Welcome to a perfumer's blog on perfumery

Returning home late yesterday, I witnessed the first snow flakes sneaking into town. Overnight they joined forces and covered Zurich with a few centimeters of white fluffy cold stuff. The first snow!

What could be nicer today than mixing an new batch of Le Maroc pour elle! I will do so after having poured and bottled and boxed Le Maroc and others later in the afternoon. Mixing thick rose absolutes (tons of it) with jasmine (even more) and dark rich woods will allow us to forget the white layers outside. Now that’s a treat!

I send you thick heavy clouds of Moroccan flowers….

  Picture: My last rose

under fat, heavy October snow, Zurich, October 31 2008

Yep, 25 % more for Kephalis. That’s what I learned when I got the bill for my last shiped order from my preferred supplier of essential oils.

Chandler Burr said (in The perfect scent) that Kephalis smells like “brown butter plus shag carepeting”, I would more go for woody amber with a green undertone and the comfort of a male chest, of a 25 year old, freshly washed with unscented glycerine soap, not too hairy. Or something like it. There is a touch swet skin and sweat in Kephalis that makes it more than your average woody amber scent. I like it a lot.

And one of these days I want to go for a Kephalis -  Stemone- undecavertol (woody-amber chest leaves) line in a fragrance….
Anyhow: 25% more per kilo; and I got a letter from them telling me that the market for essential oils and fragrant molecules is upside down, low harvests, more expensive logistics, increased demand. You name it.

Not that it would bother me too much. This piece of information just tells me that when it comes to demand of fragrant oils we are far from being in a recession right now. It is just another stone in a larger picture, together with more expensive boxes, ribbons, packaging material etc etc. you get the message.

Pictures: Stones at the beach in San Clemente, by Andy
Chandler’s website: http://www.chandlerburr.com/

Ha!

Hyacinth, or the mechanic as you like it, is back and made an apparition in my e-mail inbox yesterday. I will publish the comment later today on my website. The comment is refreshing as the mechanic seems to appear somewhat wimpy, more on the fresh “Russian olive oil” side than oily sexy skin. Reading A.’s line (Thank you, A.) I imagine a pizza boy oiling his pizza wheel indeed, rather than a mechanic. Well…. pizza boys anyone?

To be serious: I love the comment for it is a contrapunto…Thus, it looks as if this week is a week where I write about things coming from the past. And writing these lines I listen to the the doors, Break On Through …

  mechanic holding tool, uploaded by Geri-Jean on www.sxc.hu . A great photo , one of many from Geri-Jean.

I just realized, while thinking about what to write, that it is only 9 weeks left until X-mas, and about 10 weeks until the end of this year. This leaves me with just a few weeks to prepare for the last few weeks of this year. We will have to pour and box some bottles more and I look forward to do so. And , like last year and the year before last year,  I want to pour soaps as give-away for the shop in Zurich and friends. And, after serious debate with myself, I decided not to change their scent.
Thus, Mandarines ambrées again…. I will have to buy some more mandarines oil and make sure I get the soap, too. Last year I presented on this blog a picture that I later used for packaging the soaps here on this blog. (this is why “mandarines ambrées ” is ranking number 1 on google. I will not reinvent the wheel and use the picture for the packaging again. Thus… here’s the post with the picture.
Looking even further forward into 2009, the view becomes much less clear. I feel that 2009 will be a challenging year for many of us. And so far, I could not decide yet on where to focus for 2009. Slippery roads ahead….
Picture: A road in Joshua Tree National Park

Besides working on an ever growing excel list, featuring my stocks of fragrant materials that I need in production, I am planning for December 13 2008 in Zurich. This is a Saturday and in the afternoon Pascal from Medieval art&vie and myself invite for our traditional Scent Apéro before X-mas. Thus, if you happen to live in the region: Mark you calendar. December 13, later afternoon.

As always, we will offer drinks, have a little lecture by Egon (who is a professional speaker/reader) and of course provide some scents and fragrances.
This year I will show some roses, rose absolutes and essential oils, and some scents that go well with roses. And I want to give samples of the chypre rose to folks attending. I showed this rose in LA, last spring. Thus, I am mixing a little lot to produce samples today, too and the invitation flyer needs to be done.
But first: Excel… trying to keep stocks under control…. and yes: happy fooling around later ;-)

Picture: A rose, slightly abstracted using Flash, I use the picture (probably) for the invitation flyer.

“his under-the-radar status is already endangered”… with these words Maggie Bullock finished her short description of Le Maroc pour elle in the ELLE of November. How true! -> I got a letter from the Swiss AHV yesterday, our state social security thing, asking me to fill out forms and later to pay additional charges… so I truly came up on their radar ;-)

If you get your hands on this November Issue of ELLE, I invite you to read Maggie’s article dealing with  fragrances, obsessions, sniffas and stage fivers (love this term!)…

And I shall hopefully be back on track, working on fragrances on Thursday. Can’t wait to open those bottles again!
ELLE Cover
Notes from the underground
And le Maroc pour elle. Love it!

….and, of course, for you , too!

Some pictures from the Scentbar…

  where we were chatting with famous writers (see glass mirror), while the W.-factor was taking pictures (again:see window’s glass mirror)…

Where we had fun…

before leaving for…

Joshua Tree again!

  this time camping…

watching the sky….

observing the rare (very!) and shy (extreme) bighorn sheep (Ovis candensis nelsoni)

or watching foxes ( vulpes macrotis arsipus)

and wonderful plants….

looking over breath taking sceneries…

Towards San Diego, moving on,  we saw birds over Salton sea

burnt trees in Cleveland forest

… just to return to the scent bar….

for some sniffing…

to have fun again….

So I am back from my US trip and before showing some pictures tomorrow: it is again with the greatest pleasure that I invite you to check out the latest Sniffapalooza magazine. Enjoy this month’s entire magazine and two Vetiver dance reviews in the Aedes section. Enjoy…

Greetings to you all from Zurich, where I safely landed yesterday, right into a fabulous October sunny day.

And guess what: It was close to a perfect trip!

Meeting folks at the luckyscent scentbar was great fun. Pictures will follow shortly. Only topped by hiking and camping in the desert, watching the milky way with its billions of stars, sleeping in moonlight and dreaming the dream of simple life. Now, I am back again, faced with the real life which is fine, too. I just miss those steaks…

  Steaks and beans in Joshua National Park, camping on Indian cove campground.