Intermezzo

Yesterday’s cold winter sun saw me playing around, in an “l’art pour l’art” approach, with a pleasure scent of mine. The pleasure scent being Irisone, alpha; this fits wonderfully with the January sun with its cold spikes, its sunny brilliance and the vibrant heart which is so elegant. There is, although it is a single compound, an amazing complexity in this fragrant compound that I find extremely motivating to work with it. A clear sweetness, paired with a citrus hint, a crisp woody tone with a clean animalic touch. The tricky issue: To fix this synthetic scent, to render it into a form that allows it to circle back and forth. Some ideas are fixing it with a decent ambra background, agar wood, sandalwood, vetiver, enriching it with cistus without affecting its cool spikes.

After thinking over night, I might also bring in some Frankincense, now that there is Frankincense on its way to Switzerland again. Frankincense is another pleasure scent of mine and there is one source for the real thing: Eden Botanicals. I had a smile on my face when I read Will’s e-mail yesterday: It is on stock again, my CO2 extracted miracle fragrance, they stock up two qualities, both for a price which will be worth it, no doubts! I was told the Indian CO2 quality will be directly comparable to their previous CO2 extract which was triple A plusplus. Bring it onto your skin and you’ll be amazed what Frankincense can be. But maybe this issue is worth another separate post! For ordering from them: It is not on their web shop, yet; you have to ask for it… better do it now!

As mentioned before, it is still winter in Europe, as a matter of fact a rather cold winter, and for all its brightening the spirits, the January sun still does not warm our bodies. Lucky us, we can still afford the Russian gas for heating and get it delivered by friendly Gazprom company right from the even colder Taiga. People say that after a hip century where humanity efficiently turned oil into kinetic energy to move 80 kg of human being inside a two ton vehicle from anywhere to everywhere, we are flying into an even funnier century built on gas and coal energy sources. Let’s hope that Gazprom will still be friendly then and that we will have built ships and planes fuelled by whatever is available: To bring me my Eden Botanicals goodies.…. Which brings me to then end of this post: I am not affiliated…..

Retreat with R.

"Un grand parfum original n’est donc pas le résultat de „procédés industriels“, mais d’une recherche esthétique qui consiste à conjuguer avec art quelque dizaines de matériaux odorants (dont la source importe peu) en vue d’obtenir une forme olfactive belle et caractéristique."Edmond Roudnitska, le parfum

This weekend saw me again retreating and reconsidering my dear little leather trials. We are talking about version 18.6 which has matured for 3 weeks and will soon be ready for dilution. In light of my physical existence with pre-programmed cell death and limited ability of regeneration beyond, let’s say, 80 years, in light therefore of my nothingness in a cold universe I figured out that
a) I might try my leather before diluting it right now and
b) I might treat myself with a bath and Roudnitska.

Vero and I had a look at this version beforehand, before it was completely matured. Vero felt strongly that I should not change anything anymore. W. , my dear perfume tester and honest soul, also said that it is high ranking on his personal leather scale. Thus, yesterday’s impatient sniffing was somewhat biased beforehand…. Before going to bath I sat there, realized that the maturation really helped a lot, cutting off the edges, bringing out the vibrant smoky tunes. And it is a very powerful composition with high degree of individuality….too much eventually?….. another week to wait! Still digesting my memories of 18.6 and cross checking it again with Roudnitska’s 7 criteria (is it “delicate” enough….?) I came across his opinion, condensed in one sentence, of perfume creation in juxtaposition to industrial routines.

Two things are striking in this sentence: First “a grand perfume is not the result of an industrial process but an aesthetic research…Question: How much freedom is given to this aesthetic research in today’s industrial environment? I would guess that Roudnitska’s degree of freedom was much more extended than the creative playground of today’s perfumers, some niche players not included. In light of my worrying about the leather, isn’t this exactly the niche where we may thrive, allowing ourselves to create a perfume without being bound to an industrial process view?

