Learning To Make Perfume

A new perfume, ready to ...

2011-08-10T13:58:00.000-07:00

I have just finished working on a new men's fragrance. It will be on sale at my PGLightyears website around the end of October (2011). I haven't finalized the name yet (although I've preached that this should be your first step when developing a new fragrance) but to give you an idea of what the scent "theme" is, I can reveal that the working title was "Herman" -- "Her Man," get it? It was intended for her approval, for something she could buy for her man, unlike my Toxic and Blackberry fragrances which were intended for the man himself, forget what the woman might think.

When I work on a new fragrance I don't call it "finished" until I personally like what I've done. This is NOT the way to get rich making perfume, yes, I know it. To really make money you have to develop products that lots of people will like and buy. That's being practical. But there are already plenty of perfumers producing fragrances for the millions. My feeling is that if I had to make fragrances that others would like but didn't interest me, I'd rather not be doing it at all.

But the surprise with this new men's fragrance -- which I'll call "Herman #1" as it may be the first of a "Her Man" series -- is that I do like it and I've liked it well enough to use up the whole (small) trial supply I made and I had to go back and make more. Yet it's about as opposite to Toxic as you could get. It doesn't give you a wake up call in the morning. It certainly doesn't make you feel like a grand macho stud. It gives you ... a pleasant feeling, a feeling that you can blend in with others rather than standing out. So Herman #1 is for those days when you want to "fit" ... when you want to be "accepted" by those around you who, incidentally, probably won't notice that you are wearing a fragrancel which, for a man, is generally good.

But now for the serious stuff. I mentioned that I have just finished "working on" this new men's fragrance. The "work" that is finished is only the formula. Now I have to produce the formula and that calls for a number of steps. If I was a big company, at this point my only role would be to coordinate with those who would be doing the rest of the work. But, since I am not big a big company, I'll be doing most of the work myself. It goes like this.

First, I have to translate my trial formula into a production formula. In this case it involves translating drops of aroma materials into weights. If I used 50 drops of something I now need to know what 50 drops weigh. And for greater accuracy when weighing, I'll multiply the number of drops of each material by, say, twenty.

Now I'll make up this larger trial batch but this time I'll do it on a scale (reading in accuracy to 0.00 grams) and record the weight of each material in grams. For example, 50 drops of mimosa absolute 10% in DPG weighs out to 1.72 grams and so on down though each aroma material in the formula. Then when I've weighed out each material, I'll translate those weights into PERCENTAGES so that now, say, the mimosa may come out to be 3.2% of the total formula. (Note: there is no mimosa in Herman #1.)

Once I have my percentages worked out, I can put the new formula into production. Here I work backwards. How much finished fragrances do I want to produce? Maybe a gallon? If I could fill my bottles without spilling a drop (which I can't!) this would give me enough finished fragrance to fill 75 50ml bottles. Not much by industrial standards but, as noted, I'm a small company.

But this gallon of fragrance will consist of three elements: alcohol, water and the fragrance oil from my new formula. So to produce my fragrance oil I now must determine how much of that gallon will be oil. Most of my men's fragrances use 20% oil to 80% alcohol and water. But perhaps this time I'll use a ratio closer to what a big company might use but still a bit generous on the oil. Give it 10% oil for Herman #1, at least for the example here.

So if 10 percent of my gallon will be oil, I'll need to make up 1/10th gallon of oil. This works out to about 378 ml. So, to be practical, I'll plan to produce 500ml of my new juice -- that's half a liter.

Notice now that we've shifted from weights to volume. So the next question is, "How many grams (or kilos) of the Herman #1 juice will be required to make 500ml of the finished fragrance?

Now here's a little trick. If you are doing your weighing out in a lab beaker (or measuring cup from the supermarket), when you're finished you will see exactly how much oil your weighted out formula produced. So, for example, if the weight of all the aroma materials you combined came to 329.68 grams, and the beaker or measuring up you were using showed that this came to 12 fluid ounces, this would mean that one fluid ounce of Herman #1 would weigh 27.473 grams (329.68 grams / 12 = 27.473 grams).

Since we need 500ml (0.5 liters) of oil, using conversion tables we find that this equals 16.912 fluid ounces. The rest is simple. We need 16.912 fluid ounces so at 27.473 grams per ounce our weight will be 464.62 grams (16.912 x 27.473 = 464.62).

So I now look at my formula for Herman #1 and work out the weight needed of each aroma material to produce my 464.62 grams of oil. For example (and this is NOT part of the Herman #1 formula), if the formula called for 6.2% of Iso E Super, I would need 28.81 grams of it.

Once I've worked out the weights needed of each aroma material, I can order the required quantities and, when then arrive, mix my production batch of oil -- on a scale, weighting each materials into a clean, new, 500ml bottle.

And that's enough work for today.

Do you feel passionate about your work in progress?

2011-04-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

Over the last six months (they flew by very quickly!) I hit a snag with a perfume I've been working on. I had reached the point where a few people were telling me that they like it (mildly) -- but I didn't. It wasn't right in my mind, not smooth, not beautiful, not artful, not something I wanted to bottle and sell with my name on it. I had hit a wall. I couldn't see what direction to go in to pull out this project and make this fragrance something that would please me -- something I could offer with pride. My ardor cooled. My passion subsided. I put the project aside.

Now, six months later, I'm ready to go back at it -- with a passion. Why? Because the other day I smelt a fragrance that jarred me into action. Not that I wanted to imitate this other fragrance. I didn't. But it had a note in it -- a very, very common note -- that seemed to say to me, "Use me and your problem with be solved." So my first step, the one that ignited my passion again, was to visualize this new concept -- to mentally put together certain aroma materials -- that will give me this fragrance I really want.

Of course this new mental visualization is only the first step. There will be lots of balancing, lots of adjustments, to get the proportions right. And I may have to change other materials that were part of my original formula. But now it will come together. I know it with certainty.

This is a men's fragrance I'm working on. But, unlike my other two men's fragrances, this one is intended to be more mainstream, more conventional, more acceptable to women -- without being boring. Women tolerate Blackberry (some women use it themselves, so I am told) but I have yet to find a woman who had a kind word for Toxic -- which, to me, is a modern masterpiece I'm happy to wear any day I'm NOT going to a social event or to a meeting with women. They just don't understand.

We can all put out fragrances that are bland and and acceptable and don't rattle anyone's cage. But these aren't fragrances we work at with passion. When we feel a passion our work we swing for the fences. We strive for the home run. We go at it all or nothing. We don't stop until we've convinced ourselves that we've produced a masterpiece. What others think simply doesn't register.

Notebook -- Perfume Formula Revealed

2011-02-16T11:16:00.000-08:00

I've been posting some information on Tumblr about a perfume I'm working on featuring Patchwood. The notes you see in the photo are actual trials I've made ... and the outcome is circled in red. You might find these posts (there are several of them) interesting. They give some insight into how I work at developing a perfume and how it evolves from idea to small samples to formula for larger production. Here -- http://perfumeprojects.tumblr.com

Overcoming Disappointment

2010-09-17T13:19:00.000-07:00

Over the summer I worked on a theme for a men's fragrance. By the end of August I had three samples, all started with the same idea and then varied by the way each was developed.

The purpose of this exercise was to create a new fragrance that would be a delight to WOMEN who would either buy it for their man or prompt their man to buy for himself. This meant that my new fragrance would not be a Toxic or even a Blackberry – two fragrances I personally like very much but get mixed reviews (not all negative!) from women.

Just this once I was setting out to develop a fragrance that was not my style -- my “signature” if you would have it -- but something with “others” in mind.

The “test market” was to be my stepson and his wife – both in their 20's and both with an interest in fragrance. (She buys him pheromone powered body wash!)

Had I not made this promise to myself, to give Mike my three samples, I would have washed all three down the drain. Personally, to me, they were all “wrong” – so wrong that I wouldn't have wanted to take credit for their creation. Nevertheless I went ahead with my test.

On the day I gave Mike these three fragrances he was hanging out with a friend who he promised would also be given a chance to sample my creations. More embarrassment. Then, of course, there was my daughter-in-law who has a critical nose for scent.

The next time we all met, the report was a surprise. He LIKED one of the three. SHE liked it too. And my wife liked it. After a bit of discussion they convinced me that they weren't bluffing. They really did like it.

So how do I proceed? Sure, I'm happy that several people like this new fragrance. But, for all their compliments, I sensed they weren't raving about it. To them it was just another pretty fragrance. Should I consider that to be “good enough?”

In my summer reading I came across the statement by a writer I admire – “Genius is the art of taking pains.” So I'm not ready to release this summer project as it is. I want to perfect it. Make it better. Make it elicit a stronger positive reaction from both women and men.

It's frustrating to have gone through about 50 or more trials and still not have a product I can offer for sale. But I don't have a fancy store or website or name. I don't have a fancy box or bottle. But I can strive to do my best in developing each new fragrance. I want to take pains to “get it right.” All the way.

Technology as a Tool for Learning ... Learning To Make Perfume!

2010-07-09T09:22:00.001-07:00

I started the summer with a list of four fragrances I wanted to work on -- two for women, two for men. Two had been started (or "finished") in the past but hadn't been (to me) entirely satisfactory. Two were brand new ideas based on smell memories, one recent; one so old, so from another time in another country that it is only a vague remembrance which, hopefully, some experimentation with raw materials will refresh for me.

So this was the summer plan -- overly ambitious. I thought that I could at least sketch out the bare bones of these fragrances -- discover the critical notes and modifiers I wanted -- but I got sidetracked.

It's a bit of a story (told elsewhere) but, "by popular demand," I was brought back to a fragrance I had done five years ago. I had the formula and I had the materials to make it. But why settle for the original when (by my nose) it could stand some improvement?

I hadn't intended to spend much time on this other fragrance which I liked but felt was imperfect. So I ran it through one of the "wizards" in The Perfumer's Workbook to see what modifications the wizard might suggest. First the wizard was asked to adjust for "greater smoothness." Indeed the original formula had rough edges in its transitions from one note to the next. The wizard's suggestions were good. The new version was smoother -- more "professional" if you will.

Next, I asked the wizard to modify the formula for "depth" -- suggestions for improving the formula by adding really tiny amounts of new materials. The wizard came back with a suggestion that would have tripled the number of materials in the formula -- without changing its personality.

The problem that now arises is one of measurement. When you are working with very small batches -- because you don't have and can't afford the quantity of materials that would be needed to make up larger batches -- adding touches of aroma materials becomes highly unscientific, highly imprecise. I have developed my method for doing this (wetting the tip of a toothpick and using it to stir). Others probably have theirs. A larger company would simply make up a larger batch so there would be no tiny, hard to measure, additions.

No one says you have to follow the "depth wizard" exactly. Personally I find it useful to look over the wizard's suggestions and, if I am not familiar with particular materials that have been suggested, I try to find out more about then and, if something seems "right" for my project, I'll order a small supply to see how it performs.

Sometimes when I use this software, these computer wizards, I feel like I'm cheating. I feel like, gosh. I should have been able to do this without any help. But the fact is that I learn from the wizard. It expands my knowledge of aroma materials and forces me to work harder, more methodically, and not just by trial and error with my own personal and very limited knowledge.

Five years ago when I wrote the formula in question I was was working with perhaps forty aroma materials. Today I'm working with well over 100. As a result, my formulas have become more refined.

The Perfumer's Workbook, for me, has been a great learning tool. While it can create a fragrance for your from scratch, I don't use it that way. My own method is to start with a few aroma materials and sketch out my theme. Only when I'm well into a project -- with my ideas -- do I begin to consult the wizard for suggestions. It's like having a senior perfumer looking over your shoulder and giving you a small but incredibly useful helping hand.

