WHAT WE DO IS SECRET

M6

Clement’s mods for Marina’s round six are ready!

Who’s Who - Perfumer Directory

There’s one thing I have been thinking about for a while to make perfumers’ identities more visible. The idea came up as I began to hear some perfumers being unhappy only to find their names in a motley list of perfumers in the web. I think it’s not a bad idea to have a reliable source to find information on perfumers, I mean an orgnized list of perfumers at recognized houses with their bios and photos.

Some details:
- sort the list by house (Givaudan, IFF, Firmenich…), by category (fine fragrance, beauty care, household…), and by location (New York, Paris…)
- have a photo (nice ones) and a bio (less corporate, more personal) of each perfumer
- update information every year (wins, transfers…)
- include perfumers from Beauty Care and Toiletries (they are equally important assets for each house)
- list only the notable wins of each perfumer or list only what each perfumer is proud of

The information is obtainable… but who is going to put the time and money for it? This is clearly not my job. So, I suggested Perfumer & Flavorist to think about making a directory website of perfumers. The editor seemed keen on the idea, and I hope something will come out from them.

Cleaning - ‘Super’ Molecules

As Octavian mentioned in his last comment, cleaning a formula must be an interesting process in finishing a fragrance. I suppose this is not something any perfumer can do. For a multi million dollar project, you got to bring in the expert of experts to perform the operation.

I find beauty in a certain kind of “cleaning.” I used to enjoy cleaning HTMLs after building web pages with a software. Web design softwares usually leave useless “frills” in the html or scripts. I believe the most beautiful form of html is written with a minimum number of tags and in a single line without any indents or line breaks. There are scripts that won’t work without line breaks, and sometimes I chose not to use a script just to make a single-line html.

There’s another cleaning job related to perfumery. It is cleaning raw materials, more specifically, cleaning a natural material and cleaning a molecule. I’m not sure if there’s something close to mathematical beauty in cleaning a natural material, but there must be something close to it in cleaning a molecule.

A well known Firmenich molecule Hedione has a sister called Hedione Super. The way I understand is that the frills in the molecular shape of Hedione which have not much to do with the smell has been removed in the “Super” version.

I’m sure many of you have heard of Galaxolide, one of the most known molecules by IFF used in perfumes (I’d say most perfumes today), detergents, and many other household products. Galaxolide seems to have frills. Givaudan had wanted a slimmer, cleaner version of Galaxolide. There had been some discussions between the two rivals, but anyway, in the end Givaudan took the matter in their own hands. They successfully, well, not exactly… slimmed down the original molecule and obtained the patent for the new version. However, there was a problem - this new molecule, quite contrary to the original, cost too much to manufacture, and Givaudan had to give up the idea of using it for fragrances and other related products.

… what a shame. I will be willing to pay a few hundred bucks for a small bottle of clean and lean “Galaxolide Supermodel”… and I hope there will be a market in the future for superb molecules that are almost too expensive to produce.

Ao Dai（調香師 ロク・ドング）

気鋭の若手パフューマー、ロク・ドングについて述べてみました。

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There is something striking about the image below…

It reminds me of a fragrance that perfumer Loc Dong was working on for S-Perfume® more than a year ago. You may not have heard about Loc Dong yet, but his recent achievement is compared to that of Jacques Cavallier when L’Eau d’Issey was created. Naturally, other suppliers are now waiting for a chance to lure Loc from IFF.

I have a sweet spot for Loc Dong for many reasons, but the biggest reason is simply because he’s a god damn Asian. Loc often said to me, “I want women to feel beautiful when they wear my fragrance.” His simple statement is very powerful, just like this stunning beauty in a white ao dai.

So, why didn’t we finish the fragrance? Well, I thought his great mods should fall into the hands of L’Oreal or P&G one day, and not in mine. Loc Dong’s fragrances should be appreciated by as many women as possible, and they are simply not meant for niche markets.

via erikg.codepoet.no

Performance is one thing but sustaining it is another

IFF Paris is very different from IFF New York in one way. In Paris, there are stars like Dominique Ropion and Olivier Polge, and there is also a future heavyweight Bruno Jovanovic, but these male perfumers are outnumbered by very talented female perfumers. It’s great to have more and more women in mainstream perfumery, but a good balance of male and female perfumers is important, too. IFF PARIS NEEDS A NEW GUY! Listen IFF Paris, don’t just let new resumes pile on top of older ones, but check out the ones you received recently. You may be looking at a future star in one of them

The Latest from the Campana Brothers

via dezeen

Related web sites:
Albion
Fernando and Humberto Campana

La Maison dans la Loire

via Estuaire 2007

For Your Eyes Only

The 2007 WPC (I’m not speaking about the World Powerlifting Congress here.) kicked off yesterday in Cannes, France. Despite the fact that nothing is happening here these days (by the way, has anyone seen or heard from Katie lately?), there are more visitors to the blog this week, maybe thanks to Perfumer & Flavorist magazine. For those who are attending the event, there’s not much here for your noses to feast on, but here’s something for your eyes.