Inside Fragrance

Laundry evaluation

Evaluating laundry care?

It’s been quite a week here at Volatile Fiction land (what a fun land would that be? I have a mental image of a fragrant theme park x Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory now. And, as it happens, there may be a reason those images were so readily available to my imagination).

I’ve been working behind-the-scenes for almost a year and a half to get to say: this week sees the launch of my new column, The Juice: Inside Fragrance at Perfumer & Flavorist. The May column is a two-parter with online and a print articles – and the June issue will feature a profile of a British perfumer whose career is truly unique and fascinating. The Juice will run in Perfumer & Flavorist monthly and, as with this week’s column, there will occasionally be online articles popping up, too.

The first (set of) Juice column(s) is about fragrance evaluation. It’s a bit of a hidden career in the fragrance industry and is a fascinating blend of fragrance expertise, project management, communication and many other skills.

What does a fragrance evaluator do?

Evaluators work with perfumers, sales, marketing and laboratory teams to make sure that the right fragrances are selected and created for customers. The job involves keeping up-to-date with fragrance trends and being able to effectively communicate about smells. Sometimes evaluators also conduct consumer panels and focus groups. They usually manage the internal fragrance library and may be assigned to a specific product category or to just one customer.

Smelling with perfumers and being able to offer useful, objective feedback about the technical aspects and overall impression of the fragrance are at the heart of the job. Good evaluators form strong teams with the perfumers they work with and perfumers appreciate the objectivity and organisation that evaluators bring to fragrance creation.

In leading fragrance houses, evaluators choose the perfumers for each fragrance brief, task the perfumers and project manage the project’s course.

It is possible to work your way up from other roles in the company to a trainee or a junior evaluator, or enter into the role directly with some relevant external qualifications or experience. Initial training takes one to two years, depending on previous experience and the fragrance company in question.

Skills and qualities of a good evaluator:
• Passionate about fragrance
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Confident communicator
• Balanced judgement
• Diligence; attention to detail
• Project management
• Ability to make sense of vast amounts of data and interpret it for others
• Highly organised (evaluators are in charge of the company fragrance library)
• Experience of the consumer fragrance market; knowledge of trends and product categories

Givaudan

Expertise is relative and everyone has their own areas of excellence. I seem to have a knack for hoovering up lots of information and communicating it to others. I’m also interested in fragrance and everything about it (ok, obsessed). It is inevitable I have learned a lot along the way. A great deal of the learning has been quite deliberate and hard-earned by study and practical experience. I still don’t consider myself an expert (daily access to the true experts of the industry – research chemists, senior perfumers with decades of experience and many more walking perfume encyclopaedias besides is a great constant reminder of just how little I really know).

But I know more than the ‘earlier me’ 10, 15 years ago. And that’s who I’m writing these blogs and ODOU articles and Basenotes features for. The trade writing blossomed out of that almost by accident – but the real driving force was always to somehow get more information and insight out there to people who don’t know about the careers available in fragrance but would thrive in them if only they did.

I also like to myth-bust a little bit. Not to the detriment of storytelling and marketing (I like to be taken along on an evocative ride, too, and part of the pleasure of buying an everyday product with a hint of luxury like a fabric conditioner with an exotic scent – or an actual luxury product like fine fragrance – is that you want the whole experience – the courting, the dating, the flowers; the lot).

I like to myth-bust the chemophobia and the utter nonsense out there. And to illuminate who makes these fragrances and how. I like to show how passionate these people are about the tiniest details, what lengths they go to for that perfect scent, how much thought is put into something that could end up in a hand wash. I think that’s brilliant. Never mind all the wonderful fine fragrance perfumery – all the artistry, poetry and creativity and bloody hard work that goes into it. As much as I like to get taken along for the ride and seduced by marketing as the next consumer, I do occasionally wish perfume marketing wasn’t so quick to rely on the old tropes of tits and ass. I guess it’s an important aspect of what makes perfume appealing and why people wear it but sometimes it feels like marketers and brands forget it’s not the only one.