One thing more. The suggestions that the wizard gave me for my 5-year-old formula opened my eyes to an aroma material that, as it turns out, is perfect for one of the men's fragrances I'm working on. By circumstances which I won't go into, I had some on hand and found it to be "just right" for one note I was looking for. And it's use was totally new to me.

Having a good teacher can allow us to go faster and farther with our studies. And here, the "teacher" -- a very good teacher -- is nothing more than a computer program!

The Importance of Your Notebook

2010-07-07T12:50:00.001-07:00

I wrote recently about repeatability -- being able to duplicate your fragrance. It sounds simple but sometimes two problems arise. (1) Formulas are lost; (2) the original aroma materials are no longer available. As you might suspect, these problems usually come to light when one of your forgotten fragrances suddenly rings a bell with someone and a new supply is requested. It happened to me just last week.

Here's the story. I'm vacationing at our house in Canada and (slowly) noticed that my wife was wearing a perfume that I hadn't smelt in a while and I suspected it was one I had made for her and long since forgotten.

I asked and she showed me the bottle. It was one of the ones I use for samplers and, rather than a name, it was marked with a code that referenced the formula and date when I had made it. It was from 2005, five years ago! She mentioned that the bottle was almost empty.

Of course I was curious about the fragrance and wanted to look at the formula to see if I might be able to make up a new batch for her. It was not a fragrance I had ever offered for sale.

Speaking frankly, although I liked the aroma (and obviously she did too) my nose easily recognized the rough edges to the formula. If I wanted to offer it for sale today, I would work to smooth it out so that the notes blended more like a fragrant forest rather than standing out like a few tall trees.

But for the moment my task was to find the formula and, if the formula could be found, to see if the aroma materials I had used were still available with their characteristics unchanged.

I looked to my notebooks. Problem. The oldest formula in my hard cover notebooks was from 2007 -- two years short.

The next step was to go to the computer and see if I might still have it in the archives of my ancient copy of The Perfumer's Workbook. Search .... search ... search ... -- and BINGO! Formula found!

Yes, after all these years the formula was still there -- and all of the required materials were on hand and in good condition. A new batch matched the aroma and lifespan of the old batch. Not only could I now reproduce this perfume, I had a good starting point for an "upgrade" that would (if I wanted to do the work!) smooth out the rough edges.

The point of all this is THE NOTEBOOK. When you are working on a perfume -- or even IDEAS for a perfume -- keeping a notebook is of tremendous importance. For each iteration of a project I record the material used (including supplier and supplier's reference code), the date, and -- initially -- the number of drops or half drops or traces of drops used of each material. If I decide to put a formula "into production," drops will be converted to grams and remeasured to check accuracy.

My notebook also includes my impression of each trial and its aging, both on the test blotter and in the mixing pot, as well as my notes to myself on how the formula might be improved in the next trial -- materials added, materials left out, materials changed in proportion. All of this, both for fragrances that were finished and for fragrances that were discontinued, are captured (or were intended to be captured) in these PERMANENT notes.

And you NEVER discard your notebooks.

Improving your skill as a perfumer requires that you learn from both your successes and your failures. And you can expect that there will be far more failures than successes. Memories are short. What I did five years ago is not on the top of my head today. But by going over my notes -- from five years ago -- I can refresh my memory. I can study what I did then. I can think of how I might rework an ancient formula to make a more finished, more refined, perfume today.

The "why?" of a perfume

2010-06-13T16:11:00.000-07:00

A perfume takes birth in the imagination. Only when it is nearly fully conceptualized does the perfumer begin to translate it from the mind into a physical state -- the formula. At this point there are "adjustments" and they can be both in the mental image and in the physical interpretation but, if the conceptualization is sound, the adjustments are more likely to be in the formula -- the tweaks that are now needed to bring the "smell" in line with the communication that was envisioned.

The process of creation in perfumery goes under different names. Personally I think of myself "developing" a new perfume. That's a pretty neutral word. But some write of how they "design" fragrances. To my knowledge, this is a very contemporary (rather than classical) usage, probably inspired by "designer labels" and all that. When I received a sample of a new aroma material from a U.S. distributor they wished me "happy formulating." So yes, the perfumer is a developer, designer, and formulator. But no matter what you call the process, the process amounts to translating a mental image into a physical product -- the perfume.

A very useful intermediate step in this process is pen and paper -- trying to express your mental image in WORDS, before you begin to formulate. Some will cry "foul" over this suggestion. Many great visual artists are clueless when it comes to talking about their art. (In recent years "artists" who understand the sales value of publicity have begun to let their tongues flap more freely.) But in my own experience, when you try to express a mental image in words and encounter difficulty, the difficulty is often due to the mental image being foggy, unclear, or even self-contradictory. Forcing it onto paper helps (me, anyway) clarify my thoughts and expose potential weaknesses in my idea.

The paper plan that precedes a perfume has been very much a part of Stephen V. Dowthwaite's teachings, both in his home study course and in his face-to-face workshops and these have formed much of the basis of my own training. In the world of commercial perfumery, there is the "perfume brief" given to the perfumer by the client to explain, in words, what is desired.

So there is what I would call a "why?" to a perfume -- the reason behind its creation. The perfume itself is a communication of this "why?"

The importance of the "why?"

Ask yourself: why do some works of art endure while others are quickly forgotten? Not all works of art are equal in their influence on the public. Some "connect" and some do not. The "why?" behind the work is of tremendous importance because it is in this "why?" that the work takes on its significance.

If the reason for creating the perfume is simply, say to make use of a particular note that interests the perfumer, it is unlikely that the physical product, however skillfully constructed, will produce a memorable experience for others.

But if in the "why?" of the perfume, the perfumer is thinking that he or she wants to use this particular note because it recalls a certain association -- an association that might be shared by others -- then in thinking of how that associative note might be reinforced by other materials, we're beginning to develop a concept that, if well executed, is far more likely to resonate. And, important from a commercial point of view, the perfume now becomes much easier to advertise and promote because the perfume communicates the story of the "why?" and the "why?" itself is of greater significance to others.

When we start out making perfume we are pleased simply to master enough technology to be able to get a nice smelling fragrance in a bottle. As we rise from apprenticeship to artistry, we find this isn't enough. We find ourselves thinking more about what we are about to do before we do it. We clarify our vision, double check, test it, refine it -- in our minds -- until we are bubbling over with a need to communicate THIS vision in the physical product, the perfume.

Not surprisingly, as this happens, our perfumers get "better" and become easier to "explain" -- because our vision and the perfume we have created become one.

Can you make more of what you just made?

2010-06-02T07:50:00.001-07:00

I ask this question for a reason. I've been reading some notes about so-called "natural" perfumes ... attempts to formulate perfumes using only natural materials, with some of these materials being created by the perfumer.

What is being rediscovered is the ancient art of turning natural materials from the environment into aroma materials. And, from what I am reading, tincturing appears to be a favorite current method.

To create a tincture of a natural material, that material is placed in alcohol -- the most odorless alcohol available -- and allowed to sit there for about a month. The plan is for the alcohol to take on some of the aroma of the natural materials being bathed in it.

Traditionally in perfumery this method was used to extract aroma from "difficult" materials such as hard-as-a-rock resins and lumps of ambergris. Flower smells would have been achieved through distillation or solvent extraction, the commercial successor to enfleurage, an older method employing fats to extract aroma and which always left a bit of a fatty smell along with the desired aroma.

These traditional methods, used commercially today, require equipment and precise quality control. Quality control is important because the perfumer, having established a successful formula, wants to be able to scale it up to larger batches and thus profit from his or her creation. If the quality of the materials being used is erratic -- the characteristics of a subsequent batch of an aroma material is not a match for those of the original batch, the success of the formula is destroyed.

So, for any commercial perfumer -- any perfumer who wishes to develop formulas which can be properly duplicated, year after year -- consistency from batch to batch in the characteristics of the aroma materials being purchased is very important. This is also why a large perfumery will not buy from a small supplier, no matter how high quality the materials may be. The small supplier simply cannot provide the volume that the larger perfumery needs and hence the large perfumery might be forced to discontinue successful fragrances.

Now personally I have great admiration for those who are experimenting with natural materials possibly grown in their own back yards. Certainly transforming your own garden's bounty into aroma materials is exciting. But what happens when commerce raises its ugly head?

From a commercial point of view, repeatability is essential. If you have made a perfume that people like -- and are buying -- you certainly want to be able to make more of it. If your new batch doesn't match the successful fragrance, you're in trouble. And the more people and stores that have placed orders with you, the bigger your troubles will be.

It is for this reason that commercially inclined perfumers vet their sources for continuity of consistency of supplies. For a large perfumery, in an "emergency" a skillful perfumer may be able to rejigger the formula to achieve the same smell with different materials. Most of us are not so skilled.

From my own experience I can think of several instances where I used a particular material to develop a formula only to find, within a mater of months, it was no longer available and my formula had to be either reworked or abandoned.

It would be nice to think that, when we find a material that we like and want to make great use of, all we need do it stock up on it.

Unfortunately with many natural materials and even some synthetics, there is a shelf life even under the best storage conditions, so that the excess we have squirreled away might very well be worthless when we finally go to use it.

The hard lesson is that we must think twice about our sources and continuity of supply before we make a big commitment to a new formula.

Do you need face-to-face training to become a perfumer?

2010-05-31T13:00:00.001-07:00

Being trained in perfumery, face-to-face, by a knowledgeable, professional perfumer is a very big plus. But finding a qualified perfumer-trainer who can devote time you you -- at times that are convenient for you -- is not an easy matter. Ask yourself, "how many hours might this project take?" The truth is it will take more hours -- more days -- more weeks -- than is practical unless you are devoting your life FULL TIME to becoming a perfumer.

I have now completed three 5-Day Perfumery Workshops with Steve Dowthwaite of PerfumersWorld. At each workshop, while I learned some new material, the most valuable moments in these 90 plus hours of instruction and exercises were the verbal reinforcements of lessons I had previously been exposed to but whose importance I had not fully grasped.

In other words, many of the most powerful moments were a repetitions of facts and concepts I had already been exposed to but now -- sitting in front of someone who was TELLING me they were important -- these points became more firmly fixed in my head and I would pay more attention to them in my future work.

But ...

My training in perfumery did not start with face-to-face instruction.

Actually, when I first became interested in learning how commercial fragrances were developed and how I could make original perfumes of my own, I was not aware of ANY place where I could get ANY training until I stumbled across the home study PerfumersWorld Foundation Course.

At this time the internet had not yet developed into what it is today. Blogs didn't exist. Facebook didn't exist. Very few companies that sold perfumery materials -- synthetic or natural -- had websites. Online shopping was still in a primitive stage. Paypal was still a struggling start up.

I had spent money on books (many hundreds of dollars worth) and I had purchased a few aroma materials (without much of a clue as to how they "worked") but I needed HELP in understanding something that seemed as if it should be quite simple. I wanted to know how a commercial, big time perfume was made and I wanted to make perfumes myself.

So I ordered and received the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course. Ten blocks of online lessons; a box with materials to work with. Reading was required. Study was required. Carrying out student exercises was required. Passing exams was required. But there was no pressure. No teacher looking over my shoulder. It was all up to me.

Home Study vs. Classroom

It's harder to do a home study course successfully than it is to take a graded classroom course. (Grades and exams are important either way.) Correspondence course companies learned many years ago that a large percentage -- perhaps as many as 80 percent -- of their students would never complete more than the first few lessons. Why? Because learning involves hard work. (A former teach of mine once wrote a book, "Study is Hard Work.")

