So I am back after a writing break and have news for you: I just started offering two scented candles. And if you stay with me for a moment: I will talk about the scent of fear in Florence. The candles are:

l’air du désert marocain

rose delight

Yep. The two candles come in 300 ml size, smell amazing (I am totally biased) and have a burning time of at least 65 hours. You can get them here.

To get the scented candles in the way I wanted them was a bit of a challenge. I do  not pour them myself, but only provide the fragrance. Therefore, I had to search for  a producer that provides the quality that I expected to see. In the end, I found my production partner in the UK and the candles are made in the UK. The biggest challenge was probably the fragrance. It is a totally different world when creating scents for a candle. Not every ingredient blooms in a candle. Some molecules and /or naturals just disappear. Like: not there. Or: they smell horrible in combination with others. Candles and their perfumes are different.

And then, after many forth and back for both fragrances, LDDM and rose delight:  we had to test run the candles and the burning quality: some fragrant ingredients can make the candles burn faster or slower and you have to adjust your formula for that, too.

So you see: Not easy. And then, when we got it all right, the packaging supplier (another third party) supplied the wrong thing. And the glass was not right, too (another third company). And you had men and women in CH and in the UK at the edge of a nervous breakdown. But then: after almost 14 years in this business I know that what can go wrong will go wrong at some point. And that in the long run it does not matter.

On another happy note: Luca Turin and Tanja Sanchez wrote another book,”Perfumes: The Guide 2018″  that you can get here on Amazon, either as kindle version or as paperback. I love their writing so much. I find it refreshing and often up to the point. And there where I do not agree: the world is large and we all have an opinion and maybe I am wrong.

And then, by the way, Luca Turin continued writing in his blog where he talks about perfumes, too. (Les Années 25 got 5 starsthere  and a lovely review where I felt very recognized. Nice!)

And finally: there the Pitti Fragranze perfume fair in Florence. This year, it felt very odd and off and I came back energized like one of these Duracell bunnies. Hurray! Hurray! I am still there and I am different and proud. And I do not talk about the rest. But I wrapped the fair up on my Instagram channel by saying:

“The scent of fear. At the Pitti Fragranze : You would expect that the air of a niche fragrance fair is filled with delightful scents beyond the ordinary. In reality, it was more like the scents that you get anywhere, from department stores to perfumeries: functional building blocks. Why?
My guess: too many are scared to be original and too few use quality ingredients.
Entering the fair was olfactory depressing . ”