The second striking issue: The source (of the fragrant materials) does not matter much….this remark of Roudnitska is a tough one. I think he refers to natural sources versus synthetic sources. It is, however, not entirely clear, even in the context. I do not want to start another natural versus synthetics discussion here, I think it is more important to finish reading Roudnitska’s sentence ….in order to reach a fragrant form, which is beautiful and characteristic. The key is the beauty of a composition, combined with its unique, characteristic, individual form. Mixing lavender, rose and some tonka beans, or linalool, rhodinol and cumarin, might be not enough to reach this characteristic form.

The result might be beautiful, but that’s not enough.

tauer perfumes first version

Dear all
It is a pleasure to finally announce tauerperfumes.com being released as an English version.
More is to follow (german, more text and links, integration of the blog, and and and...) but at least: We have a valid running website. Here you find it: www.tauerperfumes.com

After this excursion into virtual worlds....the rest of today will be devoted entirely to making sampling......

Timing

The World Economic Forum takes place right now in Davos and, again, celebs find their helicopter guided way to this Alpine little town. Ms Angela Merkel, German Canceller, addressed the world and condensed the economic evangelism into: “Work needs growth and growth needs freedom.” A remarkable statement and probably true. But, –what coincidence!- the same day you may read about Google accepting self-imposed censorship in order to enter the Chinese markets. A fact you should think about before investing in Google shares. I love these straight forward one-liners. They condense hard thinking and philosophical debates into an easy digestible piece of quasi information. Like "we need love, love needs perfumes". Hmmm…. That’s a nice one. Suggestions for other one-liners are welcome. How about: "Men love women, women love perfumes", or "the world needs perfumes, perfumes need nature". Your contributions …?

Ms Merkel competes today in the newspapers with another thoroughly thought through message, coming from Rome, Mr Benedict XVI, telling the world in his Encyclica that “God is love”. This one-liner is not really astonishing, but it is remarkably simple and from a marketing point of view perfect. However, the whole issue of love seems to be much more disturbing once you start thinking about it. God’s love needs to be explained and in light of our physical existence there seem to apply some restrictions. That’s why the encyclical file is a rather lengthy document. The devil sits in the details.

Another message in the newspaper today: Vivienne Westwood offers Ms Merkel to dress her and create a personal wardrobe for her public appearance. Maybe Vivienne watched the ceremony in Davos and felt she had to do something about Angela’s appearance? Probably not. I rather think Vivienne saw the opportunity to bring her business into the news and her timing was perfect. Zero effort, highest coverage. Wait for a celeb’s public coverage, publish a press statement, and there you have your own coverage, too!

You know, what’s coming now….…. I wait for the next encyclica.

Flow

(pix: river flowing by as seen by A.)
In one of my comments on Heather’s Eie Flud Blog I mentioned ideas how to overcome certain nothingness in ideas on what to blog. I proposed to sit on a river, imagine the things that might flow by and start writing. Well, today is the day where I sit there. Yesterday was my birthday, a fact that my surroundings consider more important than myself. Hence, some festivities like dining in a Tunisian restaurant and quite a few telephone calls filled my day. I could fill this post now with epic descriptions of my life so far but I do not think this would be too thrilling. Thus, I sit here on the river and watch another year pass by, silently.

There was one little highlight yesterday, a telephone call with Alice. She attended the scent apéro in December and I gave her a L’air du désert marocain two months ago, a little present for a charming Swiss friend, who will soon leave us again for months, living her life in Pakistan with her beloved man. This Wednesday evening, I invited her and neighbours for a typical Swiss evening, with cooked potatoes (peel on!) and cheese and before this gathering I will leave very early for Luzern in the morning after coming home late from my visit of Heather in her pre-honey moon in the Alps today. Thus….no post tomorrow! But back to Alice. She told me yesterday that she got compliments for her perfume, my l’air du désert marocain, with people asking her where she got it from. If you follow the discussions on perfume of life, you realize that compliments for one’s perfume are a rare thing. People are shy, reluctant to express their feelings about another person’s fragrant aura. I get much, much more often compliments for my shirts than for what I am wearing in terms of perfume. And I can assure you….my shirts are not that cool…maybe we get less compliments for our perfumes because it is a more intimate thing. Telling someone “I love the way you smell today” is definitively more than “I love your shirt”. Thus, dear friends and readers….express yourself….