But the virtue of home study is that it opens the door for people who could not attend a school full time or even part time. Or, in the case of perfumery, for would-be perfumers who simply cannot find a source of face-to-face instruction through which they can fully learn the skills necessary to engage in this art.

Even the 5-Day Perfumery Workshops I have mentioned are only the beginning of someone's training in perfumery. You have to go on with your followup and keep working with your own materials and doing your own exercises and experiments.

So no matter how you slice it, unless you are planning a full time career in perfumery and have the good fortune to be accepted into one of the very few face-to-face schools of perfumery that exist, to learn to make perfume you MUST be willing and able to work on your own. And you must be MOTIVATED enough to take each lesson seriously and to continuously work at developing your skills -- with real perfumery materials. Motivation is the key.

But what can you learn on your own? How far can you go? Can you really learn to make fragrances that (if you had the marketing clout) could go head-to head with the very best offerings of the very biggest perfume companies? The answer is that, "yes," you can go to the top, but the farther you want to go, the more you must put into it.

It is at the beginning that you really discover how motivated you are and how far you are likely to go. With a home study perfumery course, I'd guess that most people -- yes, perhaps 80 percent -- do not get farther than the first few lessons. Why? Because once you have the lessons and the materials in your hands, you suddenly discover that leaning to become a perfumer involves work -- lots of work.

For those who love it, the work is nothing. They are happy to put in the many, many hours it takes to go from being a novice to becoming a competent perfumer.

For most of us who are interested in perfuming -- really interested -- working on our own with whatever authentic study materials we can find is essential. So, "no," you don't need face-to-face training to become a perfumer. All you really need is a course of instruction and the self discipline to harness and direct your ambition. But when the opportunity arises to work under the guidance of someone who knows more than you do, don't pass it up!

A rare opportunity to make perfume

2010-04-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

Do you want to become a perfumer -- a creator of fine fragrances? Did you know that there are very few opportunities -- worldwide -- to get trained in perfumery? In fact, if you don't have a father, mother, brother, sister, aunt or uncle who is already a perfumer, you will find it incredibly difficult to get connected with the "basic training" -- the apprenticeship -- you need to begin learning this incredibly special art.

"Perfumery" is not a course you can take in college. Worldwide, only one or two colleges even offer professional level training in fragrance creation and for the fortunate few who are admitted (it is very competitive!), the cost is high and a multi-year commitment is required.

Very few working, professional perfumers teach perfumery. In most cases, their "apprentices" have already been working alongside them in industry. It's not a position you can apply for simply because you think you might like to create fine fragrances for a living.

Steve Dowthwaite is an exception to the rule that professional perfumers don't teach perfumery to "just anyone." For more than ten years, Steve has offered training in "The Art & Technology of Perfumery" to anyone willing to sign up for his online home study Foundation Course, one of his 5-Day Perfumery Workshops, or for a series of more advanced private and semi-private lessons.

Even more radical is Steve's philosophy of low student fees for his instruction, in spite of the time and considerable personal effort required on his part.

Planet Earth is a big place and one perfumer can hardly be expected to cover the whole globe. So Steve's perfumery training is given, for the most part, in Bangkok, Thailand, where he resides and conducts a brisk business in the Asian market.

If you were serious about wanting to get into the field of fragrance creation, a trip to Bangkok for one of Steve's workshops would be your logical starting point. Yes, it would be expensive. But alternatives -- real perfumery training sessions open to "just anyone" -- don't exist elsewhere. So you would have to pay the price.

If you had a strong desire to learn fragrance creation but could not afford the travel expense of air fare, course fees, and a week in Bangkok, you would go for the home study Foundation Course (my own starting point in perfumery) -- which offers an excellent window of opportunity to perfumery. Yet you would still aspire to face-to-face training with Steve in Bangkok.

This year (2010) Steve will be making a (brief) trip to the U.S. to conduct a 5-Day Perfumery Workshop in southern New Jersey. He'll be coming -- with workshop supplies and equipment -- a distance of over 8,000 miles to share his knowledge and insights into perfumery with a handful of people -- professionals and non-professionals -- who are hungry to receive this practical training.

The course is "open enrollment" but the intensity of these five days, filled with hands on exercises using real perfumery raw materials, precludes attendance by all but those with a high level of motivation to learn.

It is, for those highly motivated few, an opportunity which may never again be available in the U.S. (there are no plans for a 2011 U.S. workshop). Perfumery training by Steve and PerfumersWorld in Bangkok, and the home study Foundation Course, will continue to be available.

How hard is it to make a decent perfume of your own? How long would it take you to learn?

2010-03-11T10:59:00.000-08:00

Talk to someone who has spent a lifetime with perfumers and you might hear that it takes seven years or longer before the "beginner" starts to create credible perfumes with any regularity. And it has been said that no one has ever created a really good perfume in their first year of training. I would not want to question these views of experts.

But I would like to state for the record that people with no experience in perfumery can be trained to begin to create workable fragrances of their own in a matter of days. I've seen it done.

Steve Dowthwaite runs 5-Day Perfumery Workshops, mostly in Bangkok, Thailand, where he lives with his wife and daughter, but also, since 2008, in the US. To date, Britisher Dowthwaite, through his various courses, has trained over 6,000 students in perfumery, including one member of the royal family. Of course not all of these students have the desire or the imagination to create artistically successfully fragrances. But some, in a matter of just five days, have already outlined a potential winner.

Steve's teaching methods in his 5-Day Workshops are identical to those in his home study PerfumersWorld Foundation Course. The two resources feed upon and reinforce each other. But having a face-to-face session with a professional perfumers who can give you personal guidance and encouragement is an experience not to be missed.

The USA is a big country and the logistics of setting up a 5-Day Workshop are far more intense than most people realize. As I've been the on site "facilitator" for 2008 and 2009, the workshops have been held in the New York - New Jersey area. That makes it a bit of a trip for someone in the Midwest or West Coast but a sprinkling of attendees have come from other countries -- France, Canada, Mexico, Chile, and Columbia -- usually because they (or their employer) knew about Dowthwaite's perfumery training sessions and understood that it was a whole lot less expensive to send people to the USA than for them to set up their own training programs at home.

If you have a serious interest in making your own perfume -- or in learning the technology of how modern perfumes are conceptualized and developed -- try one of Dowthwaite's 5-Day Perfumery Workshops for yourself. I am willing to bet that you will surprise yourself when you discover that you can create your own fragrances, "hands on," even though for you, this is the absolute beginning.

Warning: We run only ONE U.S. Workshop each year so if you are interested doing this perfumery training, clear your calendar and make you reservation.

Understanding A Classic Perfume :: L'Air du Temps

2010-01-28T10:30:00.000-08:00

L'Air de Temps (1948, by Roure perfumer Francais Fabron for Nina Ricci) is a perfume out of the past. You won't generally run into it at the mall, at least not in an older version that uses all those wonderful aroma materials that are restricted or banned or just too expensive to use in a perfume today.

A few years ago I had the good fortune to come across an older, unopened, bottle which I purchased and gave to my wife. Spending a DAY with her when she was wearing it was a great experience. That fragrance had both beauty and tenacity.

Last week I was reviewing the ten blocks of online lessons that are part of the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course In Creative Perfumery in order to write a new ad for the course. Of course I had studied all of these lessons before as it was this course that launched my own efforts in creative perfumery but to write about the course I needed to study the lessons again. This time when I came across the lesson on L'Air du Temps it had new meaning for me.

L'Air du Temps is regarded as the "classic" CARNATION perfume. The course discusses both the use of the accord that gave it it's special character (a blending of Benzyl Salicylate, Eugenol, and Musk Ketone) and it's overall structure. Two separate "sample" formulas are given to demonstrate how this TYPE of fragrance -- classic carnation -- is constructed.

These formulas are not given to help you create knockoffs and they are not intended to be "true" formulas for L'Air du Temps. They appear in this lesson as student learning exercises, to show you HOW various aroma materials, which DO NOT smell of carnation, come together in a beautiful carnation fragrance.

While one of the formulas in the lesson requires the use of aroma materials the beginning student is NOT likely to have on hand, the other uses ONLY materials supplied with the course and can immediately be mixed by anyone taking the course. (All this is in lesson block #10 so a bit of patience is needed to get to it.)

Now I've mixed the simple version of the formula on several occasions and I can tell you that it certainly DOES give you a taste of the experience you would get with the "real" L'Air du Temps. And, laying the simple formula side by side with the more advanced formula, you get an idea of WHAT aroma materials have what effect on the composition.

For example, in the more advanced formula, "Spice" Fleuressence (the "S" in the ABC's of Perfumery) is replaced by a blending of three aroma materials: Eugenol, iso-Eugenol, and Clove Bud Oil. So now, looking at the two formulas side by side, you begin to understand that "Spice" Fleuressence characterizes an odor group and that Eugenol, iso-Eugenol, and Clove Bud Oil fall into this grouping.

If you are curious about the odors involved, you can simply purchase small amounts of Eugenol, iso-Eugenol and Clove Bud Oil and, using your nose, make your own comparison. Likewise you can go through the other 12 materials in the simple version of the formula and explore their more "sophisticated" counterparts.

So this lesson has a double importance. In the first place you learn about the structure of a classic perfume and how materials that are not at all similar in aroma are blended into a distinctive and beautiful perfume.

Then in this lesson, the student is given a TRANSLATOR ... two formulas, side by side, that create perfumes with very similar aromas so that you can SEE how the aroma materials that you have on hand (from the K26 materials kit which is part of the Foundation Course) "translate" into combinations of the single chemical aroma materials that a professional perfumer would use.

Lessons like this are valuable when you are struggling to learn perfumery. Best of all, along the way, as student exercises, you get to make up some simple but really beautiful fragrances which can immediately be put to use.

5-Day Perfumery Course May 3-7, 2010 New York City Area

2010-01-14T12:51:00.000-08:00

This year, once again, my company -- Lightyears, Inc. -- is sponsoring a 5-Day Perfumery Course and Workshop in the New York City area in association with Stephen V. Dowthwaite and PerfumersWorld, Ltd.

Dowthwaite has been conducting these workshops for the last ten years in and around his home base -- Bangkok, Thailand -- and many hundreds of participants have passed through them. But, until 2008, he had never brought the workshop to the United States. In 2008 we teamed up to bring a workshop to New York City and we were gratified by the quality of those who attended -- a significant number of industry professionals, small business owners, independent perfumers and aromatherapists, plus people just interested in learning how a perfume is developed -- and possibly learning how to develop perfumes of their own.

A friend from Grasse who has spent a lifetime in the perfume business told me that he was skeptical that anyone could be turned into a perfumer in just five days. I have no argument with that. Perfumery is a lifetime calling. But what CAN happen in just five days is that much of the mystery can be taken out of perfumery -- mysteries surrounding the techniques and "professional" materials used -- and participants CAN begin to create their own perfumes ... their first perfumes perhaps ... and CAN be given the tools and set in a direction that, in time, will allow them to achieve some very satisfying (and in some cases remarkable) results.

Last year I was able to squeeze myself in as a participant in the workshop rather than simply a host. I had witnessed the workshop in 2008 and had started my work in perfumery with Steve Dowthwaite's Foundation Course but being part of a group was a different experience. For each class project (there were several each day) not only do you share your insights with others in the class, you get the wonderful, eye opening experience of seeing how others deal with the same perfume creation assignment.

