WHAT WE DO IS SECRET

Perfumer & Flavorist magazine

An article in the May issue of Perfumer & Flavorist discusses what it means to be a perfumer today. The article is loaded with revealing quotes from respected figures in the industry like Carlos Benaim, Jean Guichard, Frederic Malle and more. The full article is available for purchase here. Highly recommended for beauty writers and avid consumers of perfumes.

From Belarus to Ukraine with Love

The correct answer of the last week’s quiz is D - The Mother of Contemporary Perfumery. The winners are Octavian and socalsocool. Congratulations. The prize will be a new fragrance by Sophia Grojsman to be released in September.

I strongly believe Sophia’s best of the best is yet to come, and the coming years are going to be really interesting. Go Sophia go !!!

…and one last thing. VF, congratulations on your new life journey. From Belarus to Ukraine, your future is looking up !

John Lautner houses

John Lautner, a Frank Lloyd Wright disciple, is probably best know for Chemosphere House, the flying saucer like house that he designed in 1960. It has been a landmark architecture in Los Angeles for nearly half a century. When the decaying house was purchased and restored by well-known German publisher Benedikt Taschen in 2000, I remember Brad Pitt, an architecture buff, visited the house a few times during the restoration. I’m sure Brad Pitt would have wanted to do the same thing that Benedikt Taschen did if he had had the time to focus on such things.

The Goldstein House, another house by Lautner which was originally designed in 1963 for the first owners was later purchased by a billionaire “NBA superfan” James Goldstein in 1989. In keeping with the original design philosophy, Goldstein closely worked with Lautner till the architect’s death in 1994 to renovate and expand the original structure using new technologies which were not available when the original part had been built.

This weekend I discovered that Segel House (1983), a more recent house by John Lautner on the beach of Malibu, was for sale - an astounding thirty three and a half million dollars!

A Story from 2001

This is a bit of an old story now.

It was supposed to be called “Cologne S”…

True or not, I don’t know, but once heard that the designer and the perfumer were overjoyed about the concept of the scent - Shower After Sex. Unfortunately the real shower-after-sex effect can only be experienced from the juice straight out of the lab, not the one from the factory. During the mature(oil)-macerate(solution)-chill-filter process the elusive “molecule S” seems to fade away. By the time the product reaches the store shelf the shock value is hardly there… at least for most people’s noses.

“S” was supposed to imply semen, shower, and soap. Cologne S… this great name also has evaporated during the maceration process.
 

Second quiz

Frederic Malle says “it’s so true” regarding one thing I have been saying for a while. What is it?

A: Bvlgari Black is a masterpiece.
B: It easily takes 10 years to become a real perfumer.
C: Jacques Cavallier is a genius.
D: Sophia Grojsman is the “Mother of Contemporary Perfumery.”
E: Suppliers (Givaudan, Firmenich, IFF) need to change the way they bill their clients (L’Oreal, Estee Lauder, Unilever).

Quiz closed. Winner(s) and the prize(s) will be announced next Monday.

WET

Several weeks ago I promised to offer a limited number of samples of fragrance which was born from a collaboration between perfumer Dominique Ropion and photographer Terry Richardson. I apologize for the delay. Let’s say it’s not easy to bring back a fragrance which is no longer in production… but it’s coming. Thanks for your patience!

Soggy day, bright future

© Sacré Nobi

I hate rain but feel great this morning. Galaxolide smells powerful out of the bottle (it’s my morning ritual… and it’s hard to believe almost 3 out of 10 Americans cannot smell this molecular masterpiece). I’m very happy about a small event taking place today. It’s not just good for IFF but will be a great thing for the whole “competitive” fragrance industry.

I will tell you about the “small event” next Monday, but for now I am going to post a few quizzes over the next several days.

Here’s the first quiz:
We often talk about a classic of fragrances. No one would talk about it for fabric softeners. In terms of its scent, Downey’s April Fresh deserves to be called a classic. So, my question is who created the scent of April Fresh. The first person who has the correct answer will win a bottle of Miss Dior Cherie (3.4oz, brand new of course).

this quiz is closed.

How to become a perfumer

A few weeks ago I mishandled a subject in my post and decided to delete it with the comments. Among the deleted comments there was one asking about how to become a perfumer. Obviously there is not much information out there…

Well, anyone can become a self-proclaimed perfumer since there’s no rule to be a self-proclaimed perfumer, but being a “major league player” in perfumery means working with one of the legitimate houses that dominates the fragrance market. Most people don’t know how to enter one of these houses as a perfumer or as a future perfumer. Is it part of the secrecy of the industry? Maybe so.

I may post something related to the “how to” topic in the future, but let me tell you why it is so obscure. It’s quite simple - the industry doesn’t need to publicize the “how to” since the openings for new perfumers are extremely limited. Each house (fragrance supplier) has only one to three openings per year, and there are enough sources to recruit great young talents already.

So, where do they look for the potential noses? ISIPCA is the most known place to look for future perfumers, but there are several other places. I’ll tell you more about it some other time…

As we wait 6 (Tsunami)

(Warning: The following has nothing to do with perfume.)

When we were young, my brothers back in Tokyo used to make fun of my obsession with “Fifty-year storm” which I actually experienced (in the ocean) one year during the typhoon season and still remember as the most life threatening experience. I’ve always lived in big cities and never imagined living elsewhere, but Life in New York City could be quite boring sometimes. There are no earthquakes or typhoons here. This is not to say that I miss some life-threatening natural phenomena, but I don’t want to lose proximity to our vulnerability to nature’s forces.

Here is the video of a tsunami in Tokyo.

New mods are now available

A limited number of Katie and Marina’s new mods are available upon request. If you are interested in trying them out and commenting on them when the reviews are up, please write to: madebyblog [at] gmail [dot] com with your mailing address. Numbers are limited and available on a first come first serve basis. (Sorry, but we can only send the samples to U.S. addresses this time.)

Thanks all, mods will be sent out shortly.

Good start

I’m back in NY and just called up Laurent Le Guernec to see if he have had any thoughts on Edie Sedgwick, an early muse of Andy Warhol. I’m sure Lauder wouldn’t touch this kind of subject matter. Coty might do something with it but would be unlikely to capture her essence. She was simply a screw up, a major one.

N: Intrigued or put off?
L: I’m still thinking… it’s the first time that I have to think so much about a fragrance !!

I liked Laurent hesitant reply. From modern to contemporary, real art often doesn’t make sense. Perfume may be some form of design, but in this respect definitely not art, and perfume doesn’t have to be art. It’s just interesting to put perfume in the context of contemporary art.