Bal à Versaille, and a wrap up

This weekend saw my Cattleya orchid blooming for the first time (see picture, real size: ca. 10 cm); a fact I am very proud of… living in Switzerland means hard times for Cattleyas in winter time, yet my little pink lady made it! Living in Switzerland means hard times for Cattleyas in summer, too. Last summer it was almost killed by a hail storm….thus, I own a tough pink lady, too.

Then there was code developing on my computer’s nervous system that will soon find its way onto a domain tauerperfumes.com. And there were meetings and relaxation.

I sometimes wonder what other guest think when Vero and me meet in the Lobby of the Hyatt, downtown Zurich. Regular guests might know us by now. Maybe they even look forward to observing us and witnessing the study of scents that might sooner or later find their way into flacons. These habitués enjoy the calm and peaceful aura of a large, yet cosy room with a burning fire and watch us coming. Our small talk wouldn’t distract them as they have seen this scene many times. They read our faces when we start with the first fragrances. What’s happening with their eyes…do they open up, eyebrows up or down? For how long do they sniff on one particular paper strip? Are their thumbs up or down? How often do they come back to the smelling paper? Will the perfume end up finally on their wrist or does it fail to pass the test and will die silently and unnoticed? This weekend our regular Hyatt Saturday afternoon guests would have seen Bal à Versailles being brought to the test.

Acquired in the eighties by Vero, the head notes were a little bit off (we guess) but the central part of the perfume was there. Magnificent. I never studied it in such detail and there are narrative lines within this fragrance that are reminiscent of Le Maroc pour elle, indeed. It is thrilling to study a perfume for which you have such detailed insight due to your own work. I saw the Jasmine and a touch of rose, but a little bit darker than in the Le Maroc pour elle, where there is Frankincense shining through the flowers. I loved the patchouli and the cedar wood in Bal à Versailles on an animalic, dangerous background of erotic juices. Here, in the background of this wonderful perfume, I see the biggest difference to the Le Maroc pour elle: Bal à Versailles is going much further, with its castoreum and musk tones, nicely layered on top of each other and coming forth and back on you. Bal à Versailles is Ms Pompadour, fully loaded, stepping into the fête des nobles, accompanied by an entourage of young servant musketeers, all enchanted to find themselves close to a glorious woman, who starts to dance across the room to an eternal melody of erotic desire.

Il minimo II

For all those interested: Here's a detail pix of the sample bottles....

Wild boys

Eugenol: Again a restricted wonder compound. You find Eugenol in lots of essential oils. It is the main constituent of Clove oil, thus pure Eugenol brings back a flat image of dried clove buds, kind of a two-dimensional reflection of the natural oil. When I smell Eugenol I always think about whole onions with dried clove buds put in, cooked together with a decent piece of meat and some carrots, best in the stove at low heat, cover closed, for hours. That’s yummie stuff, and it might even work without meat ….maybe with celery and mushrooms?