As for Steve's guidance, it was always a kindly, helpful hand and words of encouragement. If you want to make perfume and if you aren't, at the moment, totally satisfied with your results and your technique, the course should prove most enlightening for you. You may feel like you are finally getting inside perfume -- and inside the industry -- in a very, very meaningful and intimate way that will open up, for you, a broad perfumery creation future.

The drive and the imagination must come from within but now you are armed with knowledge and technical skills and pointed in a positive direction.

So, to the pitch. As of this writing (January 14, 2010) we have set a general location for our 2010 5-Day Workshop -- the New York City area -- and a price $900 for the five days. This year meals and hotel reservations will be up to you. We hope to be able to announce our exact location by the end of this month but it will be within easy daily commuting distance from Manhattan and we have begun to fill the 50 openings that are available. The announcements for these workshops reach an international audience. Are you ready for a 5-Day Perfumery Workshop? You can register here!

Hurry!

Learning to use Patchwood (from PFW Aroma Chemicals)

2010-01-04T08:25:00.000-08:00

I'm working on a new perfume using a new aroma chemical called "Patchwood." Patchwood was developed by PFW Aroma Chemicals and they are trying to promote its use through a contest and, yes, I'm taking a shot at it myself.

Patchwood has two qualities that might seem like opposites. Patchwood has a high impact, it hits you like a ton of bricks (rush and open the window, please!) and you quickly find yourself searching for ways to tone it down, to control it, to dilute it. It's got a nice woody aroma and can even serve as a top note in a fragrance but it can quickly overwhelm you, even in small doses.

But unlike high impact aroma chemicals which tend to be highly volatile and thus have short odor lives, Patchwood has a LONG odor life and, moreover, it gives long life to the elements that surround it. None of this business of disappearing from a smelling strip in 15 minutes. Here we're talking about DAYS!

As to my own project with Patchwood, I'm rushing to get it together so -- initially - my fragrance will be simple and, I'll admit, a bit crude. I've laid a foundation for my fragrance -- which has now lasted for more than 72 hours on a smelling strip, and still retains some top and middle notes. Now I've just got some blending to do, to smooth out the transitions between aroma materials, and then a few "decorations," to add a bit of originality. Then I'm done.

Now to you, all this may seem pretty routine. It's the way perfume is made. But what excites me is that I can look back to the starting point of my career in perfumery (not all that long ago!) and to the training that got me started, the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course.

If you know anything about the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course you know that the only perfumery materials you work with in the beginning are 25 aroma "bases" that demonstrated the 25 aroma groups that are part of the PerfumersWorld teaching method. These bases ("Fleuressence" is the PerfumersWorld trade name for them) are neither essential oils nor single molecule aroma chemicals. They are traditional perfumery bases that give you a simple way to begin crafting perfumes like a professional and, if you have any nose for it at all or any intellectual or artistic curiosity, you'll soon find yourself adding additional aroma materials to your "library" of small bottles, to get more subtle touches to your perfumes and more nose-precise results.

The fellow who created the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course believes that there are a great number of people who COULD become successful perfumers, if only they had some training. The Foundation Course his is way of offering them just that. From my own personal experience, I believe that he is correct. Personally, from the moment I started working with his 25 "Fleuressence" bases, I knew that even greater excitement lay ahead.

My current efforts to develop a perfume using Patchwood -- this brand new aroma chemical -- tells me that the excitement in perfumery that lies ahead for me will be even greater than that which I have enjoyed on my perfumery path to this point.

How Long Should A Men's Cologne Last?

2009-12-02T09:47:00.001-08:00

The word is "tenacity." It refers to the duration of a fragrance's smell. A tenacious perfume lasts and lasts, for hours perhaps. A perfume that lacks tenacity may be "unsmellable" after an hour or two. Manama is a good example of a perfume that has wonderful tenacity. From your own experience buying and using perfume you could probably name more than one heavily advertised perfume entirely lacking in tenacity.

Tenacity is not always desirable. In bath products it's nice to enjoy the fragrance released by water in a shower gel. But is that the aroma you want lingering on your body all day?

Even more so for dish washing detergents. It's nice to open the dishwasher and find a fresh, pleasant odor. But do you really want your dishes to be perfumed?

Now what about men's colognes?

When I was developing Blackberry I was concerned that it lacked tenacity. (It does.) Toxic, my "modern art" men's fragrance, shares this quality, or "defect" if you will. I've even had people point this out to me.

Then one day I was talking to a friend about fragrance. He said he had long favored Eau Sauvage (1966) created for Christian Dior by perfumer Edmond Roudnitska. My friend then added, "it doesn't last very long." Roudnitska is considered one of the all time greats in perfumery so this comment got me thinking.

How long do we want a men's cologne to last? Is tenacity always a virtue? Friends who know me know I have an almost anti-fragrance attitude toward men's colognes at times, sometimes because a man has drenched himself with it; sometimes because I hate the overpowering sweet, citrus aroma that can hang so heavily in the air, even in modest use. That hateful aroma can fill a room and make me want to gag and I can only think the man is wearing it because a woman of simple, unsophisticated tastes bought it for him, to make him smell more sophisticated!

Some of the men's colognes I truly hate have lots and lots of tenacity. And they would be far more pleasant if they did not.

So I've been thinking of the "mechanics" of men's cologne and why a man would want to use it in the first place. I think sometimes that men don't think much about fragrance unless the fragrance is from food. Red meat on the barbecue. But men DO like to freshen up in the morning -- the shave ... the shower ... deodorant ... maybe a splash of aftershave. And that, I think, is where men's fragrances of LOW tenacity fit in perfectly.

Of course I'm thinking of my own lifestyle and my own men's fragrances, Toxic and Blackberry, but I suspect that Eau Sauvage fits into the same category, as do the older classics, Mennen's Skin Bracer and Shulton's Old Spice.

The object wasn't to "perfume" a man all day long. It was simply to give him a nice "wake up" jolt in the morning and any lingering fragrance was light and pleasant -- too light to offend. In short, they freshen you up and then disappear, exactly as they were intended.

So having recalibrated my thinking about men's fragrances, I'm no longer embarrassed over the lack of tenacity shown by both Toxic and Blackberry. Do you really want to smell "toxic" all day? Of course not! And Blackberry too, because of its initial intensity. No, you would want only a light, lingering note -- exactly what it delivers.

So now I can go out and sell my stuff without shame, embarrassment or a sense of failure. Now the pitch -- certain to work with those who have NOT ready this article -- is that these fragrances for men work exactly as good men's fragrances SHOULD work. Which is to say they should give the user -- the man -- a jolt of pleasure in the morning WITHOUT offending his co-workers. Even Toxic, for all its ominous sounding name, delivers on that promise.

But here's a "PS" that you may find enlightening. The first men's fragrance that I marketed (quite successfully, although I did not create the formula myself) was wonderfully tenacious. And the men who loved it were men who worked outdoors, doing physical work. THAT fragrance (which I no longer sell) was great for its ability to rise above a modest level of body odor. Desk guys -- artists and executives -- don't have this need.

Try, Try Again

2009-11-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

When two knowledgeable friends gave me the thumbs up on "Manama", I felt perhaps I had "arrived," finally reaching the stage where my fragrances were actually admired. This made me want to abandon or rework some of my former efforts, one in particular that for now I'll just call "G".

"G" was a fragrance that I had never felt was really finished. There had been some technical problems. First I thought I had overcome them. Later I realized I had not. But I had reached a point where I had stopped working on "G" and was just going to let it be so I could get started on a fresh project.

Now I began to attack "G" again and soon I had made a dramatic improvement by leaving out about one third of its original ingredients, and swapping around a few others. Now I liked it a whole lot better.

So after giving a bottle to my wife (with no particular urging to use it), I put the "G" project back on the back burner, out of sight, out of mind. Actually I was delighted that she had started using "Manama" -- unprompted -- and I loved the way "Manama" softly lingered on her from morning to afternoon. (Most fragrances you buy at the mall won't do that!) Then last weekend I noticed she was using "G." "G" is now a lighter fragrance, quite contemporary, and yes, I did enjoy standing next to her when she was wearing it.

This went on for two days. My nose was evaluating. It was good but, by Sunday evening, it struck me once again that it still could be better. The fragrance had more clarity now and because of that clarity I could "smell" something that wasn't there. So I had more work to do. It was on the "good" side of mediocre but with additional work, I felt it could be a classic. So today I'm back at the drawing board, not ripping it apart but trying to feel what it needs to take if from "good" to "excellent."

The reason I tell you all this is simple. If you want to grow as a perfumer, you have to strive for excellence. Excellence comes at a high cost. Before you can expect to achieve excellence you have to "just get out there and do it." You have to start making perfume. You have to overcome the fear of putting your creation out there where it will be criticized -- or, still worse, totally ignored. You have to create bench marks that will give you a standard on which to improve.

When I created "Incantation," my first perfume, I thought I was brilliant. I thought others would praise my work, I thought I was on my way to becoming celebrity perfumer. My wife gave it a polite reception but wasn't reaching for it in the morning. Friends who I gave it to were polite in their comments, but I never noticed them wearing it. In time I realized that I still had a long way to go and today, while I still kept a few bottles of "Incantation" around and give it an occasional sniff to remind myself of how crude and inept my first efforts were, today I know the difference.

Yes, when you create something you get very involved with it and it is hard to see it as others would see it. If your goal is to create something others will enjoy you need to be able to see through their eyes.

For me that has meant producing -- for it you don't produce, there is nothing to critique -- and then putting a bit of time between yourself and your creation, time that allows you to see it more how others are seeing it. And time for you to see it through a fresh nose -- to smell without being swayed by what you expect to smell or hope to smell but rather what you really DO smell, just as if this fragrance had nothing to do with you.

To grow as a perfumer you have to keep creating, even if some of what you create it junk. But you also have to develop the ability to stand back and recognize that which is junk and that which has potential -- and then keep working on those themes that have potential until they rise from "good" to "excellent."

The Steps In Making A New Perfume

2009-10-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

There is much interest on the internet in making perfume. There are those websites that urge you to "save money" by making your own perfume; there are those websites that encourage you to "mix oils" to make your own perfume, and there may be other encouragements for you to make your own perfume. I have no argument with any of them.

But I will point out that NONE (with the exception of the PerfumersWorld home study course which I sell) will teach you perfumery in the sense of commercial perfumery -- the art of making fragrances such as are found in drugstores, department stores, and at leading mass merchants. High end niche perfumeries too. In fact, many of the "how to make your own perfume" websites on the internet website discount the artistry and skill of perfumers who have spend a lifetime in the industry and whose training has introduced them to, and taught them to use, thousands of aroma materials. In spite of what some may tell you, making a credible perfume is not simple.

Let's face it. If we are making perfume "part time," no matter how creative we may be and no matter how well developed our noses may be, and ignoring the fact that we may succeed in creating a handful of really great fragrances (or perhaps just two or three in a lifetime) we are a long way from possessing the skills -- and noses -- of the masters, the full time professionals. This need not stop us from enjoying what we do, or profiting from it.

The reason for this lengthy introduction is simply this. I get calls and emails from people who want me to create fragrances for them. Sometimes it is an "anything will do because we have a market now" request. Sometimes it is a request for "original" perfume that (closely) matches a well known commercial fragrance. If the person has a realistic budget and a realistic understanding of what is involved, and is contemplating a realistic order, I can render assistance by guiding them to an appropriate private label service.

But more frequently the initial proposed "order" is for 100 or fewer bottles, with the bottles themselves being of an original design. And of course they are needed in just a month or two. I can only say, "Sorry, I can't help."