The stories on the large corporate and tiniest artisan side to be told are in their thousands and really fascinating. I am going to be able to tell you at least a few of them over the coming months. But I also love it that there are so many great people quietly squirreling away, making your homes smell like a tropical forest and people whose whole life is devoted to making sure that the towels come out of your specific brand of washing machine smelling just right.

Givaudan_laundry_care_evaluation_photo_Volatile_fiction

Laundry care evaluation is a little bit more serious at Givaudan.

I don’t like to make things easy for myself, so I’ve based the majority of my fragrance articles on primary research. What this means is that I’ve interviewed people face-to-face – mostly in person (sometimes over Skype). Email interviews do happen but I don’t like them. This has resulted in a lot of travel and interviews conducted in the offices and meeting rooms of fragrance houses, posh London hotels, coffee shops, people’s homes and many more locations besides. This week I travelled to France to tour Givaudan’s Paris sites and interview several people in one, intense day. I was also happy to finally meet a long-time reader of this blog there and receive a great gift for a bookworm-perfume nerd: Givaudan’s new perfume book which weaves their story with global perfume history and some philosophical musings about perfumery and flavour.
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I spent some time with the Givaudan perfumery school director and students – and will be writing about that soon – will let you know where.

Givaudan_Perfume_School_photo_Volatile_Fiction

Givaudan perfumery school

In futile search of the Bad Guys

EU regulations foot by Grant OsborneYou know what would be easy? If we could all join forces to fight the Dark Lord of Anti-Perfume and drown him in a special potion of oakmoss and alpha damascone.

Alas.

The reality is that the regulations squeezing the juice out of fragrances are complex, inconsistent, overlapping, hard to understand even for professionals and not black-and-white. They all stem from good intentions.

Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions. T. S. Eliot

Are fragrance regulations evil? They certainly seem to be if you’re a perfumer, struggling to reformulate a classic scent to fit IFRA or a perfume fan whose favourite fragrance has been discontinued because it could not be changed without destroying it.

It’s very easy to cast IFRA in the role of the Bad Guy, but it really is not that simple. It’s complicated and nuanced. Understanding what is really going on with the EU fragrance regulations is tough.

I’ve written a long piece for Basenotes about the topic. It came out of sheer frustration – as some Basenoters of old will remember, I’ve had a long journey from a perfume enthusiast to perfumer, much of which has been documented here and in various blogs and articles over the years. In the sorts of jobs I do now, I have to understand what is really going on behind the scenes and therefore attend training courses and symposiums and whatnot.

I went to an IFRA day a while back now (must have been 2013!), hoping I’d come out of there a little wiser. Well, I suppose I did, but I also came out of there with pages and pages of notes and more questions than I went in with. It was obvious that many of the industry representatives in the room were frustrated about all the restrictions; didn’t feel that the EU’s actions – while well-meaning – were really protecting consumers as intended and just causing lots of extra pressure… and nobody seemed to be able to present a comprehensive overview of how all these parallel regulatory requirements fit together. So I decided to have a go at gaining a better understanding.

What became obvious was that there are no “good guys” and “bad guys” and that there were lots of inconsistencies, even loopholes, and the whole thing seemed in parts to be over-protective but in others, curiously obscure. I needed to learn more for my work anyway, so read through everything I could, asked subject matter experts to help spot errors in my facts (hence the fabulous Penny – who since has offered me a job; nothing to do with this piece, just the fact we’ve had a growing friendship and mutual respect over time and I happen to have skills which she can use).

I held back from finishing the article until I’d attended lots of extra training and spoken to many people who know more than I do.

