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

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

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?

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

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

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)

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?

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.