What frustrates me is that if the person making the request had done their homework, I might have been able to give them some assistance. What doubly frustrates me is that the research they should have done is laid out for them in two books I have written on the subject, explaining what steps must be taken to accomplish the goal of "having your own perfume" and HOW to carry out each of these steps. (Book 1) (Book 2)

In a recent burst of frustration after going round and round with an "assistant to a celebrity," I wrote up a Perfumers Developer's Checklist which simply outlines the steps involved in creating a perfume.

For the person who has never read Book 1 or Book 2, the checklist will seem overwhelming -- too many decisions to make. But the Checklist itself urges you to first read either Book 1 or Book 2. After that, the Checklist becomes simple because you now have a sense of what you can do practically on your budget and what you cannot expect. Thus you avoid the frustrating conclusion that putting out a new perfume is too complicated when, in fact, it is not.

The point of Book 1 and Book 2 is to help you succeed ... on your budget ... without getting bogged down in attempting to achieve that which is neither practical or affordable.

Even as I began to write up the Checklist I sensed that those for whom it was written would probably ignore it. It will probably gather dust on my hard drive. But I can tell you this. When someone comes to me with a serious inquiry about having a fragrance produced for them, if they have not done their homework by reading Book 1 or Book 2, I sure am going to use the Checklist -- to complicate their lives -- unless they start, right up front, by talking budget ... and what part of that budget they've budgeted for me.

When is a perfume finished?

2009-09-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

If you are developing a perfume to sell, at some point you have to stop developing and start selling. Or do you? Can you continue to develop your fragrance AFTER you've started to sell it?

I recently introduced a fragrance I'd been working on since last April. ("Manama", at FrankBush.com) At this point it was finished. Now, in my mind, the only work to be done is to produce it in a larger quantity (which I am doing now) and sell it. Simple.

But life isn't always so simple, not when you have an open mind and take seriously helpful suggestions from knowledgeable friends whose feedback just MIGHT guide you toward IMPROVING a fragrance you consider quite good, even when these respected "coaches" AGREE that you have put together a really nice fragrance -- perhaps the best you've ever done. (I shared this feeling they had about Manama.)

I've done this before -- with Blackberry (FrankBush.com) even AFTER it was finished. I tested some ideas that were given to me and, while I respected them, they were rejected because I liked Blackberry just the way it was -- and I still do.

My post introduction experiments with Manama were interesting, educational, and food for thought for future projects. But the Manama formula has stayed the way it was on the day I pronounced it "finished."

It may come as news to some, but long lived, famous fragrances have been tinkered with over the years. this happens for several reasons. The first and most urgent is when a traditional raw material falls under suspicion (rightly or wrongly) and its use becomes restricted (or politically incorrect.) A substitute is now called for that can be used in such a way that the odor impression of the fragrance is unchanged.

A second reason for tinkering with a proven formula would be when one or more ingredients becomes prohibitively costly -- or simply unavailable in the quantity needed. The perfumer turns to the research chemist in the hopes of obtaining a less expensive, more available, synthetic substitute with the result often being the salvation of an endangered species while the product suffers only the slightest quality downgrade, so slight that even the most sensitive noses would be unlikely to notice the difference.

Finally there is the tweaking of a formula to bring it "up to date," to modify it to meet contemporary tastes and trends. This was the reason for the suggestions I received on Manama. A friend, who is enthusiastic about very modern fragrances that use the latest synthetics from research chemistry, suggested a few substitutions that might give Manama more of a state-of-the-art, cutting edge, feeling.

I would have been an arrogant fool NOT to have experimented with these suggestions. I did and I experienced the effect he had described to me. But I didn't make the changes. Not to Manama. I prefer this fragrance just the way it is.

But, going forward, I have already begun to use some of these ideas, and some new raw materials I had not encountered before, in my work to finalize ANOTHER fragrance I'm working on. And, as a result of these ideas and materials, this other fragrance is showing improvement. Very nice improvement.

Finally there is a new fragrance on my drawing board I'm developing to impress a particular person who has a particular market in mind. The suggestions and aroma materials I rejected for Manama will be the STARTING point of this new fragrance.

Yes, you can keep developing a fragrance AFTER you've started to sell it. The results might be a subtle improvement -- or they might be a whole new fragrance.

Do you REALLY want to know how to make perfume?

2009-07-20T15:40:00.000-07:00

I started a new perfume in April (2009) and just produced a small batch of the final result last night -- three months later. Some samples of this fragrance in its not quite final form were tossed into my Sample Bag at the end of June. Hopefully I'll have an ad ready for it by mid-August and the first bottles ready to sell in September. I won't tell you the name in case I change it at the last minute but you'll be able to guess my working title if you purchase the Sample Bag. It's the fragrance that has only one sample.

Looking at the finished result (see the photo at the right), I find myself fascinated by the aesthetics of the golden color of the compound -- the "juice" as perfumers would call it. Once I've added the alcohol, it will take on a much lighter coloring but still have a golden tone to it, thanks to the particular materials I used.

This fragrance came together rather quickly in "outline" form. (I sketch my perfume outlines, for the most part, with the 25 aroma bases included in the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course.) Then, after I had my outline, the slow and sometimes painfully frustrating work of making the modifications and decorations began. Those who tell you that 95 percent of the time you spend on a perfume go into the final few adjustments speak the truth.

The purpose of this blog is twofold. First, I want to make you aware of my fragrances which I sell at my Frank Bush online store. But it's more likely you are reading this blog because you have an interest in making perfume yourself and the second purpose of this blog is to encourage you in that interest. Yes, you can learn perfumery and make your own perfumes -- to sell, if that's what you want. And I'd like to help you. But I get frustrated at times (and so I'm venting a bit here) because too many people who ask me how to make perfume seem to think this is knowledge I can reveal to them in an email, or even a tweet.

Learning to make perfume requires study, discipline, materials, and a qualified teacher. It requires a commitment of years (not minutes). It's true that, as a student, you can often produce some gratifying results in a short period of time -- sometimes in just a few days or weeks. But at that point, unless you develop a passion for perfumery -- a desire to explore the world of aromatic substances and how they might be blended together -- you are a bit like the weekend painter hobbyist who struggles to copy the teacher's work, or even paints by the numbers. But at least these would-be artists are working with paint.

The most frustrating cases to me are those who say they want to make perfume but, when you tell them exactly how to get started (with materials and lessons -- lessons that require WORK!) they just ask the same question over again without taking the first step themselves. It's like somebody saying they want to play hockey yet they won't buy a pair of skates.

Last night I started a new perfume project. I have a theme. I want to play around with some aroma materials to see if I can find a favorable starting point. The theme was suggested to me by someone in another country and she will be among the first to receive a sample when it gets close to being finished.

How do I get started on a new fragrance? In this case I have an "idea," I have some "research," and my challenge is to create a fragrance that will please a select group of women who have never heard of me, who have never seen this blog, and who have never been exposed to my ideas on fragrance creation.

I love the challenge. The fragrance I finished yesterday is my new favorite. But the one I started yesterday has me really excited.

If you can feel that excitement over aroma and if you can commit yourself to hours of study and more hours of experimentation and learning, I really do encourage you to take up the study of perfumery yourself. You'll find all the resources you need to get started in the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course. This is what got me started in perfumery and the British perfumer who created this home study course has been a most wonderful mentor.

And then we wait

2009-06-22T10:28:00.000-07:00

A well known photographer was asked how he got the light "just right" in his scenics. His answer was, "I wait." Getting your perfume "just right" involves waiting too.

We've all had the experience where, for one reason or another, we've been pressured to rush our fragrance into bottles and into the hands of a customer. Some things you can rush. You can work longer hours (up to 24 each day), you can bring people in to help you, you can purchase equipment to automate filling. But you can't rush the chemistry that allows ingredients to blend together and bring the fragrance to perfection. This requires time, and waiting.

Recently I was presented with several examples of this need to wait -- and the client's impatience to receive the finished perfume. In the first example, a person acting as a middleman in a "deal" inquired about getting a private label fragrance. We went over the issues: custom or stock bottle, custom or stock fragrance, time considerations, etc. I thought we had an understanding and passed this person on to a friend who had, at hand, all that was needed.

Then the fun began. Suddenly stock bottles weren't good enough, a custom design would be required. The existing fragrance compound that was immediately available wasn't good enough and a new fragrance would have to be created. And all of this had to be done in ... a couple of weeks! In spite of the coaching, the client had no understanding of what was involved in creating a new perfume. Their planning made no sense.

Less than two weeks later I had a similar experience. This time it was someone else's client. A perfume had been accepted; an order had been placed. But it was needed in a week or two. What was the perfumer to do? The perfumer KNEW that the perfume needed more time to blend to perfection. But, it the perfume wasn't delivered as requested, the order would be lost.

For anyone who hasn't encountered it yet, in the business world being pushy is considered a virtue -- a sign that you care -- that you understand that you can make things happen faster by being outspoken and aggressive. At times this can be effective. At times it can be essential. But when the pushy, client side contact DOES NOT UNDERSTAND the mechanics of making perfume, does not understand of what can be rushed and what cannot, both sides quickly become losers.

Agreeing to give the client less than your best makes you a loser. Your reputation as an artist suffers. Pushing the perfumer to deliver what should not yet be delivered makes the client a loser, for the client is paying the full price for that which is not of full quality.

Proper planning will generally eliminate the problem. There are times when YOU have to take charge and set the schedule yourself and, if it doesn't work for the client, it may be more profitable to you in the long run ... just to walk away.

The costs involved in making your own perfume

2009-06-08T09:15:00.000-07:00

The bottle on the right is 2.5 liters of PEA, the bottle next to it is about 10 grams.

Everyone knows that when you buy a bottle of perfume at retail, most of what you are paying goes into advertising expense and profit. The bottle and packaging have SOME costs associated with them but the fragrance itself? Why THAT costs almost nothing! That is, if you are a BIG perfume company.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss costs with a friend and business associate who is also the source of my own perfumery raw materials. I'm going to speak a little in general terms here as some of what I'm writing about is a bit confidential. And also, I don't want to destroy the "mystique" of perfume which is what helps us all make money.

I know from personal experience that it is not easy to find suppliers who will sell the raw materials of perfumery in small quantities to people like myself. For example, if I want Lyral -- a beautiful lily of the valley aroma chemical made by IFF in New Jersey -- I can buy it directly from IFF at a very good price ... if I am willing to take a DRUM.

But Lyral may be only one of 100 raw materials I need. My office doesn't have room for 100 DRUMS of aroma chemicals, nor do I have the MONEY to buy that much, nor would I have the equipment necessary to TRANSFER chemicals out of drums and into smaller containers.

Realistically, when I am working on a new fragrance, I might only want 20 or 30 GRAMS of each aroma material I am using, which would be a "sample" quantity for a company like IFF. The big fragrance companies WILL send samples to customers -- "customers" meaning companies that will ultimately buy by the drum. And -- irony -- speaking to a chemist for a major U.S. household products company, he complained that when his company made a sample request, the fragrance houses sent them a LARGER sample than they really wanted because their need in developing a product wasn't much bigger than my own but, while I hoard any aroma materials I can get my hands on, this giant company DOES NOT keep a "library" of fragrances and has to DISPOSE of what is left over from their experiments using VERY STRICT AND EXPENSIVE techniques to safeguard the environment.

So back to making perfume. In need of smaller quantities of aroma materials, I have a limited choice of sources. And to get what I need, I have to go to a source who buys from ANOTHER source who may buy from a THIRD source who buys it directly from the manufacturer or processor.