And yet, any failings (such as the sad way in which this piece seems to have come across as scaremongering or propaganda to some of the Basenotes readers – or most confusingly, as a piece advocating the use of synthetics over naturals… that’s certainly not the message)… any failings are mine alone, and it’s been an interesting education to see just how tough it is to communicate complex topics like this from an informed position. The irony is that in order to understand something like this, one has to get knowledgeable enough that to many people one can appear like an industry shill. That I am not. My desire is to understand and I certainly don’t speak for the industry.

I hope this piece will generate healthy debate and discussion. I’m not the slightest bit offended by some of the more frustrated comments on the article; it is to be expected and I understand.

What I’d love to hear is your take on the final question I pose. “So now what?”

What do you all think would be a reasonable and realistic way to protect perfumes from over-regulation while protecting the consumers? Is it a totally naive idea to reason with the giant bureaucracy monster? Who do you think would be in the best position to protect the industry’s interests AND reassure consumers that their products are safe?

 

The Osmotheque comes to London

Osmotheque in LondonWhen an email with the above header popped into my inbox, I booked a ticket immediately. How could I not? Somehow I’d missed several opportunities to visit the Osmotheque – I wasn’t about to miss this one!

The event was held in Brasserie Zedel for 50 lucky guests, including a bit of a familiar cast of UK perfume-lovers whose company made the day all the more wonderful. We started off with a glass of sparkling wine, sandwiches and little cakes. For some reason the table I was sitting at was immediately branded “the naughty corner” by Odette and Jo. I’m sure we proved them wrong by our impeccable behaviour throughout. The whole day whooshed past – it was absolutely worth every penny – and my only regret is not having taken a proper camera. Of course the most important souvenir from yesterday is the pile of carefully wrapped up scent strips, doused in antique perfumes which we were allowed to keep. I’ll take them out and sniff them on special occasions.

Perfumer and Osmocurator Stephanie Bakouche gave a thoroughly enjoyable presentation, briefly covering perfume history and then each of the houses we were to experience perfumes from. Guerlain, Bourjois, Coty and Poiret were on the cards (figuratively and literally).

My favourite scent above all from the selection was the outrageous tuberose-laden original Parfum des Champs Élysées – heady, sweet, animalic, sensual; dripping with nectar. Guerlain’s Chypre de Paris was also glorious, and not how we think of a chypre today; it smelled very much like Imperial Leather soap, actually. For some reason Coty always gets credit for ‘the first chypre’ (even though it wasn’t), and we were lucky enough to smell that, too. It took me by surprise – a banana note (amyl salicylate?) over animalic, mossy base. Not at all what I expected.

Osmotheque in London

The most educational perfume of the night for me was from the bonus round (not listed): original Eau Sauvage. Educational because as soon as I smelled it, I realised Ô de Lancôme and Eau Dynamisante owe their character to it, and that it really represents a trend in its own right.

La Jardin de Mon Curé was a big, animalic rose, the Muguet was not at all like the way we think of lily-of-the-valley accords nowadays (I got a strong citral note, indole, vanillin, and we thought hydroxycitronellal, too), Cuir de Russie recalled Finnish tervapastilli (birch tar sweets), Soir de  Paris was a powdery, animalic clove, Kobako had a glorious, dry, almost 70s feel, Jasmin de Corse was very indolic, yet balanced, L’Aimant was floral carnation and not as powdery as the modern version, Le Muguet des Bois was beautifully described by Karen Gilbert as “the end of an orange lolly when you get to the stick” and I immediately got what she meant (whereas the others at our table didn’t – Karen and I must have been eating the same orange lollies!). It was more recognisable as ‘lily of the valley’ than the earlier Guerlain Muguet, too. From Poiret, the scents seemed to divide opinion – I was fascinated by Le Fruit Défendu, which made me think of marzipan fruits and I couldn’t get that impression out of my head after the thought popped in there.

Before the official talk, our table also had a little sneak peek preview of a special scent created by 4160Tuesdays for Louise Woollam (whose parosmia has made scent appreciation a difficult task. Violets were among the few acceptable fragrance notes at the time, so a violet perfume was born. It’s a gorgeous blend of ionones and violet leaf which will be launched soon, I hear).

