Welcome to a perfumer's blog on perfumery

I could not resist picking this title for today’s post as I was running around last weekend like there were 4 Mio $ to win. Well, I did not run for my life, of course, and my physical appearance still does not match with Schwarzenegger’s of the 80-ies, but still…quite busy.

Looking back, things look much less spectacular than I feel that they are. I guess I am somewhat biased here….thus, besides the usual stuff such as pouring and bottling le Maroc:
The flyer is sent off to the printers!

The sticker going on the bottle got its ok after a final check of the proof and is in print now!

The ribbon arrived (shiny green). The first batch of the sample bottles should be delivered in the next ten days. And….
The Rêverie au jardin went into dilution! Hurray. This is always thrilling, because it is the first time you (ie I) can see how the fragrance develops when produced in larger quantity and with zero ethanol when maturing as concentrate. I can tell you (…biased): It got excellent.  I am prematurely wearing it. Prematurely as the ethanol diluted fragrance needs to mature for a couple of weeks, too. The maturation process of the concentrate needs also a couple of weeks; all compounds of a perfume are mixed together and then allowed to react, to find an equilibrium in a sense. Often, the scent gets softer, looses its edges, gets balanced. When testing new scents and preparing mods, I can not always employ undiluted stuff and hence, the maturation may be slower in the mods compared to the real fragrance soup (dilution effect). Furthermore, the accuracy of mixing is much higher when going to litres scale.

Which brings me to the end and the beginning of this post in a sense. I have a new cellar room available to store my ethanol cans. I run out of place and the last 50 litres I got made me think about getting more space; fooling around with these ethanol cans will sooner or later bring my upper body to match with Arnold’s. Now that’s a nice perspective…

At the end of this working day and week… a sunset over Zurich full of warmth; an intense shower of red and orange, sending us to a peaceful night. Finally: The flyer for the Rêverie au jardin is ready and after a last quick check it will go in print. Time to dream of something else….
Fragrant wishes for your weekend.

(Picture: Sunset over Zurich) 

Somewhat sentimental as we are…we watched my fair lady lately, the English version, of course. Ahh…what a lovely movie! In its German version, the rain in spain …translates into “es grünt so grün wenn Spaniens Blüten blühn”, which back translated brings you again to “it greens so green when the flowers in Spain are blooming”. In the end neither this nor that makes much sense. It just sounds nice and I admit: I am loving it for all its kitch. Which brings me neatlessly to yesterday’s radical change in terms of Hyacinth….

It greens pretty much in my perfume lab, too. A first sniff the morning after brings out a green note with flowers (not from spain, though, more a somewhat harsh May morning ….no jasmin in it yet….). The overall composition is not finished and waits for my return tonight, it needs some work in the base, and a serious line, to compensate the kitch….

More my fair lady including the rain in spain: http://www.audrey1.com/lady.html 

Greetings from Zurich, where the rain seems to stay in the plain and where it greens in perfumery labs…Have a wonderful day
 

I have a good friend who’s favourite saying is “tue Gutes und sprich davon”, which translates into “do good and talk about it” and he usually does so in a business context. For instance in meetings, where adults sit together, often in circles, often with little motivation to do so, the few talking to the many about their heroic endeavours of last week. The many listen to the few and praise the hour when this modern version of purgatorium ends.

I usually write to do lists, dream sometimes about new scents and observe human being behaviour patterns, like women tending to excuse themselves before they say something, men interrupting them more often then other men, or both sexes smiling when they say something unpleasant.

Rather unpleasant was also the latest mod on the hyacinth-mechanic thing. But luckily enough I woke up early enough today to think about it. Maybe it is time to try something else there, as I do not find myself there where I want to be. I want to try to wooden things up. You know…the mechanic is troubling me ;-)

In this context…I  am glad to see that I am not the only one sitting in Monday meetings. More about Mondays, feeling sexy (without mechanics) and meetings, in Green eye’s post, that I found truly lovely, for entirely selfish reasons … In that sense, you are free to leave this blog now and visit Greeneye’s….Go - From now on sin no more.

 

I had a thought or two on Chayaruchama’s comment of yesterday, dealing with “a fragrance for him and her”. First it is really hard to find a different sentence that means the same and is less bleached. Second: The more I think about it… Why mention this “his and hers” at all?