Let me do that again, in reverses. The big company like IFF sells a drum to a smaller company like Vigon (in reality Vigon stocks the Givaudan line) who sell by the KILO and (this is speculation on my part) sell to a smaller operation like The Good Scents Company, who will then sell in an every smaller quantity to people like myself.

But lets now consider the costs. When Estee Lauder or Coty makes a fragrance they are buying "direct from the factory" at the lowest cost possible. They probably even negotiate a LOWER than list price based on the size of their order.

But when I buy aroma materials, they go through a series of middlemen before they reach me. At each there are repackaging expenses and profit to be taken out. Thus at each level the cost per kilo ... or per gram ... increases so that when I finally place my very small order (compared to those ordering by the drum!) I am going to pay a good deal more per gram or kilo than a larger company would pay, but this cost, for me, is still "workable."

So the materials I use in my perfumes COST ME MORE than they would cost Estee Lauder or Coty. Fortunately ALCOHOL -- which is cheap compared to the cost of aroma materials -- is the great leveler. Unless I am selling an "extrait" with a low percentage of alcohol, the 70 to 80 percent alcohol used to make the perfume helps bring my overall costs within reason. And what I "lose" on my higher cost for raw materials can be made up in in my lower overhead, advertising, and promotional expenses.

To put this picture in focus, as you become a smaller and smaller perfumery, your costs for aroma materials get higher and higher per gram or kilo but you're generally delighted if you can simply FIND a supplier for the materials you want to use who will sell to you in the small quantities you want.

To lay it out in dollars and cents, when a major fragrance marketer puts out a GOOD ("fine fragrance") perfume, their cost for the fragrance compound -- the "juice" -- may be around $30 per kilo (fragrance compound is sold by weight.) MY cost for a typical composition is over $200 per kilos and rising (with the cost of oil -- and remember, oil isn't just a source of petro aroma chemicals, it is also the ENERGY source used to process and transport natural aroma materials.)

Anyway, in talking to my supplier friend, I discovered that HE goes through many of the same problems in obtaining aroma materials that I go through, and his company is a lot larger than mine. But if you love perfume and want to keep creating -- and selling -- you do find a way, even if finding the materials you need can be a bit difficult.

And yes, there can be a great deal of profit in perfume, but you can't MAKE perfume without first INVESTING a bit of money.

A Quick Way To Test A Perfume Idea

2009-04-16T05:52:00.000-07:00

It's almost too simple to mention but it has worked so well for me that I will mention it. A quick technique I use for testing a (very) rough idea for a new scent or accord is to simply drop -- from eyedropper-type bottles -- several (liquid) aroma materials onto a test blotter.

I simply take a "blank" perfume test blotter, select several dropper bottles of aroma materials that I think might produce an interesting accord when blended, and let a drop from each fall on my test blotter.

In doing this you must make sure that the tip of each dropper does not TOUCH the smelling strip, to avoid having it contaminated by the other drops that have already fallen on the test blotter.

The thinner your test blotter is, the faster and better your aroma materials will blend. A cut up coffee filter will work well for this technique. Because the paper is thin and because each aroma material is quickly absorb absorbed into the paper, the aroma materials dropped onto the paper blend more quickly than they would in a mixing pot or test tube.

This is NOT a precise way to create an accord. But if I'm curious as to how a "green" material, a "mossy" material, a "spicy" material and an aldehyde might smell when blended together, this technique gives me an answer in seconds. I don't have to stir and mix; I don't have to wait overnight for the aroma materials to blend properly.

Try this technique as an experiment yourself, if you haven't tried it already.

Getting Started On A New Perfume

2009-04-15T04:13:00.000-07:00

Perfume doesn't evolve from a random mixing. Developing a new perfume involves having a plan. The big companies call it a "perfume brief." If, instead of a perfume you were developing a TV commercial, you would call it a storyboard.

This description of your "perfume to be" can involve pictures, video clips, words, maps, foods, even smells and existing perfumes. What you are defining is a goal. What you are avoiding is random mixing -- putting aroma materials together without a plan. Randomness can be fine for experiments; to learn what happens when various aroma materials are combined and to store these impressions and formulas away in your personal memory bank. But when it comes time to develop a perfume, you want to be sure that you have a target -- an aroma goal. You'll be amazed at how much faster you learn perfumery if you direct your work toward well defined goals.

I'm on vacation in Canada and, on this vacation, I wanted to start working on a new perfume. I had some ideas that started coming to me as I worked on advertising concepts for some of my existing fragrances. At present all this planning is still confidential but I will tell you that I sat down with a notebook and pen and started to draw pictures, imagine certain music, focus on a particular geographical area (which I've never visited!) and meditated on what aromas might appeal to a fantasy woman in that (to me) fantasy city. These images suggested to me certain aroma materials to use to get started.

As mentioned, I was on vacation at our house in Canada, traveling light. Today perfumers have access to around 3,000 aroma materials. Top perfumers sometimes limit themselves to about 200 basic aroma materials. My kit consisted of the 25 Fleuressence aroma bases that represent the 25 aroma groups -- not to be confused with perfume types -- used in the PerfumersWorld ABC's of Perfumery teaching method. It is a bit like having a small set of oil paints, yet knowing those paints, mixed in proportions and combinations, can create an infinite range of colors.

So is it too with my kit of 25 Fleuressence bases from the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course in Creative Perfumery.

Now I have my target and I have my materials. Now I am ready to start working on the physical creation. From the years I have worked with these 25 materials I have developed a sense of how to put them together to give me what I want. But I continue to make new discoveries too; to find desirable aromas by blending various of these 25 "paints" in ways I have not blended them before. Each time I work with them, my knowledge is expanded.

The work goes quickly. Four "paints" are blended. One is made dominant. The others modify and decorate. I have achieved my central theme. But there is another theme that must pull against it. I create that separately. Then the work of blending the two themes begins.

Some modifications suppress the central theme. Putting too much into a perfume creates problems. The color becomes muddy. Certain of my "paints" must be cut back or eliminated entirely to clarify the desired theme. This theme must be reinforced rather then blobbed over. Complexity is desirable but extreme moderation is essential. The decorations should draw attention to the melody, not compete with it.

The project comes together. I have my perfume. But... BUT, at this stage, working with my 25 bases, I have only drafted the OUTLINE for the fragrance that is in my head, the fragrance that is suggested by my "perfume brief." It is as far as I will go for now.

I know, at this point, that I want to make certain substitutions. There are effects I want to achieve that I personally do not know how to achieve with my 25 "colors."

When I return home, when I return to my many, many little bottles, I will select certain "colors" and use them as substitutions because I believe some will be more precise. I know already most of the substitutions I want to make. I will try a few experiments too, to see if some "colors" with which I am less familiar might be suitable to help me achieve the final result that I want.

It will be these final steps, these final substitutions and adjustments, that will determine whether my final result will amount to anything great or not.

My Next Perfume

2009-04-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

New fragrances start in the head; they start with an idea, an inspiration, a riddle, a vision -- something that PROVOKES you into developing that new fragrance, going through all that work, worrying about how -- or whether -- you'll be able to sell it. But, if you are a perfumer, that inspiration gets you out of bed, off your duff, and into the lab to start working on that idea.

A recent article in Perfumer & Flavorist (April, 2009) jogged me. It was about the beauty of the drydown, that scent that is last to evaporate -- the basenote. The two perfumers being interviewed described themselves as "drydown junkies." They could not get hooked on a perfume that did not have a beautiful drydown.

Now the sad fact is, many of today's fragrances have a no discernible drydown. Marketers have learned that consumers, at the perfume counter, go for the top note -- the instant gratification -- the quick hit. Try spraying a few blotters, walk around for an hour, and then smell them -- if there's anything left on the blotter to smell!

It's funny how we've come full circle. Early 19th century fragrances required constant application. How many bottles of cologne did Napoleon carry on his person when he went into battle? He had to keep dousing himself because, in the early 19th century, those fragrances just didn't last -- like so many of the fragrances being sold today.

Tucked away in my travel bag I have a really old plastic bottle of an early Ralph Lauren "Polo" fragrance, made when Ralph Lauren fragrances were still under the Warner (as in "Time-Warner") label.

I'm not sure whether the fragrance in my bottle has changed a bit over time, traveling thousands of miles and to various countries, but it sure is tenacious. Use a little in the morning and you can still smell it on your body the next day! You have to wash it off. It doesn't just go away. The drydown is super powered, even if you don't fall in love with the scent.

Here's a second example. We have a house in Canada and go there in the summer. one summer I was working on some tests with Oakmoss, inspired by the writings of the great perfumer-teacher, Jean Carles. I had dipped a bunch of test blotters which, by chance, were left in the house over the winter. The following year when we returned, they still had a beautiful aroma! That's a powerful drydown!

So my current inspiration is to take an idea I've been toying with for a woman's fragrance and see, first, what kind of a drydown I can achieve, without worrying too much (initially) about the top note. To keep this all simple, I'm "going back to my roots" and will start with the less volatile bases that come with the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course in Creative Perfumery. I'll work with the U-Animal, V-Vanilla, W-Wood, X-Musk, and Y-Mossy Fleuressence bases.

Will it work? Will my drydown be not only tenacious but also beautiful? I can tell you this. In the small book that comes with the Foundation Course there are a number of formulas. Some make use of as few as five of the 25 Fleuressence bases in the kit. Those "sample" formulas produce some really inspiring drydowns. So this will be my starting point.

Disasters Happen

2009-03-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

OK. Here's the deal. I created a gardenia fragrance -- a very nice fragrance -- and because I had a stock of pink spray bulbs and bottles to fit, I decided to make the perfume pink and call it "pink gardenia." Yes, I know, gardenias are really white, but what's a perfume without a little fantasy?

I made up a few bottles. I even gave away a few bottles to friends as samples. And I was busy working on a graphic theme for Pink Gardenia ... and drawing a big blank which, perhaps, was lucky. Here's why.

In order to coordinate my gardenia fragrance with my pink spray bulbs, I used a food coloring to give it a pinkish color. This worked fine. Then I came across an even pinker coloring, one that was intended for use with soaps. It gave my perfume an even pinker look, just as I wanted.

Unfortunately this new coloring also gave clothing that came into contact with the fragrance a pink coloring. Disaster! Sure, it would wash off (or dry clean off) easily enough (but not as easily as the food coloring) but ... I didn't want to be the one to give someone that grief.

So, except for the few bottles that have already been prepared, the pink is out. Now I'm thinking this fragrance needs a new name. It's the same fragrance -- a gardenia accord that just keeps evolving from one beautiful "petal" to another. But it needs an image. A concept. A photograph. Some music. I'd like to send you a sample to get your ideas. But right now I'm not sure how best to do it. My on hand supply of the non-pink Pink Gardenia is probably too small.

So disasters happen. But maybe this disaster will inspire some amazing new "gardenia" marketing breakthrough for me. As usual, I'm optimistic.

FREE OFFER: The Perfumer's Workbook

2009-03-27T12:15:00.000-07:00

One component of the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course in creative perfumery is The Perfumer's Workbook. This is a computer program, on a CD, that guides you through the creation of a new -- original -- fragrance from YOUR odor descriptions. (The "big" -- professional -- version of this program sells for $5,000 but most of us will never need it!)

Some people, including it's developer Stephen V. Dowthwaite, look at it as a shortcut to becoming a perfumer. Personally I would add the warning that, even with The Perfumer's Workbook, your first efforts may fall a bit short of the mark but in time -- a short time if you give it the effort -- you WILL be able to achieve quite satisfactory results. In fact your results could be quite brilliant.

