Welcome to a perfumer's blog on perfumery

Please make sure you are checking in tomorrow! Starting tomorrow, this blog will feature sand dunes, a mountain and a few surprises.

But beforehand: I continue wondering about luxury these days, now that a super-trooper perfume is launched exclusively in Zurich. Super trooper as it tops what we have defined so far as luxury; we are talking Murano glass, Teak wood, Chinese silk and gold leaves: Xerjoff.
This is what I read today early in the morning at 7  in the newspaper, and with a brain still trying to get acquainted to the concept of getting up early I start wondering where we are heading with all these luxury things going on around us and that maybe it would be time for a contra punto. Something subversive, like a fragrance that everyone wants, that is selling for almost nothing, but that you can not get if you are an oligarch or otherwise rich.

And I think about another contra punto: Make a really good, rich fragrance, with lots of really good rich ingredients, reduce the entire packaging to a glass bottle and nothing else. The simplest bottle you can get. And sell this as zero fancy line.

  True luxury: Watching the sun rise, enjoying yet another day on a beautiful planet.
Picture: The sun rising over the Savannah, seen in Namibia, 2007

No post today, but a life sign from the “bottle on a journey”…..

A green, very green post on the Non Blonde Blog (thank you!)

more here on the Non-Blonde Blog

Good morning to you all and fragrant greetings from the banks of the river Limmat where the sky is clear and the air fresh. The pictures below show you a detail of my daily way to work, crossing the river, looking towards down town, with a railway bridge limiting an otherwise endless crisp morning sky.

When diluting the final rose version yesterday, I realized that the latest vetiver version can be diluted, too. Thus, rose and vetiver appear again on my event horizon. Unfortunately, my nose is not 100% there, yet. But even at 90 % or so: olala!…this rose is heavy. And it is there, in heavy rose land, very present indeed.

Like the vetiver. Olala. Now….I kindly ask you for a little bit more patience. I will have a closer look at the rose soon, but first: Enjoy your crisp mornings where ever you wake up.

and a train passing over the bridge

Last week end I officially exchanged links with a blog that I featured on my private blogroll since a while: Aromatisches Blog. It is in German, and brings articles on fragrant stuff and some hints and tips of making things yourself. Like Papier d’Arménie; You find an instruction how to make this scented smoking paper here: http://www.aromatisches-blog.de/?p=92 . I have never tried it, but will have to one day after Christmas….
Today Aromatisches Blog features Linalool, one of the wonder molecules in perfumery, and I especially appreciated the statement “it brings about lightness and sets highlights there where mixtures of pure natural compounds might be to closely grouped together.” Of course, a similar aspect might be tried to be reached with a coriander/lavender mixes when employing naturals only. But then, linalool indeed comes in handy quite often. A must have. And probably employed in my last rose trial, too. This trial is ready for dilution now. I will do so tonight, hoping for a stable nose. What I sniff right now, sitting next to me in the train, sprayed on toilette paper, looks interesting indeed. Well, at least one nice discovery this cold morning….
Finally….., what follows next is the daily bulletin from the Tauer sick bay…. nose a little bit clogged, but at around 95% of its capacity, coughing worse, head ache stabilized, number of fellow coughers growing, everyone seems to get sick these days around me.

Fragrant greetings

(Picture: Le Maroc pour elle, seen Sunday evening in Zurich….)

You know this feeling? You are at home, relaxed, look forward to a relaxing, zero-work, 100% relaxation week end when the phone rings. On the phone you are told by Mr. x, that this and that happened and within the glimpse of an eye you realize: Oups. The week end is gone.

I thought I had huge piles of samples and l’air and le maroc and other stock. Until Saturday, when getting the order for Medieval art&vie ready. Shocking news: No stock left of packed samples, and Le Maroc and L’air. Thus, happy sample making and pouring over the week end. I am glad I still have some pictures to show you from Munich otherwise I would have to bore you again with pouring fragrance stories.

Thus: Munich! There is ONE great place to visit for perfume addicts: Suendhaft in the centre of town. This, by the way is true for on-line shoppers, too and you may get stuff there you do not get anywhere else!

It is a place where you might get a great coffee served

with happy folks and dogs around

cool interiors and….

perfumes! and more….

(some of which I really liked)

and some cosmetics

that will make you beautiful for the price of a little car….

This post is born at the airport Zurich, where in a couple of moments my flight will leave. Sorry, but the Munich II post will come later as my plans to get it ready yesterday were drowned in sweat. I got kind of a flue thing yesterday, shaky legs and a body heating like crazy. Thus, a couple of aspirin and 2.5 lt orange juice later we all hope for the best.

