A perfume training workshop coming up in April

Have you always wanted to know how perfumes are made? Do you blog about perfumes or sell them? Do you want to see if a career in perfumery might be right for you?

Penny Williams

My friend Penny Williams from Orchadia is running a one day perfume training workshop that you might be interested in. Download the event info and see what you think! This is likely to sell out fast so think quickly.

The event is happening on Tuesday 16th of April in Thrapston, Northants, UK.

This is what Penny has to say about the day:

Come along to our Perfume Training Workshop to smell & discover more about perfume and perfumery.
With lots of practical smelling & real world examples of ingredients and perfumed products, we will explore perfume and all it entails.
Starting with raw materials and how we smell, we’ll then explore the job the perfume does. It’s not just a pretty smell! What makes a perfume ’right’ for a person, a product or a package? How are fragrances created in a modern day Perfume House? In addition we’ll visit the technical & creative requirements and undertake a fragrance creation exercise.

HQ perfume relaunched at Lush 29 High Street

29 High Street perfume, in Lush Spa Poole.

When I worked at Lush, customers often asked: “Can I buy this smell? The smell of the shop?”, to which we’d have to reply “no, but here are some other perfumes you might like”. Until, that is, I was working on the Christmas 2012 product perfumes and was given a bath ballistic that looked like the 29 High Street shop in Poole.

The ballistic never made the cut, but the scent I developed for it caught the attention of Mark Constantine who asked me to work it up to a sprayable perfume so he could bottle it and sell it at Lushfest (a company event for 2000 staff and customers). So, off I went, and the second variation was bottled. Had I been able to work on it some more I would have probably adjusted the opening – it’s a little sharp for my liking with an overdose of lemongrass – but overall I think the fragrance fits the brief pretty well. It’s like a “shop tour” in a bottle. You get wafts of Honey I Washed The Kids, Karma, Creamy Candy, American Cream, Flying Fox, Butterball, Blue Skies, and of course Avobath, responsible for that lemongrass opening. So how did I do it? How was it possible to cram in the entire tutti-frutti smell of a Lush shop into one perfume?

I went into full geek-mode and spoke to our essential oils buyer about the tonnage of materials Lush uses each year. Rather than immediately thinking of individual products, I scanned the list and highlighted all the major materials, then scanned it again and caught all the materials that may not be used in high volumes but have a prominent odour profile. I now had a set of potential building blocks. Only then did I start listing Lush best-sellers and picking out themes from each of their product scents.

Grant Osborne’s adorable illustration of 29 High Street perfume.

Eventually I had an impressionist interpretation of the smell of a Lush shop, which is what was used in the bath product prototype. When I went back to the lab with the formula to work it up to a perfume, I added some extra facets and ended up with less of an impressionist interpretation; more of a sleight of hand where everyone who smells the scent seems to pick out their own interpretation of what a Lush shop smells like. One of the best moments of my entire life was at Lushfest, when we were setting up the Gorilla Perfume shop and a staff member walked past seconds after we had been spraying HQ perfume. She asked to try it and squeaked: “Oh my God! It smells just like the Lush shop!” She had no idea what the perfume was supposed to be about.

I realise the Lush Smell is Marmite-ish. If you think it’s awful and wonder how people can work in there, move along, nothing to see here. It’s your worst nightmare in a bottle. If, on the other hand, you are a Lush fan and have always wanted that smell as a perfume, you can now buy the 29 High Street perfume from the Lush shop in Poole. I called it 29 High Street because that’s the shop’s address, but the name of it morphed into HQ at some point. I’m glad to see it in its new bottle and with its original name.

This article was originally published at Basenotes as part of my Study Notes series.

 

A little London perfume tour (featuring tea and cake at Fortnum’s)

One of the best things about the internet is how it’s brought fellow fragrance nerds together and allowed us to get to know each other. People from all sorts of backgrounds can become fascinated by scents and it’s great to have the opportunity to hang out with such an interesting bunch. I’ve been running small perfume tours in London for a few years and yesterday I met up with a few friends in Spitalfields and visited Angela Flanders, Bloom and Patisserie Valerie (yes, cake is an essential part of any decent perfume tour). Then we headed to Piccadilly Circus and walked to Geo F. Trumper’s perfumery and had afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason. Fortnum’s perfume and toiletries department is opulent, old-fashioned and a must-see for any perfume fan heading to London. I bought Angela’s Precious one and Trumper’s Ajaccio Violets (which sounds like a spell from Harry Potter). I might write about Angela Flanders and Bloom a bit more in the future, but here are some photos!

We met at Patisserie Valerie for breakfast.

Healthy breakfast foods.

This is what my friends were having. I had a cheese and tomato croissant. Looking at these pictures, I wish I could go back and have the cake, too.

A chocolate croissant.

(World’s first?) crowd-sourced perfume from 4160 Tuesdays.

On the way to Angela’s perfumery, there’s an old wall with a new building right behind it. One way to conserve things, I guess!

Artillery passage.

Angela Flanders’ perfumery.

Angela’s daughter was there to meet us and told us stories about her mum’s perfume creations. I can’t remember the last time I received this warm a welcome at a perfumery.

Inside Angela’s perfumery.

Look, it’s Persolaise’s book!

Sarah Mc Cartney (polymath and perfumer at 4160 Tuesdays) and Karen Gilbert (author and perfumery teacher).

Sniffing perfumes at Angela’s

We worked our way through everything.

Window display at Angela’s.

I bought Precious One, the FiFi award-winning soft vetivert perfume.

We walked to Bloom’s which is just around the corner.

Sweetish Old Books at Bloom’s.

A nice display at Bloom’s.

Inside Bloom’s.

Glasses hanging from the ceiling at Bloom’s.

Caron perfume urns at Fortnum & Mason

We made our way to Piccadilly and Sarah took us to Trumper’s behind Fortnum’s.

Refined old-style colognes at Trumper’s. I liked everything I smelled.

I bought Ajaccio Violets – an old-style sweet violet cologne. I had something similar as a child and it’s a smile in a bottle for me.

We had booked at table at Fortnum’s for 3pm and had some tea and cake. Mine was a lemon tart and Earl Grey. Fantasic tea; Fortnum’s deserves its reputation for this.

We also spent quite a while sniffing Sarah’s perfumes and chatting.

Bisquit packaging at Fortnum’s.

Stairs at Fortnum’s.

Aqua di Parma candles at Fortnum’s.

Caron counter at Fortnum’s.

Caron face powders at Fortnum’s.

Caron urns at Fortnum’s.

More Caron urns at Fortnum’s.

Caron refillable bottles at Fortnum’s.

Fancy Caron packaging at Fortnum’s.

Candles at Fortnum’s.

A window display at Fortnum’s.