You find Eugenol also in high concentrations in cinnamon leaf essential oil; I have the oil that I usually use from libertynatural. It is a slightly greyish oil, with a gorgeous spicy aura. It is a wild scent, loud, very dominating, somewhat aggressive, a wild young man, reaching out and being very impatient. Cinnamon leaf oil is entirely different to the bark oil and I love to work with it. (The cinnamon bark oil is dominated by cinnamic aldehyd which itself is much higher restricted by IFRA for its sensitizing effects.) It is a difficult oil in the sense that it easily dominates the entire head note and may bring in medicinal tones that you don’t want. However, in small doses it does wonders. Take a bowl of citrus accords with some coriander and lavender and you will find yourself exposed to a nice accord but somewhat replaceable and boring. Add a little bit of cinnamon leaf and bang! Your head note starts to fly and will last much longer. Eugenol has this amazing power of adding dimension and extending notes. Add a little bit more and bang! Your head note is transferred to the effluents of an all-spice factory with a dentist lab near by.

To get the spices of cinnamon leaf and make full use of the magic eugenol, I combine the two, natural and synthetics, to set tight boundaries for a wild, but charming boy.

Il minimo

All readers be aware: What follows next is a commercial break on this blog’s routine. I am going to need sooner or later pump spray sample bottles again and addressed this issue at my preferred supplier in Austria, being Oskar Karla. I can get them, within 4-5 weeks, no problem, but O. Karla is obliged to order 50’000 because their supplier sells in huge batches only. Meaning, I have to order thousands. This is the fate of being at the very bottom of the pump spray sample bottle food chain. Anyone interested in buying perfume sample bottles?.....

And here’s the break:

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experimental

A short post because a) time is a little bit short today and b) because I forgot my Dior pour home which is intrinsically linked to a). Thus, just a quick note about an experimental composition that I created more than a year ago. It runs under the title l’eau d’épices, Looked at it from a structural point of view, it is an oriental note, with lots of different spices (les épices…) together with lavender dominating the head note, some orange flower in the heart and a touch of woods with coumarin and cistus in the base. In comparison to a finished composition like the l’air du désert marocain it is very simple, being composed of around 15 compounds only, most of them naturals. By the way, the L’air du désert marocain is highly complex….I realized this fact again when preparing a master mix lately. If asked what could be omitted: Nothing!

From an aesthetic perspective l’eau d’épices is highly appreciated by W. (who developed with the years into a genuine perfume critic), it is somewhat too harsh, too stingy with a medicinal touch, but not the saffron kind of medicine… It needs some softening and trimming, for sure, but it is not that far away from being acceptable. Truly amazing it is, however, for its lasting power on skin, even more on cotton fabric. This effect was not foreseen when I experimented on this note and it still baffles me. This surprise moment is one of the pleasures of working with scents (especially naturals); sometimes you will find your composition drifting into an unforeseen direction, transporting you to foreign lands, which means: Sit down and think about it…. What was the magic button you have pressed to get there?

Delivery time and tunnel effects

The Eie Flud blog gets a new look. Heather is a couple of months ahead of me and her blog’s new skin is pure motivation to my own endeavour of transforming my virtual presence. Heather: I am jealous. Thus, I have decided at the turn of last year, when implementing my little paypal shop, to seriously work on the blueroll.com site. This site is programmed in pure HTML, using tables in tables in tables in tables to come up with a design that is somewhat controlled. The action plan looks like a) new blueroll site with b) new content and c) with the blog integrated and d) ultimately bring everything onto a new domain. Time to delivery of this whole, very code related project with little impact on my perfumery work will be months, I guess.

The main kick for this decision came by Alla (well, thank you Alla!), when we were discussing by mail about this old site of mine. Alla showed me that my products (and I am really proud on them, believe me!) are almost hidden on this site and they are not the site’s central focus point, which is odd, with blueroll.com being a commercial site!

