Today’s picture: a pencil drawing based on Segantini’s painting of a dead goose. The drawing class that I am attending these days goes to museums, where we analyse paintings, discuss them, the flow, the proportions, the light, the texture and where we sketch them, trying to capture what makes a particular painting a particularly good painting. Next week, we will go and visit Roman and Greek statues and sketch them. The human figure…

In perfumery, I do the same thing: I am looking for classics, and try to look at them, searching for what makes them special.

The problem: There are not many new “classics”, but the classics are usually old creations. This analysis is not a copy paste work. Most of the classics cannot easily be copied as some of the raw materials are not there anymore, or they were used in quantities that are not allowed today. It is more like: Trying to capture and understand the “gestalt”. Sometimes, you look at them for years and suddenly, you realize: Ah…. that’s the trick!

Exciting!

I do not have a vintage collection, though. But I have some classics that – although reformulated over and over again- are still good. I guess a really well done perfume can stand a couple of reformulations before it loses it’s “gestalt”. Thus, my partner said the other day ” you get really tough in your statements about perfumes”. And I replied, yes, but only about the new ones.