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Welcome to Made by Blog!

 Posted by Nobi, 24 May 2006

Since the beginning of 2005 several blogs devoted to scent have appeared on the web. I am not an avid reader of these blogs, but it didn’t take take me too long to understand each blogger’s interest and way of smelling things. Interestingly enough, in this small community, there is enough diversity in their opinions to make you believe that the way we smell scent is not as simple as the way flowers appears to our eyes. That is why it’s so difficult to make a good mass fragrance.

There are two things that I don’t like about today’s mass fragrance market - insane number of new launches, and too many celebrity scents. But the whole structure of making commercial scents is driven by shrewd marketing to achieve better sales just like any other businesses. What differs in fragrance business is there are only few major suppliers (or makers), each of which with a small stable of perfumers, to feed the huge appetite of giant cosmetic companies. Anyone with knowledge and passion can make their own scent, but to be a perfumer at one of these major fragrance suppliers is much more difficult than having a solo exhibition in New York City as a visual artist. One needs to have an exceptional olfactory sense, to be able to go through years of rigorous training, and to withstand an enormous amount of pressure from their clients. They are the genuine creators… but with an ironical mission. The perfumers have to make sure the designer, celebrity, or the brand will stand out, not them.

Geared with cutting edge technology, their hands on the best natural and synthetic raw materials, the biggest three fragrance suppliers (Firmenich, Givaudan, and IFF) are intent on recruiting the best noses. They employ these distinguished noses to work almost exclusively for their client’s multimillion dollar projects, which are based on thorough market research and analysis. The perfumers’ outstanding skills and the superb materials are rarely used for small clients. However, this does not imply that individual people’s taste lack importance to a perfumer. The truth is that there are simply not enough trained professionals to cater to any one individual’s taste.

If you have a passion for perfume, what could be more exciting than to have your own perfume created by one of these perfumers at their state-of-art lab using the best materials that only they can have?

So, I asked two very different type of women who both have a deep, boundless passion for perfumes if they were interested to have their own “dream” scents created by very talented perfumers in one of the major suppliers. They were both excited about the idea, and I received their proposals shortly after. Their proposals were interesting and articulate enough for me to choose the ideal perfumer for each proposal. The rest was simple: I handed their proposals to two perfumers who coincidentally worked together on Lovely Sarah Jessica Parker. The way perfumers at these big suppliers work on scents has always been secretively hidden inside their contemporary and modernly outfitted buildings. So I knew these two perfumers were going to be excited by the proposals and the idea to develop a scent openly using a blog.

Marina’s scent will be composed by Clement Gavarry and Katie’s scent by Laurent Le Guernec. The two scents will be developed without any deadline or cost restrictions, in other words, there is no commercial goal to achieve for this project and, and none of us know where it will end up. I hope both the “clients” and the perfumers will have unique experiences through the developments, and the visitors to this blog will have a better idea of fragrance development.

Nobi Shioya (a.k.a. Sacré Nobi)
New York, May 2006

Read Katie’s proposal to Laurent for her ideal perfume »
Read Marina’s proposal to Clement for her ideal perfume »

 Filed under: Made by Blog
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27 Comments »

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  1. Wow! How exciting! Thank you so much for including me in this exciting new project. I am so excited to be part of the ongoing sniffing experiments, to ultimately help find these expertly and beautifully crafted dream scents. What an honor for me, truly.
    Victoria

    Comment by Victoria's Own — May 30, 2006 #

  2. Not worthy! But delighted and excited to have a chance to follow the development of these fragrances. So cool! I think the process will be absolutely fascinating. Although I am currently more envious of the professionally shot pictures.

    Comment by kuri — May 30, 2006 #

  3. What an amazing idea, I just love it. I can hardly believe a thing like this is happening out there. I’m in awe of everyone who started this project, good luck to you all. I will, very excited, follow this project closely.
    Martin

    Comment by shifts — May 31, 2006 #

  4. I am honoured, excited, enthousiastic, thrilled, I apreciate very much thank you for including me in this project, and think that this is a wonderful idea. wow. that’s gonna be a few exciting weeks and months to come.
    did I mention that I am excited?…

    Comment by Andy — May 31, 2006 #

  5. Guys,
    I can’t tell you how great it is to see you here! Big welcome and please come back often!
    Marina.

    Comment by Marina — May 31, 2006 #

  6. This is such a great project!

    Comment by Sexy Sadie — May 31, 2006 #

  7. So marvelous to see you all here - I hope you will all return here frequently and pop in with comments. Thank you so much!

    Comment by Katie — May 31, 2006 #

  8. How exciting!!!! I’m happy I found this blog. I will follow everything on this blog I don’t want to miss a thing. What a wonderful idea!