I had to realize that the blueroll site tunnel got quite long. You wonder what this means? Well, being Swiss, I am used to think in mountains and tunnels going through them…. A website (or any other project) is like a tunnel. You work on it, publish it and then you modify it and add more features and additional goodies. You dig yourself into the mountain and the longer you work on it, the more the tunnel system will become complex. The vision you have from within this tunnel gets narrow and for long tunnels you may loose any contact to the outside world. Suddenly, while happily digging and thinking about how to make your tunnel below the Matterhorn cosier and how to implement central heating and neon light, you encounter a lost client, trying to find his way within this labyrinth. The enduring customer will ask you why you never thought about building a cafeteria in bright sunlight, at the foot of the Matterhorn. Well, right he is!

peace loving integrators

Working with natural scents in perfumery is sometimes like working in corporate management, having the vision to bring a new product to the market and managing a team to reach this ultimate goal. You have the leaders of the different sub projects, alpha by nature, dominant and hard to control. The challenge: Bring those alphas together and have them join their forces to move on together towards progress. Like in perfumery, these leaders are key, and if they do not blend well, if you do not manage to tie them together for the sake of a common vision, your project will fail. In a world of growing complexity and distributed competencies this is very much true for all business endeavours. There is little room left for the super hero fighting his/her way through corporate jungles all by him- and herself.
On your way to success you will also make sure that you have all competencies needed on board. This is critical as one missing key competence will ultimately lead to failure. And again: All of them have to fit and start working together. You will need to leave room for creativity, for dispute and you must motivate each one to give his/her best without being visible and becoming a star. This is a tricky one. The world is full of failed projects where there was no dispute allowed, and the endeavours failed with everybody knowing it is going to fail and nobody was allowed to say so. Here I come back to a favourite of mine: Creativity being a flowing process and the need for balance.

In perfumery this means: Allow your notes to dispute and argue. You want the different lines to be seen. Bring in the right tones and tonalities, not more than needed not less then essential, and make sure they will support each other without loosing their individuality.

And then, finally, you have in every project team the integrators. Mother figures that stand on neutral ground, peace bringer who love all their children, balance the different interests, and hold the family together. In perfumery these are: Bergamot, jasmine and rose. Add bergamot to your head note assembly and it will open up, hard edges will become smooth, shaky lines become radiant clear. A little bit of rose will bring notes together that dispute too loud, weaving a soft fabric that covers the sharp tips within a composition, without diminishing individuality. And there are perfumers saying that every perfume needs a little bit of jasmine. At least in mine, there almost always is….
The bottom line of this post: The rose seems to work in my leather composition, too. A painful waiting time is ahead until I will have a definite answer.

209'788

209788 e-mail letters have already been sent to the future on futureme.org
It is a funny idea, with a deeper sense, the very moment you start to think about it seriously: What shall I write to myself to be read in 30 years from now? Why should I do it if I am dead by then? Do I need to write it in very simple words because my mental state will have severely deteriorated? What about my e-mail address? Do I want to read my e-mail in 30 years from now?

I haven't writen an e-mail to my far future yet. I think I'll have to make a test first.

Pudding hunters

Today will be a day again below the fog, grey and rather cool, the perfect microclimatic surrounding to work with warm scents, like vanillin. This pure compound, a thin edition so to say of the vanilla absolute, has a warm, soothing quality to it. If I had to choose a colour for this scent, it would be a soft, yellowish brown. Vanillin per se fits with almost everything, be it lavender, spices, woods, flowers, but it is nevertheless tricky to work with. Contrary to culinary applications, where you may take as much as you want (well….almost), there seems to be a sharp line between the vanillin empowering and lifting a composition and a brute vanillin pudding base.

Vanillin will for sure be part of the leather base, the newest version standing mixed in front of me, on my desk, awaiting my decision on how much more of the v-stuff to add. A little bit more, I think, it might well stand, but this time I will approach it carefully, like a hunter, trying to catch a groundhog. The same approach I will have to choose in this particular case for the Turkish rose that I want to try in order to balance the head note’s initial start as I am not pleased with the medicinal, green kick-off, yet. The hope will be to balance the start, by using the rose’s quality of rounding off. Here, I am not certain yet whether this is going to be an approach worthwhile following. There is no way knowing in advance, I have to try.

