This is actually a happy post although the title let ‘s you guess it might not be. The postman was busy yesterday, bringing me a lot of things: fragrant raw materials that I have been waiting for since….October 2011!  Finally, I have (almost) all ready to mix Loretta, the second fragrance from the Tableau de Parfums series. These fragrances in the Tableau de Parfums series are  inspired by movie portraits in Woman’s Picture, a film created by Brian Pera, but -contrary to what I read the other day in a comment- they are not celebrity scents or perfume made for a particular human being. I think that’s important to mention again.

Loretta will launch in autumn 2012 and it is getting time to produce it. One message from this post is: if you see a fragrance in the shelfs in autumn 2012, its logistics and production started eventually 12 months ago. Add another 12-24 months for its creation and you have timeline from start to launch of 2-3 years.  Frightening, isn’t it? Right now, I am waiting for one last molecule. In the mean time, I make all ready for the launch of Miriam, the first fragrance from Tableau de Parfums, in Italy, where we plan to present it early May at Campomarzio, in Rome. I am really, very much, looking forward to presenting Miriam in Italy. I feel that Miriam will find a lot of fans in the south.

Bringing Miriam to Italy translates into some translation work, too. With the 50 ml size Miriam comes a novelette, written by Brian Pera. This novelette, called “From the desk of Miram Masterson”, shows an other sides of the character Miriam and goes beyond the movie part. Both, the story and the movie, are part of the Miriam 50 ml packaging, by the way. And for those who missed it all: Here is the Miriam packaging explained in a little vimeo video, by Andy Tauer. Just click here to get to vimeo. Thus, we will translate the novelette for Italy, and print it specifically for Italy. I insisted on this because I think the novelette it is important to fully appreciate the fragrance and the character who inspired it.

I remembered all this when I was testing the digital foto frame yesterday. Yes, there we go: I am coming to the title of this post in a second. I wanted the movie part of Tableau de Parfums to be somehow visible to perfume lovers in perfumeries in Italy. Therefore, I figured out that I will -together with my Italian partner who takes care of my fragrant babies in Italy, ProfumImport in Milano- make a display that presents Tableau de Parfums and Miriam and that shows little sections of film clips, highlighting together with text what Tableau de Parfums and Woman’s Picture and Miriam is all about.

The display will be produced in Switzerland, it will be about 50×30 cm, super expensive, and integrate a digital foto frame, 10” size, and will be really cool. I visited the company producing it all by hand, using wood, iron, cardboard, printed fabric and the digital frame. From a commercial point of view it might not make sense. In a sense that I will not get it paid back in a year or two. But I think from an artistic and communication point of view it makes much sense. And not everything I do must make sense from a commercial point of view. That’s my privilege. And that’s – by the way- why you get 1,2 fragrances in my line that are ridiculously expensive to produce and do not entirely make sense from a commercial point of view.  At least not for the price tag that I mark them with. But that’s another story.

Here you see the first draft for the display that I made, asking the company to offer me 25 of these displays.

A simple sketch of the display from the side.

In the mean time, we started working seriously on it and for that I ordered the first digital frame to build the display around it. I also made a little test video to see whether it does play MPEG4 video. It arrived. It worked, but unfortunately, the screen has one line that is not ok. The frame is a simple out of the box failure and needs to be replaced. See the picture going with today’s post. There you see a little green line in the LCD display.

However, as time is short, I will ask Intenso, the company producing it, whether we can keep it for a month and then ask for a replacement, to build the prototype. I am curious to hear what they say.

Another parcel that I got: A new headphone. For my ipod and for traveling. I got it in pristine condition and can cut the world off my ears now. It feels like meditation, but without the intense work needed to find the inner calm.