Odette Toilette and The Perfume Society are running this event again on the 27th of June – book as soon as you can because it’s likely to sell out fast.

 

Is it time we sniffed out the real human pheromones?

IrresistibleWould you like to spray on a potion that will make you instantly irresistible? Would you like everyone who gets a whiff of you to quiver with lust? Would you like to have an unfair advantage on the pull? Help is here! There are pheromone sprays which will do just that – fragrances and body sprays which will send people wild around you. Everyone knows that androstenone, androstenol, androstadienone, and estratetraenol are human pheromones and adding them to products produces very special effects.

Except, of course, all of the above is probably rubbish.

There are many products on the market which claim to contain human pheromones. More than that – there are research papers, books and scholarly articles talking about putative human pheromones as though they had been identified.

Amazingly, every one of these products, articles, books, papers and claims is based on dodgy science.

There are no real ‘putative human pheromones’, as they are currently presented. However, since we’re mammals, it’s highly likely we do have them.

Very early on in human pheromone studies, something peculiar happened to thwart the research, and we may have been chasing the wrong leads ever since.

Doctor Tristram Wyatt from Department of Zoology, University of Oxford thinks that we should start again. I recently attended his excellent talk at the Royal Society of Chemistry (a version of which you can watch on TED and was written up as a recent Proceedings of the Royal Society B paper) in which he systematically demonstrated that a) it’s likely that we do have pheromones; b) no solid evidence exists for what they might be; c) the research into this area is under-funded and based on dodgy science; d) it would be great if we could start again, as though human beings were a newly discovered species.

Why should we forget everything we think we know and start from scratch?

Because we’re animals, we give off hundreds of odours just by being. Other animals have pheromones and it’s likely that we have them, too. While we don’t have a functioning vomeronasal organ (it does develop in-utero but regresses) this is not a problem as we now know that pheromones are detected by the main olfactory system in many mammals such as sheep. However, smells play a very big role in our lives and especially in sexual selection. The mechanisms for this are still quite fuzzy and hotly contested. We simply don’t understand just how much of human sexual behaviour is influenced by smell and what the pathways and biological processes are. We know that we’re highly influenced by our experiences, emotions and context, and while there have been some studies on the so-called ‘putative human pheromones’ which seem to demonstrate pheromone-like effects, no clear evidence exists to show how they are supposed to work in humans.

It’s clear that human beings give off, and react to odours – but it’s important to realise that not all odours are pheromones, and that we don’t know much about human pheromones at this stage.

Our personal body odour fingerprint has been found to influence mate selection. We seem to prefer the smell of partners whose immune system gene expression differs from our own (with the biological benefit being that if offspring are produced, their immune systems will express genes from both partners and therefore be stronger). Immunotypes from both partners would be incorporated into the offspring. It’s also been shown that women on the oral contraceptive pill can prefer the odour of partners whose immune genes are similar to their own (and subsequently experience a loss of sexual attraction to the partner they chose whilst on the pill when they come off the pill to try to conceive!). I attended a fascinating talk by Professor Craig Roberts about this topic a few years ago and it’s very interesting to think about how our natural body odour affects our fragrance selection – we’re better off wearing scents which we are instinctively drawn to because they are most likely to be the ones which enhance our natural body odour.

According to Dr. Wyatt, “We do seem to be obsessed by body odour – billions of dollars are spent on removing it and putting it back on again.”

There are so-called ‘pheromone parties’ which should really be re-named to major histocompatability complex parties, but that wouldn’t sound nearly as sexy. Participants wear a t-shirt for a while before the party, place it inside a plastic bag, and the bags are given numbers. The t-shirts are sniffed by other partygoers and if they like the smell, a photo of them is taken with the bag and displayed on a screen during the party.

Of course human pheromones could also be at play here, but we genuinely have no clue yet what those might be.