Thus, it’s going be a cautious hunter’s day. Which reminds me on a hike in the mountains a couple of years ago: It was a sunny autumn afternoon, and I was on my way down again, when I saw a happy family of groundhogs, already quite fat, ready for a long winter sleep. I sat down and watched them from some distance. After a while I moved on and some 15 minutes later I met a hunter, in desperate search of groundhogs to balance his ego. He complained about his misfortune, lamenting about the groundhogs somehow not showing up today. I wished him good luck and lied recklessly ….

Nature’s blessings and room for improvement

Anina is a famous fashion model, at least that’s what was said in the newspaper yesterday and she is proof for nature’s blessings. I am not into fashion model spotting, did not know her name, but must admit that nature has blessed her with a beautiful face and a talented crew. Anina has a blog, telling the world the very personal perspective of the fashion model business, which must be quite tough. As this blog of mine is somewhat personal I must admit: I was jealous at first sight. Anina was invited to speak about her blog (was it in Paris?), at a high ranking blogging scene buzz event. On second thought: She deserved it. I would bet she makes everything to get her blog known. With cosmetic surgery out of scope and Heather’s shea butter cosmetics still not ordered yet, there is not much I can do about my visual impression. Maybe I should improve somewhat on my dissemination and publicity work?

Besides admiring Anina’s blog I spent some time on google, before going to bed, checking my ranking to sooth my ego. A search for tauer and maroc brought me rather quickly to Ebay. Here, I found le Maroc pour elle, sold there in December, 1/6 FL OZ filled into a nice, shiny golden vaporiser. It sold for 15 $US, which is the price for five 1.5 ml samples on my little PayPal shop. My night was not as calm as originally expected. I immediately engaged in thinking about the Ebay Maroc pour elle. At the edge of my long awaited sleep I realized that we might be faced with a customer wish for Le Maroc pour elle in shiny golden flacons filled with 10 ml of oriental elixir….

A kiss is still a kiss

Depending on the circumstances a kiss may be more than just a kiss, especially as time goes by. It may bring the earth’s rotation to a complete stop. This is the planetary reason why –provided the circumstances and the partner fit- you feel like loosing your balance for a moment and gravity forces your knees to bend due to missing coriolis force.

A physicist will of course tell you “no, can’t be, forget it”, a biochemist would refer to raising adrenalin levels, endorphins, combined with fitting Major Histocompatibility Proteins, and a perfumer would probably whisper “sure thing, must be”. Perfumers tend to be romantic. This is why I love Casablanca, the movie. And this may be the reason why I reached my second state of excitement after having read Colombina’s post on Le Maroc pour elle.

It was like a virtual kiss, on Monday morning, while stepping into a week with excursions on the theory of CSS and php. And again, I come to the conclusion that customers, perfume lovers, have a clearer view, unspoiled and undisturbed, that allows them to pinpoint the magic sentence in a book which is thick enough to keep you busy for weekend. Le Maroc pour elle is the perfume to fall in love and get kissed in Casablanca. Wow! Thank you Colombina!

Orchid dreams

Sometimes, when we are desperate, but not like suburbia house wife on TV, rather a little bit anxious, uncomfortable about things to come, our brain produces a counter vision at night. For those among you who have done some Freud reading, things are of course much more complex, with our dreams not only fulfilling wishes and making things come true. But for the sake of simplicity, we may leave it like that: Dreams make things come true.

Thus, in my dreams the leather perfume has come true. I was imaging a scene where I was visiting an orchid exhibition. Well, I was going to and before, I bought a ticket at the green house entry. I entered the green house but once I was in, I remembered having seen a little perfume sample lying on the desk of the ticket shop. I returned to get a hold of this sample, packed in silver paper, a little glass bottle saying Coty’s leather. To my shame I have to admit: I have no idea whether Mr Coty ever made a true leather scent. I have to ask the blog community: Do you know…?
Anyhow:
I sprayed a little bit on my hand and there it was, beautiful, perfect: The orchid leather scent, powdery due to iso-amylsalicylate and with lots of vanilla, joined with Tonka in the back, a soft woody base, remembering the Jicky base accord, the scent played on a green chypre ground, with a smoky line perfectly integrated, hints of rose and some geranium played in the middle, the start was somewhat stringent, with a touch of green spices. A dream perfume in a perfumers dream.

