Gowé, the scent of Africa
Gowé, a very popular plant in West Africa where it is valued for its healing properties as well as being burned like incense, has now joined the perfumer’s palette.
Sarah Bouasse
Posts
De Laire bases: a 150-year revolution
The Smell Talk at Palais Brongniart during Paris Perfume Week dedicated to the de Laire bases attracted a crowd of over 150 visitors, keen to listen to Symrise perfumers Aliénor Massenet and Pascal Sillon recounting the bases’ long history – and get the chance to smell some of them.
Maurice Roucel and Francis Kurkdjian get together to talk about the Héritage(s) collection
To mark Maurice Roucel’s contribution to the Héritage(s) collection, Symrise and the Per Fumum endowment fund organized a very special get-together between the perfumer, filmmaker David Richard, and Francis Kurkdjian.
Scents with superpowers
In this age of personal development and the pursuit of equilibrium, it’s no longer enough to simply smell good – you also have to feel good. On the occasion of the World Mental Health Day, we offer you an article originally published in Nez magazine about the influence of odors on our mood.
Liam Sardea (LKNU): “We try to guide each person to create their own constellation in this vast cosmos”
In 2021 independent perfumery LKNU opened its doors at a high-end mall in Melbourne. It offers a selection of around sixty brands and a resolutely different approach to sales and customer experience. Interview with Liam Sardea, education manager.
Pissara Umavijani (Dusita): “The hardest thing for a perfumer is expressing your signature style in different registers”
Launched in Paris in 2014, Dusita is present in 60 countries around the world as a brand with a unique universe, rooted in the Thai culture of its founder. A collector of vintage fragrances turned self-taught perfumer, Pissara Umavijani pays tribute to her native country and her father’s poetry with a style nourished by European influences. Interview.
Barbara Herman (Eris Parfums): “Whether consciously or not, with each new creation I tend to explore a very different path from the previous one”
Launched in 2016 by Barbara Herman, American writer and creator of the blog Yesterdaysperfume.com, Eris Parfums offers contemporary sillages with a bold style inspired by vintage fragrances, all created by independent perfumer Antoine Lie. Interview with the brand’s founder.
Responsible formulation: different tools, one ideal
How best to judge the sustainability of a scented composition? Using which criteria?
Back to school for the sense of smell
Although olfactory education is absent from the official school curriculum in France, a number of initiatives demonstrate the benefits it can offer to children.
Isabelle Doyen and Camille Goutal: “For us, 100% natural is a perfumer’s challenge rather than a marketing position”
The two perfumers and creators of the brand Voyages imaginaires, who stay true to an unfailingly bold and unpretentious creativity, an intentionally poetic feel, and a shared taste for natural ingredients.
Caroline Dumur: “Without synthetics, you have to learn to formulate differently”
When they work for several brands, perfumers have to deal with different accepted definitions of what is natural as well as various specifications. How do they cope? And how does the formulating process differ between natural and traditional perfumes? We asked Caroline Dumur, a perfumer at IFF.
Hiram Green: “If people want to buy my perfumes, it should be because they like their smell”
Hiram Green is alone at the head of his own brand since 2013. He dedicates his 100% natural palette to making artisanal perfumery and his perfumes, astounding with creativity and skill, belie many clichés associated with natural perfumery.
The Osmothèque – Patricia de Nicolaï, perfumer and former president of the Osmothèque
The Osmothèque is home to perfumes that are part and parcel of people’s lives and memories. Whether they are still on store shelves or long gone, they are all fragments of a collective consciousness.
The role of the in-house perfumer – Mathilde Laurent (Cartier)
Perfumers become an integral and crucial part of a true ecosystem and they are involved in every stage in the development of a new creation as Mathilde Laurent explains.
Choosing your palette – Véronique Nyberg (Mane)
Perfumers are often involved in selecting the ingredients that make up their company’s palette. Véronique Nyberg, perfumer and vice-president of fine fragrances at Mane, discusses this crucial mission.
When seniors train juniors – Domitille Michalon-Bertier (IFF)
Fragrance houses train their youngest recruits by placing them under the wing of one or more experienced creators, as Domitille Michalon-Bertier, senior perfumer at IFF explains.
Madagascar, a unique testing ground for natural ingredients – Suzy Le Helley (Symrise)
Perfumer Suzy Le Helley (Symrise) tells us the story of the close-knit collaboration with Madagascar small-scale producers and the issues involved.
Sustainable development, the engine of innovation – Juliette Karagueuzoglou (IFF)
Juliette Karagueuzoglou, senior perfumer at International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), details the different fields of innovation at Laboratoire Monique Rémy (LMR).
Renewal and creation of new natural products – Serge Majoullier (Mane)
Reliant as it is on the biodiversity that humankind has explored extensively, the palette of natural ingredients may seem immutable as Serge Majoullier shows us.
Bad Girls Perfume – Sarah Colton
Whether we know it or not, the perfume we wear affects the way people perceive us. So argues Sarah Colton, an American perfume journalist based in Paris