Greetings from  Zurich , where I sniff around the scent strip with black orchid on it, ….and more to be expected towards the end of the week at the latest.

To be honest with you: It is not my key competence to make soap, respectively scented soap. (I use transparent glycerine soap) It reminds me a little bit of making scented candles: Likewise, crafting scented soaps is quite different to making perfumes. First, you have to be very careful not to use material that is sensitive to alkaline environment. Like you put in the most magnificent flower and what comes out after a week or so is a dark-brown foully compost pile. Not everything you may use in perfumes works in soaps. And then, the soap should smell nice in a linear way for a couple of weeks, meaning: It should not change its scent too much when being used. And then, you do not want a soap scent to stick to your fingertips for the rest of the week…..but nevertheless the soap should smell nice and radiantly give away its encapsulated scented treasure, and thus,  be present enough to fill a bathroom with scented waves….like waves of mandarins with an ambergris touch.

In French this translates into “mandarines ambrées” (I think so at least; the translation has not passed the W.-factor’s French teacher control yet!).

I can tell you: It took me a while and quite some fiddling around to get this ambergris hint, the little woody vibrant touch that I wanted to be there, lifting the green mandarins without transforming the bathroom into Givaudan’s Okoumal production facility. In a sense, the ambergris line shall bring out the colours, point the nose to a mandarin that is fresh, green, clean.
Les Mandarines ambrées have survived an extensive bathroom test for weeks in Zurich, they pleased the eye and the nose and the skin as well. Now we wait for a time slot to pour some more for x-mas…
(Picture: Clementine, seen in Zurich, on my little Clementine tree)
Next post: Munich II, but only if we are lucky as I have to go to Brussels tomorrow morning

So we went to Munich. “we” translates into Vero and me. It was the first real winter morning this season with snow on the roads and on some leaves that were too late falling off the trees. We were both very excited, as this was our first trip together abroad ;-)
We went, sustainably and with a built-in thrill factor (strikes!) by train, and arrived in time in Munich, which is in light of the strike a little miracle.

(picture: The locomotive, seen from behind, proof of our Deutsche Bahn venture)

Then…we, the perfumers, met Sands, our host at Lothringer 13 where we got all excited and started to sniff almost immediately in Sand’s perfume court, inside the exhibition. Wow! If you are close by: Visit this dedicated room inside the exhibition. You are free to sniff all of Sand’s fragrances and trust me….he’s got many! IN the following you find some pictures of Thursday evening….
Konstantin Mihov

Vero Kern

Sands Murray Wassinsk

And then there were sessions….

Spontaneous sniffings…

There was a huge exhibition of Sand’s art

more….

Sand’s mother from the US

Sand’s father to the left

And then there were more visitors…

Drugs…

and more highlights.

Well, and now… I am still totally thrilled and excited and going through some post-Munich depression, sitting in the train to Berne again.
In order to be documented here for later generations: I gave a talk, too and was addressing the question: “Perfumes, why perfuming, I talked a little bit about what Sands and me did together for the Orris, and addressed questions on object and subject in perfumery and perfumes.” More on the last question maybe later.

And off we go, hopefully by train, to Munich. We: Vero and me, and later in Munich we will meet Konstantin, where we will then meet Sands and officially open his exhibition. We will each give a perfume and perfumery related talk, like “why” and “how” and “where”….

Thus, wish us luck and see you next week again, same station, with news on the X-mas soaps…

Fragrant greetings to you all

This post is going to be short. First, because I am somewhat unfocused after Space Odyssey 2001 yesterday on ARTE TV. Love the film, love the 60-ies crystal-clear vision of a bright future of man, wearing narrow black ties and suits in meeting rooms on moon….one day I have to get a book on the film. There must be more than what I am getting. Like HAL = IBM, like the colours….red inside the space ship, like in a gigantic synthetic uterus, but then: Why is the camera of HAL red, too?
Secondly, I should not think about HAL and Jupiter right now, but rather about my upcoming short phone interview, with a beauty and life style magazine about self starters in the business, something like from passion to profession (my words…). Feeling honoured, of course, I look forward to the chat on the phone. At least this interview is for real.

You would not believe it, but I get quite some requests to send entire perfume bottles to Mr/Ms xyz, working for magazine () doing a thing on lavender/chypre/…. and a sample is not sufficient to appreciate my fragrances and that the article will be a feature article and that I should answer one, or two questions, like …. usually the questions are, well: naive.
So, this time, it is for real.

(picture: From www.palantir.net. Found more internet resources on 2001: A space odyssey here on http://www.palantir.net/2001/gallery/mystery.html )