I forgot about this dream but when I did my weekly orchid watering yesterday it popped up again. I smelled my little unknown orchid which is in bloom since a month, with little flowers, not larger than a finger nail, and there it was again: Vanilla and a smoke line. Guess what will the main line of action on the leather theme…..

Picture: Orchid in bloom, sending off waves of brown vanilla, with a woody smoky touch, right now in icy Zurich

Flacon

As I have never posted a picture of the flacon of the L'air du désert marocain on my blog and as Colombina's post on the perfume is so elegant and better than anything I could ever write:
Please visit her blog for a nice picture of the flacon and a lovely poeme by Baudelaire.

For your visual pleasure here on this blog: A souk scene full of spicy flavors, seen last year in Tunis.

What a pity

I have just realized that Luca Turin put his blog on indefinite hold.

I will miss it; I loved to read his posts, the sometimes sharp comments to his posts and the witty replies. What a pity!

I would like to thank you, Luca, very much, for your post about my perfume, for many hours of pure reading pleasure and many thoughts that inspired my work.

French and magic English words

French
There is no doubt left. This is the reason why France is the place where some of the best perfumes were born: It’s the French soul, mirrored by the language which is astonishing. It transforms every prosaic textual description into a dance of words. The words circle and bend with a rhythm and melody that enchants the innocent and amazes the baffled ignorant. You can write magic poems in German, too; but your words will dance to a different melody. French is wonderful.
When I got the professional French translation yesterday of my German text for “Le Maroc pour elle” thanks to Mariette, I fell in love immediately. We should skip the German description entirely, and let the words dance, in harmony with the dance of scents.

And-if we really care for an english sentence- we should use Alla's words which are marvellous, dream stuff; I couldn't come up with a magical sentence like that. Maybe I should consider having our customers do the writing. Thank you Alla!
(l'air du désert marocain) "...magnificently, a hot sirocco, fire and sun, brilliant. Within lies the rhythm of the savannah, and a wild erotic dance."


And thank you Mariette for the translation:
"Le Maroc pour Elle, eau de parfum
Une fragrance ensoleillée, un arôme oriental sensuel et passionné

Le Maroc pour Elle exhale la senteur des roses marocaines à l’aube, harmonisée aux effluves érotiques du jasmin au crépuscule. Une quintessence florale fondue dans une base d’extrait de cèdre invente l’enchantement sensuel.
La note de pointe est soutenue par de frais citrons sur de la lavande. La mélodie en sourdine est composée de cèdre du Haut Atlas porté par des bois orientaux."

delicious

Simplicity in perfumes is wonderful and difficult to reach. And who wouldn’t dream of a delicious fragrance, transforming the fragrant pleasures of scents in brown pharmacy bottles into an artfully created masterpiece. Well, you guessed it. I will talk about be delicious for him by DKNY. This post is a bit lengthy, because tomorrow, there will be probably be no post.

Although the days between Christmas and New Year were filled with HTML code and layout questions, there was time to meet with Vero, my dear perfumer mentor, and bring her and my nose together. After a dry cherry on the lady’s side and a cool Californian Chardonnay on mine, we let our nose sink on “be delicious”.

Our venture of smelling the sample kept us busy for about 30 seconds. I got a sample in a shop where I bought my toothpaste the other day, so we didn’t spend too much money on these 30 seconds. We then moved on without looking back, so to say, as there was not much that would be worth looking at. Except for the sample package which is nice and shiny on the inside. And the apples like flacon which looks expensive, but probably isn’t. The last point is ok for me; one has to compromise in life, even in perfumery. The shiny sample is ok for me too, as I got my free sample without having to ask for it. I just wonder whether it wouldn’t pay off to limit sampling and invest the free money into some components and creativity.

