Disasters Happen

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

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

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

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!

"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?

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!

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!