Two days ago (May 23rd, 2009) PerfumersWorld offered me the right to distribute FREE copies of the newest version of The Perfumer's Workbook (Version 9.025) as an incentive to get people to look at a web page announcing our 2009 5-Day Perfumery Course and Workshop at Warwick, New York (May 4-8).

There is no real "catch" or downside to this offer. The software is functional and you can use it for as long as you want. The only limit this unregistered version has is that you won't be able to add new aroma materials to the database or edit the existing odor descriptions of the installed database.

In short, the unregistered version of The Perfumer's Workbook functions, in part, as a catalog for the aroma materials sold by PerfumersWorld, including their own specialty "Fleuressence"® bases. But this isn't such a great limitation as their product catalog is extensive and covers most all major fragrance categories.

But, if you want to unlock the aroma materials database so that you can add your own aroma materials, or edit the descriptions of the ones already installed, you'll have to register for the 2009 5-Day Workshop and make your payment in full.

As you may guess, after May 4th, 2009, this offer will no longer be available.

You can download Version 9.025 of The Perfumer's Workbook here.

How I Think About Creating A New Men's Fragrance

2009-02-04T09:01:00.001-08:00

I did not grow up using cologne. My mother, as best I can remember, made little or no use of perfume. So I come to perfume late in life -- perfume for women and, oh yes, perfume for men which we call "cologne" to make the men feel more comfortable about using it.

My first male fragrances were, as I recall, Halston's Z-14 (given to me by the beauty who is now my wife), Xeryus Rouge (Givenchy), Grey Flannel (Geoffrey Beene), Giorgio Red (Giorgio), and a really old Ralph Lauren Polo which I still use from time to time. Oh, and a Guy Laroche Horizon. Of these, today, my preference would be the Grey Flannel and the Horizon. That should give you some idea of my taste, or lack of it.

In fact, I'm not overwhelmed by most men's fragrances. I like Sean John's Unforgivable. OK for Usher. Ocean Rain left me cold, which was a surprise to me as I loved Roudnitska's Femme. Maybe I just got a bad bottle.

When I work on a fragrance for women, my primary goal is to create ("produce"?) something my wife will enjoy wearing without being prompted and which I will enjoy when she wears it.

It would be logical to think that I might want to create a men's fragrance that she would enjoy when I wear it, but I just can't wrap my mind around that concept.

When I work on a men's fragrance -- which here I'll call perfume -- I think only of my own selfish desires. (Some women might say that this makes me a typical male.)

When I was first told by a knowledgeable critic that my Toxic smelled like burning rubber and my Blackberry like smoked ham, I worried that I had really gone off the deep end.

When I was first told that my men's fragrance, Toxic, smelled like burning rubber, I was willing to admit that it was a bit edgy. When I was first told that my men's fragrance, Blackberry, had a bit (only a bit) of the smell of smoked ham, I did some trails on that one ingredient (cedarwood) to see what Blackberry would be like with less cedarwood, or perhaps no cedarwood at all as it could be replaced by a less demonstrative substitute.

After two months of testing I put ALL of the cedarwood back into Blackberry because that was the way I liked it!

These two experiences (I personally enjoy both Toxic and Blackberry) convinced me that neither my taste nor my goals were mainstream -- but I was now discovering a unity in the work I was doing, a unity I wanted to pursue rather than abandon for I suspect I am not alone in my tastes.

The other day I noticed a cologne a man was wearing. I noticed it because (1) it was too strong (he had used far too much!) and (2) because it said all over it, "I am a safe, typical cologne for men and nobody will fault you for wearing me." I wanted to puke.

Toxic doesn't have that effect on me.

Blackberry doesn't have that effect on me.

So the next men's fragrance I create will probably be in for some sharp criticism too.

Learning to match fragrances

2009-01-15T09:38:00.001-08:00

Creating a new perfume is about having a vision. But to recognize your vision, skills are required. So if you want to create the fragrance of your dreams, you first need to learn how to "match" a fragrance -- creating a physical representation of your mental or nasal vision.

Matching has long been part of the perfumer's training. After learning how to recognize the smell of basic perfumery raw materials, the perfumer trainee begins to put them together. Trying to recreate a classic fragrance by this matching process is a standard training event. For example, you have a bottle of real Chanel No.5 and you have, in front of you, a row of bottles of aroma materials that are not Chanel No.5. Your challenge is to construct "your" version of No.5 using these aroma materials.

Young perfumers have been doing this for generations. The purpose is not to reinvent Chanel No.5 but rather to (1) learn something about the structure of classic fragrances and (2) to develop your technical skills at transforming a mental or sensual "image" into a physical product -- your own new perfume.

When I first started working with the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course I don't believe I had ever heard of Edmond Roudnitska. When I mixed the simple formulas presented by the PerfumersWorld course, "muguet haute couture" or "classic muguet" didn't mean any more to me than the experience of taking five of the 25 bottles in front of me and mixing 25 drops of this with 10 drops of that, etc. After stirring them for a minute or so, they were left overnight. In the morning I was treated to the wonderful fragrance of "classic muguet."

In time I learned that the concept of "classic muguet" derived largely from perfumer Edmond Roudnitska's Diorissimo (created for Christian Dior) and itself inspired in part by Henri Robert's Muguet de Bois (created for Coty). In time I was able to obtain an older bottle of Diorissimo. This gave me an opportunity to compare the "classic muguet" that I had mixed with the "real" classic muguet -- Roudnitska's Diorissimo. The initial impression was certainly that of a good match!

Don't get me wrong . What I had mixed was certainly no substitute for Roudnitska's creation, one of the most beautiful fragrances ever. In the first place, Roudnitska's CONCEPT was original; my mixture was simply a crude copy of that concept. Roudnitska's materials were richer, more costly; mine were more simple, more affordable, more synthetic. Roudnitska's perfume has all those wonderful qualities of a great perfume -- radiance, tenacity, subtlety, depth. Mine mixture achieved the outline, not the substance. But for me this was an excellent training exercise (even though the formula had been given to me!)

The "classic muguet" formula in the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course was not my creation. I use if only as an example of fragrance matching -- a skill at which I am still just a beginner.

But the road to learning how to actualize your fragrance visions begins with working with perfumery materials -- conducting directed experiments rather than just random mixing. The more you try your hand at matching either an existing perfume or a perfume that exists only in your imagination, the more skilled you become at working with perfumery materials, and the more you begin to appreciate subtle differences between one fragrance or aroma material and another.

Success in perfumery requires discipline and working at matching, over and over again, first to get the right materials and then to get the right balance of those materials.

The more you work at it, the better you become. And, as you become better and better at it, those dreams of a great perfume you have imagined become better and better realized in your own compositions.

Try creating your own "Joy" perfume!

2009-01-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

"Almost no perfume is complete without
a little Jasmine in one form or another"
-- The ABC's of Perfumery

Jean Patou's response to the Wall Street crash of 1929 was the creation of Joy perfume as a gift for clients who -- quite suddenly -- could no longer afford his pricey frocks. Advertised as "the world's most expensive perfume," Joy led the way for Patou's perfumes to carve out a successful business of their own during the dark Depression days, a business which continues today.

Joy, in its original, super-expensive version, is a bit heavy, a bit old fashioned, a bit too rich, to opulent for today's tastes. And a bit too expensive. Yet for the student of perfumery, Joy is one of those "must match" fragrances, a perfume that every student perfumer must make an attempt to recreate by nose alone, without access to the formula.

Loaded with costly jasmin, Joy was created for Patou by his long time perfumer, Henri Almeras who, so the legend goes, was appalled at the excess of expensive ingredients insisted on by Patou. In the history of perfumery, Joy is not considered to be a breakthrough perfume, it is not innovative nor is the theme original. But it is considered a legendary fragrance because of its history, because of Patou's daring to insist on excess, bright lights and joy at a time when others could see only darkness and gloom.

How hard is it to reconstruct Joy? Certainly not a job for the faint hearted. To work with the perfumery materials used for the original would be prohibitively expensive. And today the use of some of Joy's original aroma materials would be restricted or banned (safety, environmentalism, animal rights, etc.) Yet the student perfume can get a taste of the structure and aroma of Joy by simply following the highly simplified formula offered in The ABC's of Perfumery or Unit 5 of the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course.

If you were studying perfumery within one of the handful of giant fragrance creation houses, you would not be "given" a simplified formula like this, you would have to "discover" it yourself through your knowledge of raw materials and by using the power of your nose to match, with your aroma materials, the fragrance of Joy. This is certainly an ideal way to learn perfumery.

But for those of us who have other responsibilities, for those of us who are unable to devote all 24 hours of the day to perfumery, for those of us who do not have the good fortune of having been taken in by a major fragrance house to learn perfumery under the daily, personal tutelage of a master perfumer, the PerfumersWorld solution offers strong advantages.

While you might say that giving students a simplified Joy formula first -- before they have become familiar with the raw materials, before they have trained their noses to match materials, and in many cases before they have ever smelled the original -- is the wrong approach to teaching perfumery, I would argue the opposite.

By starting with a hands on project, with a series of small dropper bottles, mixing pots, and toothpicks to stir, the student quickly comes to appreciate (1) the structure of the perfume in terms of top notes, middle notes and base notes, and (2) the concept that a fine fragrance involves blending two or more raw materials together to produce a result which is more artistically beautiful than any of these materials taken alone.

Creating beautiful aromas is an art -- the perfumers art -- and by mixing formulas that are given to you in the beginning, you begin to appreciate the nature of the aroma materials themselves. Some have beautiful fragrances by themselves, others -- which are critical in fine fragrance creation -- you might at first think to flush down the toilet. Still others have little impact at all by themselves but play a vital role when combined with other aroma materials.

Some people say it takes seven years to become a perfumer. Some perfumers would say it takes a lifetime. Steve Dowthwaite has said it takes a single day -- the day you decide to become a perfumer.

But to create perfume you need aroma materials, and some instruction in perfumery basics to get you started. That's why Steve created the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course -- a home study course which provides all the tools needed to start the motivated perfumer-to-be on the path to becoming a mature perfumer.

Here's a footnote. The PerfumersWorld Foundation Course which comes with aroma materials, mixing pots, book, software, and lessons costs less than a half ounce bottle of "Jean Patou Joy Parfum Deluxe" at Bloomingdales.

How much training does it take to create a successful perfume of your own?

2008-12-30T08:38:00.000-08:00

I knew I had done it when my wife started wearing it without being prompted. I knew I had done it when, in the late afternoon, I could still detect the clear aroma of the perfume she had put on that morning. I knew without a doubt that I had created a fragrance that (1) my wife liked well enough to USE without being prompted, (2) that had enough RADIANCE so that I could detect it on her from a distance, and (3) that it had enough TENACITY to last all day. I was even more gratified to learn that several of her friends had ASKED her what perfume she was wearing ... because they liked it too!

How much training does it take to create a successful perfume of your own, on your own? A number of people have asked me where I got my training in perfumery. The fact is that my "training" is quite limited and nothing that is not, today, available to anyone who wants it badly enough and who is willing to read, learn, spend a little money, and discipline themselves to think, smell, take notes, and keep at it.

It doesn't come by magic and it doesn't come overnight. But unless you get started and work at it, it will never come at all.

My starting point was DESIRE. The desire to LEARN how to create perfume. This much I knew: perfume or cologne is a mixture of alcohol and fragrance compound. The alcohol is plain ethyl alcohol, commonly denatured due to tax regulations and frequently sold under such names as "perfumer's alcohol" or some such. In the United States, the approved methods of "denaturing" alcohol are found at the Treasury Department's website. "SD-39" and "SD-40" are the common denatured formulas for the ethyl alcohol used in cosmetics and perfumery.