I am convinced that in perfumery the lines between his and hers are hard to draw anyway and  do not really make sense. If you feel like wearing Hugo boss bottled, do it, whether you are male or less so. Thus, why mention it anyway? Let’s be brave here….Let’s rather use this precious space for a few words that matter….

Finally, we are here:

“Rêverie au jardin,
a classical fragrance, twinkling like a star,
caresses your journey, through green lands.

Tangy galbanum and gentle fir
circle a green mountain lavender.

Bulgarian rose softens an airy and
mystical frankincense.

Abelmoschus seeds embrace a woody vetiver
and balmy tonka beans.
ohhh…I love it!

Watching the stars yesterday evening, white little crystals glued on a dark velvet cover over Zurich, I thought in a few other dark skies with blinkering stars, like in Bryce Canyon a long, long time ago! Ahh… I want to go to the US again, and be it just for a few days! The next window of opportunity is probably early May…we will see. The most beautiful stars I have seen in Africa, in the wild, and our hopes are that this year’s trip to Namibia will allow us to enjoy this beauty again; a dark sky, darker than anything you have seen before, and stars, as many as you can imagine.
Watching the stars I thought about CO2 and that I have used up my quota of what emissions would be considered sustainable since many years. Exactly now, while writing these lines, the sun goes up, behind the hill, orange golden, promising another sunny, slightly too warm day in Switzerland. It is about time to invest heavily into brains, present and future, to address challenges that we will still face when the war in Iraq is the story of the grand-grand-parents.
Thus, watching the stars, I looked back at a weekend full of computer work and a couple of minutes thinking on the sentences that will go on the flyer. The Rêverie au jardin still needs this sentence or two, describing the notes. Half a pack of sweet gelatine bears, a beer and a few laughs later(W still is not getting used to perfume language): This is what we got so far.
Mind you looking at the following lines? I am better in watching the stars than composing and writing proper English. Greetings and thank you.
Rêverie au jardin is a fragrance for him and her,
caressingly taking you on a journey,
through green lands.

Tangy galbanum and gentle fir balsam
circle a green mountain lavender head note.

Bulgarian rose softens an airy and
mystical frankincense in the heart.

The gentle embrace of Abelmoschus seeds
lifts the woody and balmy notes of
vetiver and tonka beans in the body.

There is this truly wonderful power of the human mind, allowing us to do marvellous things, like changing the face of planet earth, sending money forth and and oil back all over the globe, solving the greatest mysteries of the universe and dominating the weak body that always weeps and asks for care. Or like watching TV when you really should be in bed. Mouth open, staring into a screen and watching other human beings falling in love, quite irrationally, fighting, solving a mystery and then …well, a sad ending it was in a sense, at around 00.30. I love dramatic love stories, not the modern plastic antiseptic ones where going to be lovers have to meet their parents, more the Romeo and Julia style, with drama and suspense, because….well, because I think we are -without drugs- nowhere as close to our own  annihilation as in these precious moments when we fall in love and some hormones trigger changes in our brain that let us change everything with a snip of a finger.

It can be one look into the eyes, or…. one sniff and we are programmed for the rest of our life, or at least it may start there. Imagine…wearing the wrong perfume that day!

You all know the classical arrangement in movies and books: A hero, in 90% of all instances a hormone boosted male, sometimes even with botox soothened forehead, goes out there to save the world or what is left of it. His mission is paved with dead bodies, exotic locations, sometimes quite dirty locations like old factories, too!, beautiful women and the final showdown extends epically, with the bad guy still fighting back when the average guy would have died 7 deaths in the mean time. The good guy wins, usually because he is more clever. He has something or finds something that ultimately does the trick, like using an old battery or a car front light to finally exterminate the stupid bad guy. Now, that is a medial mirror of our self-vision, a portrait by the movies, and an appreciation by the audience: The human race is saved by cleverness, not by brutal force.

So far so good.

Now comes the best: In perfumery it is exactly the same. Here, the good guy is the perfumer, fighting for the liberation of the best fragrance there is on planet earth from an imaginary prison.
Here, representing the 90% of all male perfumers, less botoxed, the perfumer hops around in down town Switzerland to create his fragrance, his mission is paved with half filled mod bottles, dirty locations like the stock room in the cellar, beautiful women not taking notice at all and his showdown extends epically… right now he is waiting for an ordered goody, or two, from a friendly allied company, hoping that this together with the old car battery will do the trick.

Greetings to you all.