Volatile Fiction

A Finnish indie perfumer and writer in England

Month: January 2015

A small John Lennon interlude

January 13, 2015nukapai 2 Comments

About Volatile Fiction

Pia Long is an independent perfumer, fragrance industry professional, writer and a bit of a nerd. This is her personal blog. If you want to find out more pop over here.

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Today’s agenda! 😁🌸🌼🌻🌺 #garden #gardening #pääsiäinen #easter #flowers

😍😍😍 loooooook! I’m a lucky woman! #moomin #rococochocolates #easter #pääsiäinen

One of the best books I’ve read on perfumery - finished this in one sitting yesterday. So much relatable content! Also shows there are as many ways to arrive at perfumery and to create as there are perfumers. Although when you take an overview, and when I think of all the perfumers I’ve interviewed, and my own path - there is a sort of shared obsession that is hard to put into words. So we put it in our perfumes instead. #perfumery #perfumes #fragrance #creative #creativecareer

I miss the boys when I’m here by myself but I do get more perfumery thinking done when I’m left alone to focus and follow the (sometimes odd) garden paths that invite you to see what might be down there. #perfumery #britishperfumer #perfumes #lab #work #creative

The words SAFE, TOXIC, CLEAN, CHEMICAL, NATURAL are all massively misused in perfume marketing. ONE: absolutely nothing is categorically “safe” because safety is not a binary state - you can drink a glass of water safely but a thimbleful in your lungs, and you’ll drown. A pinch of pepper in your food is safe but not so much in your eye. SECOND: safety of a chemical is judged on dose and exposure scenario. Breathing a classic lily of the valley fragrance from a room fragrance is fine. Having some of the historic materials used to create LOTV scents on your skin - you might become allergic. Or - a glass of milk is safe to drink but if a drum of it spills into the river, it’s extremely hazardous to aquatic life. THREE: fragrance trade and international regulators ensure that risk from fragrance is minimised to be almost non-existent. Fragrances are formulated to have safe levels of chemicals in the intended dose and application. FOUR: plants are natural chemical factories, and natural perfume materials are natural chemicals. FIVE: ironically for the marketers, it is often natural materials that prove difficult, hazard and risk-wise - and it takes a skilled perfumer and regulatory bodies & lots of research and calculations to ensure no adverse effect level is observed in the finished product, and that we can still indulge ourselves with the beautiful natural aromas. SIX: it helps no-one in the long term to be deliberately misleading about the above. I love natural chemicals and want to keep using them.

It’s sometimes hard to illustrate the obscene amount of work that goes into perfumery (and there is no way I could do it without the help of an assistant these days) - but it’s incredibly enjoyable in its nerdy, creative problem solving and I think it was the realisation that perfumery = endless puzzles that require a blend of art, craft, design & science was what got me completely hooked all those years ago. #perfumery #perfumes #britishperfume #olfiction

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