Handpicking Essences

Life is a waving feather., originally uploaded by Olivia Bee.

We start from the top notes, which are easy and accessible, as they are very fleeting and familiar– citrus notes such as grapefruit and blood orange. Spices like star anise and fresh ginger root. Eliza surprises me with picking up lavender and telling me how much she loves it. Most people finds it calming and relaxing and associate it with the feeling of well-being. Here’s a twist and a turn to what I thought would be an herb-free perfume… She also likes rosewood, which shares some similarities with lavender, but is more light and floral and “perfumey”.

I was sure Eliza will love all the heart notes, but she ended up being more a base note gal. I knew she’s going to love rose and jasmine (and she did), but I was surprised she did not like tuberose and orange blossom, even though she was extremely smitten with the Neroli! Another two surprises where her immediate connection and ease with more quirky essences, namely geranium and boronia… Both essences which I would have not thought of to begin with, and haven’t put them in my initial “sketch” for the perfume.

Moving to the base notes, we complied quite an overwhelming collection of notes. All the woodsy notes drew Eliza in like magic – sandalwood, agarwood, amyris, hinoki, frankincense… Everything woody seems to invoke a dreamy expression on her face as if she just found a vintage fabric she forgot she had and now she can finally find a use for it. But locally growing trees like fir and cedarwood made her even more excited.

This is why it’s so important to do the olfactory journey session, even though it takes a long time, through this process the client unlocks memories and discovers essences that played a big part of their lives but are long forgotten, or discovers new loves. And from the perfumer’s point of view, the seemingly random array of notes that the client picks poses a challenge. How can they work together? And will they work together? Which fragrance family could they belong to, if at all? These strange combinations, the imperfections so to speak, the most challenging pairings, are what make a perfume interesting and can make the whole difference between just another pretty smelling thing to a work of art.

Tomorrow I will be bringing all the essences we hand-picked in the 1st round last week, and we will sniff through them again to pick the ones that resonate most with Eliza and the spirit of Gentille Alouette. We have no more and no less than 30 essences that were chosen in the 1st round, so there is a lot of wonderful smells to go through. And this time I’m even more curious to see what stories and expressions they will bring out this session, because it will be a lot more focused.

We start from the top notes, which are easy and accessible, as they are very fleeting and familiar– citrus notes such as grapefruit and blood orange. Spices like star anise and fresh ginger root. Eliza surprises me with picking up lavender and telling me how much she loves it. Most people finds it calming and relaxing and associate it with the feeling of well-being. Here’s a twist and a turn to what I thought would be an herb-free perfume… She also likes rosewood, which shares some similarities with lavender, but is more light and floral and “perfumey”.

I was sure Eliza will love all the heart notes, but she ended up being more a base note gal. I knew she’s going to love rose and jasmine (and she did), but I was surprised she did not like tuberose and orange blossom, even though she was extremely smitten with the Neroli! Another two surprises where her immediate connection and ease with more quirky essences, namely geranium and boronia… Both essences which I would have not thought of to begin with, and haven’t put them in my initial “sketch” for the perfume.

Moving to the base notes, we complied quite an overwhelming collection of notes. All the woodsy notes drew Eliza in like magic – sandalwood, agarwood, amyris, hinoki, frankincense… Everything woody seems to invoke a dreamy expression on her face as if she just found a vintage fabric she forgot she had and now she can finally find a use for it. But locally growing trees like fir and cedarwood made her even more excited.

This is why it’s so important to do the olfactory journey session, even though it takes a long time, through this process the client unlocks memories and discovers essences that played a big part of their lives but are long forgotten, or discovers new loves. And from the perfumer’s point of view, the seemingly random array of notes that the client picks poses a challenge. How can they work together? And will they work together? Which fragrance family could they belong to, if at all? These strange combinations, the imperfections so to speak, the most challenging pairings, are what make a perfume interesting and can make the whole difference between just another pretty smelling thing to a work of art.

Tomorrow I will be bringing all the essences we hand-picked in the 1st round last week, and we will sniff through them again to pick the ones that resonate most with Eliza and the spirit of Gentille Alouette. We have no more and no less than 30 essences that were chosen in the 1st round, so there is a lot of wonderful smells to go through. And this time I’m even more curious to see what stories and expressions they will bring out this session, because it will be a lot more focused.