My first association with the paper strip under my nose was dish washer, because I once got a sample of a newly launched green plastic piece in the form of a little apple. You put it into the dishwasher and in a magical transition the ugly stinky dishwasher would transform into an apple scent dispenser. You would sit in the kitchen, surrounded by the fragrant delusion of an apple orchard in Chile, with trees almost breaking down under the burden of Granny Smith. So, there definitively is some apple in it (which fits with the marketing message!). The nose still on the paper, the next association was eternity, because I sometimes imagine hell to be managed by TV stars with the purpose to bore the bad guys until eternity has come to an end. The next clear thought was something like limonene based woody green, stingy assembly of something unclear. And then Vero and I stopped. From Antaeus and Dior home which is very interesting, we went back once, just to realize that the apple orchard has been bulldozed away, leaving a stingy woody desert. Thus: Get your sample and test it yourself!

The other issue during this meeting was my leather note. Here, we thought about adjusting its base, bringing in some Sandalwood (in light of the S. alba crisis Sandalwood translates into S. Vanuatu from Eden Botanticals, S. spicatum again from Eden or Libertynatural with Sandalore prolonging the dryout and supporting the woody note) and add a Patchouli/Tonka bean accord. The head note needs also improvement which means: Focus and softening, without diminishing the nice green Geranium based touch.

There is one thing left to be said about be delicious: It may be boring and dull, but still…. It smells in a way that customers eventually will buy it. The leather is not there, yet.

Triumph

I sometimes try to figure out how people looked at their lives a couple of hundred years ago, let’s say 1685. Were they also living under the impression that things got faster from year to year? That they are witnessing unseen changes in a time of transformation? Well, I guess 1685 is an unfortunate year, after 30 years of religious war in Continental Europe. But still, I wonder from time to time.

This question came up again on New Year, when celebrating the passage into the unknown, there where I was born in the sixties. Here, in a little medieval town, little meaning 380 inhabitants, 5 public places to drink beer in the 60ies, some 30 dogs, cats not counted, there, in a place with some historical relevance, was a little work-shop like factory, assembling underwear, called Triumph. When the local factory closed (in the 60ies?... there I am not sure), an employee, Ms. W., decided to open a Triumph shop in the village, serving the 300+ inhabitants. To make things even more dedicated: She decided to focus on one target group only: The women in town and the surrounding two or three villages. Thus, since I can think there is this little shop, selling Triumph underwear for women to 300+ locals, with a modest window facing the main street, presenting underwear and bathrobes. And believe it or not, the shop is still there, at the same place where it’s always been, thriving to some extend. Since its opening, I would guess some of the manufacturing and assembly of the originally label has gone to Portugal first and then to China or Pakistan. A good part,though, may still be produced in Europe.

What people liked about the shop was the fact that they could try everything and got advice from Mrs. B. Unfortunately, I would assume, based on the fact that Ms. W. is facing her 70ies birthday soon, the shop will find an end within this decade. What are the lessons we can learn from Ms. W.’s little shop in a little Swiss village in our time? The first one; there is always a niche in a niche where you may find a business; even if underwear is not produced anymore in Switzerland, people will still need it, and pay for it. Then: What matters is service in a time where goods can be bought everywhere from everywhere for almost nothing; and at the very end of the road, people may pay money almost entirely for services not for products anymore. Well, almost.

Finally: We live in a time of local deindustrialization; maybe with a few exceptions: In Zurich, there is a little place where a few are rather industrious, producing flyers and perfume samples with their new Canon printer, assembled in China, and used in Switzerland to manufacture goodies for the world. Welcome to the age of global markets.

By the way: Ms. W. is an official sales point for Triumph, as mentioned on Triumph's website......