Paradox

Mélanger des produits nouveaux, ne donne pas nécessairement une forme nouvelle.
“Mixing new ingredients does not necessarily lead to a new shape.” (Edmond Routnitska, in "Le parfum")
This is absolutely true. And somehow this seems to me another paradox of our time (one of many, we seem to live in the age of paradox. Like the French paradox: This is the one with the French people smoking and drinking much more than the US Americans, yet the French live better longer. But this is an other issue…)

Back to synthetics: Never there was a larger choice available of synthetic starting materials for perfumery. With every year we get more of them made available by giants like Firmenich or Givaudan. Which is great, as they allow us to go far beyond the point where we would be with only natural essential oils and absolutes isolated from natural sources. Every month it is like Christmas and we get new compounds isolated once in South American tropical forest by adventurous Givaudan chemists (where they meet the other chemists working in tropical forest producing white powder stuff….). By natural standards only available in tiny amounts from orchids blooming somewhere in tree tops we get them now produced by the kilogram.

And yet, our times (say: the last 20 years) and our perfumers are not known for the creation of truly unique masterpieces which give rise to a new class or form of fragrances. (me being not exception, hunting on well known ground) Think about the appearance of the first synthetics in the perfumer’s lab: Coumarin, Vanillin, ,… immediately embraced and leading to perfumes which turned out to be generation one of new classes (shapes, forms) of perfumes altogether. With all those new synthetics we have at hand nowadays, you might imagine truly innovative masterpieces appearing every year on the marketplace. In the contrary: We are face with a market for perfumes, as huge as never, with as many “new” fragrances introduced every year as never, but all this activity leaves to not much originality. It is a little bit like in the modern supermarket: I have the choice of 10 cereal mixes for breakfast. Yet, I still return to my old fashioned oak flakes pure!