Once the alcohol and fragrance compound have been mixed and allowed to blend thoroughly, all that remains is to bottle and package your perfume or cologne.

As far as the perfume or cologne itself is concerned, the key to it all is the "juice" -- the fragrance compound to be mixed with the alcohol, and THIS is what perfumers create. This was what I wanted to learn how to create. Getting started was not easy.

For me, the beginning was books. I searched for any books I could find on perfume making. Some books along this line exist. The best are expensive and sometimes quite hard to find. And the books I found inspired me. But what was missing was A FOUNDATION because these books were all written for people with SOME background and experience in perfumery. The fundamentals -- the basics of perfume creation -- were missing from these professional books.

Moreover, while the books talked about many common aroma materials, they made no suggestions as to WHERE these materials might be obtained, particularly in small and affordable quantities.

Everything changed for me when I discovered the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course. Is this just a blatant plug for a commercial product? Yes, I sell it at my website. And yes, I'd like to sell many times more than we now sell. But "yes," also, this home study course is the ONLY course I know of that is available to ANYONE to get you started in a professional way toward becoming a professional perfumer.

Now let me scroll back to the perfume I was talking about at the beginning of this article. It's called "Code Name: 'Paris'" and what's special about it is that, with the exception of a trace of one single aroma material, ALL of the aroma materials that I used to create "Code Name: 'Paris'" are materials that are included with the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course.

For me, this home study course, which comes with aroma materials and supplies, was MY starting point in professional perfumery. Can YOU create your own perfume too? Hey, your nose may be a lot better than mine and YOU might go farther even faster!

Pink perfume? This has to be the reason!

2008-12-19T12:41:00.000-08:00

Suppose you are introducing a new perfume -- on an absolutely tiny scale, a scale so small that it would be a real drag on (potential!) profits to order special bottles ... and pumps.

Spray pumps, in small quantities (1,000 or fewer) aren't exactly cheap. Worse still, limited styles are available because you'll generally need a screw-on pump rather than the "crimp style" pumps used by ALL major fragrance marketers (unless you want to shell out about $2,500 for a "one at a time" manual crimp machine!)

But suppose you have -- in your inventory -- several thousand "bulb style" fine mist sprayers. And suppose you hand a generous supply of 2 ounce bottles to which these bulb sprayers will fit quite nicely. Then -- the icing on the cake -- suppose you also have a good supply of screw-on caps that will fit your 2 ounce bottles, to using during shipping as spray bulbs, if attached to the bottle, will leak in transit.

Then the only problem is that ALL of your beautiful spray bulbs are ... hot pink!

Now do you understand the dilemma?

Taken together, my bottles and spray bulbs look quite nice -- and are nicely functional. But what about the image? How do you fight against hot pink? And these hot pink spray bulbs did not take well to dying when I attempted to change the color of one.

Would it be better then to have a pink perfume?

The result is Pink Gardenia. The perfume may not be quite as pink as the spray bulb but at least it suggests that direction.

But perhaps next time I buy a large quantity of spray bulbs I'll be sure to get another color!

“I have an idea for a perfume”

2008-12-18T10:01:00.000-08:00

At lest once every 2 weeks I receive an email with the message, “I have an idea for a perfume.” Usually the message concludes with a phone number and the words, “call me.”

Perfume is a funny art form. If somebody said to you, “I have an idea for a painting” you might respond, “So what? Why talk about an idea for a painting? Just go out and paint it!” Likewise, in songwriting, music composing, and writing poetry or books. You don't talk about your “idea for...” You go out and do it.

But I fear that when someone approaches me saying “I have an idea for a perfume,” they are thinking like the person who has an idea for (1) a new Hollywood blockbuster, (2) a new hit game show, (3) a brilliant new product everyone will buy, ... etc. Their vision is on a pot of gold, not a bottle of perfume. They are looking for 90 percent of the profits on a project where 100 percent of the capital, research & development and marketing will be provided by somebody else. And to think that Coco Chanel only got 10% of the profits on her “No.5” perfume! Going through the process of making “their” perfume is not to their taste at all!

Now if someone comes to me and says, “I have an idea for marketing a perfume, where can I get my own perfume without spending a fortune?” I have an answer. I simply tell them to buy a copy of my book, "Creating Your Own Perfume With A 1700 Percent Markup" and read it. It gives the would be perfume marketer a detailed description of how you can get your “juice” (perfume compound) without spending a fortune and the steps you'll have to go through to bottle it and get it ready to sell. And the less you are hung up on exactly what your perfume must smell like, the simpler the “get it to market” process becomes.

But what about the rare case of the person whose idea for a perfume actually involves wanting to achieve a specific fragrance?

Among those whose serious interest is the fragrance itself, I've seen (and heard about) some pretty far out ideas (which I'll not detail in the interest of potential client confidentiality!) The more far out of these ideas would give a chemist headaches in trying to sort out what combination of molecules just might take the perfumer in the right direction – without burning the skin off the consumer, causing an explosion, or producing such a toxic mess that it could only be transported by a hazmat team.

But suppose YOU have “an idea for a perfume” and you're serious about it, so serious that you are willing to learn a bit about perfume creation, even if you suspect that you may not, on your own, come up with a perfect recreation of the perfume of your mental vision? If you fall into this elite group of artistic but practical people, I have an artistic – and practical - suggestion for you. It's called the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course.

Last spring I had the opportunity to spend a few days with Steve Dowthwaite, founder of PerfumersWorld and creator of the Foundation Course. Steve was conducting a 5-day workshop in New York City and one of the practical exercises involved having students “match” a classic fragrance using just 25 aroma bases (all of these are provided in the Foundation Course kit.)

For one very classic fragrance, some good matches were created. For a second fragrance, no good matches were produced but there was a good deal of discussion – and some suggestions by several chemists – why a credible match for this fragrance could not be produced from our 25 aroma bases. (Later I was told that a number of top perfumers had failed at this same challenge, only they had been using far more than 25 aroma materials!)

The fact is that perfumery today makes use of some very state-of-the-art aroma materials, some of which are held very closely by the companies that created them and are NOT available to just anyone who might want them.

So if you have an idea for a perfume – a vivid mental picture of a fragrance you would like to create – or see created, the Foundation Course might NOT be the answer for you ... unless --

Unless you really have a long-range interest in perfume, an interest that is so strong that you are willing to accept the reality that, at the beginning of your work in perfumery, you will not be able to produce fragrances of the quality you will be able to produce as your work progresses. For example, you can't expect to pick up a guitar for the first time and give a sellout concert. You have a learn a few cords first.

If your interest in perfumery is limited to realizing this one particular perfume that is stuck in your imagination, and if this one perfume idea of yours just happens to be a “difficult” fragrance to match, your best hope is to recruit a perfumer who will work with you although this could be expensive.

So it's all a matter of motivation. Do you want to create just a single perfume ... or do you want to become a perfumer?

The Creation of my "Pink Gardenia" Perfume

2008-12-16T08:58:00.000-08:00

This blog was inspired by my own work in perfumery which started with the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course, a home study course in creative perfumery which I began in 2005 and which, thanks to my relationship with PerfumersWorld, I now sell at my PerfumeProjects website.

The starting point in the Foundation Course is a set of 25 perfume bases and one non-alcoholic solvent representing the letters "A" through "Z" in the "ABC's of Perfumery" teaching method developed by perfumer Stephen V. Dowthwaite, founder of PerfumersWorld. Using nothing more than these 25 bases, you can "match" a very wide variety of fragrances and fragrance types -- IF you give your nose a bit of training. More important, you can imagine -- and create -- excellent, original perfumes of your own.

Now, while finishing my final adjustments on a men's cologne (Blackberry), I've returned to a woman's fragrance I started last summer. For reasons I'll explain in another post, I've called it Pink Gardenia.

Blackberry was inspired by a black currant base from PerfumersWorld but the formula itself makes use of both a number of essential oils and synthetic aroma chemicals. In fact, the black currant "inspiration note" is the only base I used for this fragrance and it includes none of the "A-Z" Foundation Course bases.

Like Blackberry, Pink Gardenia was inspired by a PerfumersWorld base, "Gardenia Fleuressence." But for Pink Gardenia I decorated, modified, and enhanced the gardenia base using, almost exclusively, bases from my original K-26 Foundation Course materials kit. In fact, of the aroma materials I ultimately selected for Pink Gardenia, only three were single note synthetic aroma chemicals and one of those was simply a swap for a K-26 kit base that I made because my substitution, an aroma material I had used frequently in the past, had "bell sound" (to my nose!) rather than the "gentle melody" of the K-26 base material I had first used in this formula.

Pink Gardenia isn't the first perfume I designed using the K-26 kit bases almost exclusively. Code Name 'Paris' is another example of a sophisticated perfume built almost exclusively from these "simple" aroma bases.

Building a sophisticated perfume using nothing more than 25 bases plus the gardenia base (which is not part of the K-26 kit), may seem a bit simplistic. You can't imaging Estee Lauder's perfumers limiting themselves to just 25 bases to sketch out a fragrance such as Sean John's Unforgivable. BUT here's where the tools in the Foundation Course get really interesting. The course comes with a computer program -- The Perfumers Workbook -- which gives you the power to add enormous sophistication to your fragrances by introducing you to aroma materials that are likely to be entirely new to you.

In the case of Pink Gardenia, I did not make use of this incredibly useful tool. Why? Because my goal was to create a pleasant, simple fragrance, and that's exactly what I had when I finished my original formula. But, had I not been so pleased with what I had created ("If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"), this is what I would have done --

Using The Perfumers Workbook, I would first enter my formula for Pink Gardenia. Then, for each of the K-26 kit bases I had used, I would ask the software to suggest substitutes -- essential oils and/or synthetic aroma chemicals that I might use as substitutes or supplements for each particular base.

Then -- the ultimate "professional" touch -- I would ask the software what I might do to give the formula more complexity and depth. In a few seconds the screen would spit out a formula of its own -- a modification of my formula -- adding small quantities of many aroma materials which, for the most part, would be totally new to me.

Most of the computer's suggestions would be for materials I would not have on hand. This isn't as big a problem as you might imagine. The software allows you to review each of the materials to get an idea of their aroma and characteristics, just by looking at your computer screen. Only when I see a new aroma material that I believe could enhance the aroma or smooth over a rough spot would I start to worry about how and where to obtain a supply.

In fact, most of the materials suggested by the software can be purchased from PerfumersWorld in small, affordable, quantities. And, as you begin to develop your "library" or aroma materials, you learn of other reliable sources, some of which may be more convenient for you. So, if the computer is showing me some new aroma materials that might improve my formula, I'll try to obtain a small supply of those materials and play with them a bit, to see if any of them are helpful. Of course all of this will be detailed in my notebook.

Pink Gardenia came together for me a lot faster than some other perfumes I've worked on (some of which just ended up in the sink!) But, when your nose tells you that you've got what you've been seeking, it's time to stop developing and start bottling ... and start marketing!

3 Steps To Becoming A Perfumer

2008-12-11T14:59:00.000-08:00

Today anyone can create their own perfume, just as anyone can paint a picture or compose a tune. The first step is the desire to do it. The second step is the decision to do it. Then you launch yourself into the exciting work of learning the aromas and characteristics of the raw materials of perfumery and how they can be put together to yield beautiful perfumes.

My starting point in perfumery was the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course and my results from that course and subsequent adventures in perfumery are what this blog is all about.