    Comment by jenny — May 31, 2006 #

  9. Thanks again, Jenny, and I am so glad you have found the blog - look forward to hearing your thoughts :)

    Comment by Katie — May 31, 2006 #

  10. This is awesome! I can’t wait to watch the process unfold.

    Comment by rodelinda — June 1, 2006 #

  11. I am green with envy. Green! :-) I look forward to watching this whole thing develop. Now this is what blogs were made for.

    Comment by brooklyntbone — June 1, 2006 #

  12. What a fabulous project! And the two proposals both sound fantastic! I am lemming them already! Can’t wait to see how they develop. . .

    Comment by lilybp — June 1, 2006 #

  13. What a clever idea! This is going to a neat learning experience for all…especially us newbies to the fragrance ‘fetish’ scene. I’m saving up some of my questions :)

    Comment by JustBreathe — June 1, 2006 #

  14. I am looking forward to seeing how everything develops. Great project and great proposals!

    Comment by Victoria — June 1, 2006 #

  15. This idea looks awesome, sounds awesome, feels awesome - so the results should be - AWESOME!!!

    Nobi, Marina and Katie - thank you for the possibility to read about the sacred process and maybe try the results (awesome, of course!)

    Clement and Laurent - you`re brave guys and should be very patient and talented mentors to take part in creation `on air` with dozens and hundreds looking people. You are heroes!

    I think it will be great thing to write an article about. So I`ll follow you all the blog.

    Comment by moon_fish — June 1, 2006 #

  16. Thank you everyone, and welcome to Made by Blog!
    Clement, Laurent and I are excited and honored to have you all here, and to tell you the truth, we are a bit nervous, too.
    We don’t know how long each project will take and how many trials will be made but hope to see you all at every phase of the fragrance development.
    Nobi

    Comment by Sacre Nobi — June 2, 2006 #

  17. Best wishes to you all on this exciting project!
    My nose will be quivering, watching from the sidelines as the story unfolds!

    Katie and Marina-you are true adventurers in “The Perfumista Way” :-)

    Comment by kyahgirl — June 4, 2006 #

  18. Thank you kyahgirl - your good wishes are much appreciated!

    Comment by Katie — June 4, 2006 #

  19. Wow! I’m really looking forward to see how the process unfolds. Reading the proposals was really fun. I’m so jazzed for you!

    Comment by IrisLA — June 5, 2006 #

  20. Good luck to you all! I already posted about you on my blog. Please post pictures of the process, if you can, as you move along to create the perfumes. That would be great.

    Nobi, did I read you right, you are not an “…avid reader of these (perfume) blogs…”! that’s a really back-handed comment, plus I don’t understand you :)))

    Comment by Scented_Salamander — June 5, 2006 #

  21. Ooh la love. I’m very excited about this project - it seems like you’re making the most of the blog medium, writing in “real time” about a fabulous and inside industry… I’m excited to read about this process, I love experts who are passionate about what they do.

    Comment by KRiSTOPHER DUKES — June 6, 2006 #

  22. What a wonderful idea! Looking forward to following this process - thanks for including me!

    Marlen

    Comment by perfumecritic — June 7, 2006 #

  23. The proposals for this project sound amazing. I love the theory behind Katie’s proposal, and the notes Marina has chosen for her scent make me think it may be a “holy grail” not just for herself but for others as well. Best of luck to you all!

    Comment by greeneyes — June 7, 2006 #

  24. IrisLA, glad you enjoy the two proposals!
    Scented Salamander, Thanks for the post and I like your blog. I’m not blog savvy at all. I’ll have to learn a lot as I go…
    KRiSTOPHER DUKES, thanks for your compliment and visit us again soon.
    Marlen, it’s an honor to have you on board!
    Nobi

    Comment by Sacre Nobi — June 7, 2006 #

  25. I like to tell you that this project inspired our perfumers on my yahoo group to do our own versions of the two fragrances. We discuss about how we can translate the discriptions of the “dream” perfumes of Katie and Marina in smell, what kind of notes would represent those discriptions etc. We would love to talk to the perfumers about the creating of the fragrances. But I think that “what they do is secret”.

    Comment by jenny — June 18, 2006 #

  26. Jenny, thanks for your message. Things related to formula is basically confidential since it’s owned by IFF. But, I’ll see if we can have some form of communication between the blog visitors and the two perfumers using this blog.
    Nobi

    Comment by Sacre Nobi — June 26, 2006 #

  27. If anytime, you decide to begin a new project, I would love to be included in anyway. I’m not an expert like the girls, but I really, really love perfumes and I do live in a place far from the best “houses” (I’m from Brazil).
    Good luck !

    Comment by Katia — June 20, 2007 #

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