to this picture….. I asked Sands to choose a picture for the Orris scent. There is an earthyness in the Orris scent and a very erotic line, it is a dirty scent in a way. The picture that Sands Murray-Wassinks came up with, was a diapositive of one of his early performances in Zurich, which fits nicely. In this performance (I did not know him back then) he was nacked, drawing a huge picture on the wall, only with his body.
I saw the picture and immediately knew: This is it.  It is very true, every line on the picture was brought there by direct physical contact. In a sense this picture is very intimate, very close, it is what is left after this body touched the wall. The hand on the left hand corner created this, together with the rest of his body. I can feel a sense of desire in this picture, especially when looking at this hand. It is a hand that touched the wall in an extatic creative process. On the perfume bottle, this hand might be interpreted as allegory, too. An allegory for a creative process, an allegory for intimacy, for body contact, for desire.

Many bears are not sleeping in Siberia, yet. It is still too warm for their hibernation, thus they stroll around; at least that’s what the newspaper said yesterday. I wonder whether the bears really care about hibernation. Maybe they find it ok to reduce their winter sleep to one month or two, enjoying the rest of the year with healthy food such as salmon, berries and some deer on the side.
Here in Switzerland, we enjoy a nice November so far, too. Many trees are still colourful and some of my pot flowers still bloom, as temperatures haven’t dropped below zero on my garden place, yet. It is still warm during the day and from time to time it makes you wonder whether there are not some positive side effects of this global warming thing … a naive view of course, entirely selfish, but….
Another entirely selfish thing is this post; its sole purpose is to send greetings to Russia, to Vladimir and other perfume lovers. I apologize that my Russian is so bad (well, to be honest: it is not existent) and that we have to communicate with digital translators in the middle (which works amazingly well)
Thus, thank you for your passion and fragrant wishes to Russia.

Momo is nice. He works for DHL, drives around in Zurich with his yellow car and brings me parcels. Usually, I am not at home. Then Momo has to leave a yellow paper with numbers that I hardly ever can read, telling me that he was here, and I spend an evening, trying to get through on the phone and get a line, listening to endless repetitions of how important my call is. Sometimes I wonder, why I have to wait so long if my call is important. But then, after a while, I get through and , like yesterday, I talk to nice people, tell them that Momo was here and I wasn’t. We then try to figure out the numbers on Momo’s piece of paper and ask him to come back again. With every visit by Momo, I realize that the bottle neck in globalization is the final delivery to my house….
Today Momo brought me 4×20 kg of paper;and he helped me bring it all downstairs (amazing how heavy paper can be). Momo really is nice. The paper comes in many boxes, a pile standing in the living room right now, waiting to be distributed. It is a leporello featuring everything about Morocco…perfumes, travel, calligraphy, handicrafts and more. We will do some experiments with it. One being a mailing in one quarter of Zurich, to see whether we can interest potential clients. I am now a proud member of the businesses that fill up your letterbox …

The leporello design is by Tauer, the content by the four of us, travel=Brahim Tours, calligraphy=Daniel Reichenbach, handicrafts=Medieval art&vie and perfumes…well I guess you know.
Thank you Momo.

It is November 15 and finally Orris is sold and shipped from one round of the globe to the other. It was tight and a few bottles are still in the air, somewhere over the ocean towards lovely distributors, approaching their final destination.
I must admit: I never received so many e-mails and enthousiastic comments  for a scent in such a short time. Thank you all.

I must tell you: Working together with Sands Murray-Wassink was fun, asking him to take the burden over, asking him to come up with a visual line for the sample flyer front image was an idea I am still proud of.

I must confess: I am already scared of the day when we run out of the 200 bottles…..

And finally,  here’s the secret of today, coming right from the perfumer’s mouth: I forgot to apply it when leaving home this morning and have no sample with me either. Thus, I will have to wear my lavender trial version…..