philosophy-of-perfumes

My perfume

Philosophy

What kind of perfumes do you like? I am often asked by sales people in shops. I like them all! I say, compelled to tell the truth although I realise it’s not a helpful answer. For a long time I approached perfume as a source of intellectual pleasure, the rabbit hole leading to intriguing information from history, aesthetics, botany and chemistry, visual culture, business administration and marketing. More recently, I learned to simply take pleasure in it, to allow a moment of abandon into the beauty of a great fragrance. To this day the greatest pleasure is in sharing such a moment of joy with friends and clients, to forge a bond through marvelling at the beauty of the fragrant world. As our perfumery teacher taught us, perfume is love.

I chose to work entirely with naturals for two reasons. First, experiencing first hand the beauty and complexity of natural molecules, I wanted to create such moments for my clients. Second, I like the idea of working with nature and am perpetually curious to see how fragrances evolve (unlike lab created molecules which tend to be more stabile and predictable). There is an integrity to working to naturals but also a gesture of surrender to nature, of allowing oneself to be part of something equality interesting and surprising.

Fragrance geek

Artisan perfumer

Perfume collector

Olfatory educator

Trainer, researcher

training-mobile

Perfume training with

AbdesSalaam Attar

The basis of my training as a perfumer was laid in Italy by a French man: AbdesSalaam Attar, a great nose, aromatherapist and master of natural perfumery (his brand is Via del Profumo). He is an equally stern and affable instructor, teaching intuitive perfumery with a focus on knowledge and appreciation of ingredients. I walked into his course a skeptic and walked out a convert. He taught us a lot about ingredients, technique, composition, communicating with clients and above all he taught us to approach perfume making with respect, integrity and love.

perfume-training

My perfume collection

My collection is a contradiction.

The origin of my collecting drive is classic: I wanted what I could not have for I have lived in the perfume desert and longed for an oasis. My mother is proud of her minimalist approach to beauty (lipstick only) and looked down on those who spent their time and money on hair dies, make up or fragrance.  I respect her austere ways but for me beauty and fragrance are more than mere embelishment: they help us transform in who we want to be.

My first proper fragrance was Kobako by Bourjois, cc 1996 bought from money I earned on my first part time job, while still a student. Soon after, I bought Magie Noire from my first pay-check after barely making rent. I wore it (and others) with abandon until I slowly started to suspect that the formula of my favourite fragrances was changing. In early 2000s I wrote Chanel to ask whether they were changing the formula for Chanel 19 and got a negative reply. I wanted to believe them, but my nose was saying otherwise and the other obsessive fragrance lovers all over the world soon confirmed it online: fragrances were changing for many reasons, but this was rarely acknowledged by the perfume houses. History was disappearing literally into thin air, and I decided to do something about it: to build a library of scents so I can remember how these landmark fragrances smelled like originally. I now have a few hundred fragrances, bought from shops, online, from flea markets and donated by friends and acquaintances. I like to collect the strongest concentration available to make sure they keep as long as possible.

My collection is nevertheless a living one: I like to collect but also like to share my passion. My friends are always able to dig into my fragrant vault and smell pretty much what they like and many of my treasures are used to illustrate olfaction education courses.  Inevitably, some fragrances I gathered will run out. It was recently the case with Kingdom by McQueen: I bought it soon after it was launched but shared it with friends and eventually it is no more. I wish I had a larger bottle and I wish I could miraculously find more (at decent prices) but chances are my story with Kingdom stops here. We had a great time together and made quite a few people happy. That’s no small feat for a 30 ml of fragrance.

My collection has been great for building connoisseurship it is always there to refer to, to check a new fragrance against it and to understand how commercial fragrances evolved in terms of ingredients, aesthetics and branding. It keeps bringing joy not just to me but to my friends and clients who were able to enjoy it and many of them to contribute to it.