What are pheromones?

Bombyx Mori

  • Pheromones are a chemical signal between members of the same species.
  • They are same across the same species (e.g. all males of the same species, but possibly appearing in different amounts).
  • They are usually a combination of molecules and can be short-range.

The first pheromone was identified in the Bombyx mori silk moth in 1959 by Adolf Butenandt & team. It was named Bombykol after the moth. In Dr. Wyatt’s opinion, the way in which this research was conducted represents a gold standard for pheromone identification and should be followed in other similar studies.

The criteria for identifying a real pheromone should be:

  • To isolate a specific compound or a mixture of compounds (all compounds in the mixture should be necessary)
  • There should be a clearly identifiable response to the pheromone(s) (in the Bombyx mori, scientists observed increased wing fluttering of the male moth in the presence of bombykol)
  • Synthetic compounds should elicit the same response as real pheromones
  • Realistic concentrations must be used in experiments
  • There must be a credible pathway for evolution

We should expect humans to have pheromones because other animals do, too. Pigs, mice; rabbits all have them.

Humans can distinguish between a trillion different smells and though we might not rely on our sense of smell quite as much as some other animals, it’s wrong to think of our sense of smell as insignificant.

So what’s wrong with ‘putative human pheromones’?

There is simply no evidence for them.

The history of putative human pheromones can be traced back to the discovery of ‘copulins’ in monkeys (1970), and the idea of ‘menstrual synchronicity’ which was put forward in 1971 (the menstrual synchronicity thing is not proven, though – and looks like it might not be real). Androsterone and androstenal was discovered and researched in pigs around 1970-1980.

In 1991, a symposium sponsored by the Erox Corporation was held in Paris and many leading scientists were invited to attend. Slotted into the procedings was a paper about ‘putative human pheromones’ which also claimed that humans have a functioning vomeronasal organ: “Effect of putative pheromones on the electrical activity of the human vomeronasal organ and olfactory epithelium”. Erox Corporation had supplied the ‘putative human pheromones’ androstadienone (AND) and estratetraenol (EST) for the study, and had a clear interest in patenting them.

However, the study has no details of how these molecules were extracted, indentified, bioassayed and supposedly shown to be human pheromones.

In 2000, Jacob and McClintock published a paper “Psychological state and mood effects of steroidal chemosignals in women and men” and used the same ‘putative human pheromones’ in their experiments. This gave the putative human pheromone myth credibility.

Since 2000, there have been more than 40 studies (about 4-5 a year) using androstadienone and/or estratetraenol and these studies have been cited hundreds of times.

How is this possible? Aren’t we supposed to be evidence-based? One of the toughest things about researching human pheromones is the identification and extraction of them. So since it’s easy to purchase AND and EST, researchers seem to default to these. The literature has become self-referential which creates a closed loop of evidence. It’s easy to confuse the volume of work with quality, and in this case there is no lack of literature – just a lack of original evidence. In fact, it is now a commonly held assumption that there really are ‘putative human pheromones’, but nobody seems to have looked at the 1991 source critically.

All fields in science also suffer from positive publication bias (where only positive studies are published and negative ones are not). The worst area for this is psychology, at about 90% of the published work being positive. Since the research into human pheromones falls into this field, and since there have been no Bombykol ‘gold standard’ studies, everything we have on the ‘putative human pheromones’ seems to ultimately rest upon the original rather questionable study.

Now what?

According to Dr. Wyatt, we should approach human pheromone study as though we were a newly discovered species. We should look for ways in which to identify and bioassay pheromones – and he thinks that there might be something in how human babies seem to recognise the odour of their mothers. More importantly, when the scent produced by special glands on the areolas of lactating mothers has been collected and presented to babies, they react to the smell by starting to suck even if the scent was not from their own mother. There could be a mammary pheromone at play. Other things we could do is to compare people pre- and post puberty, but the main problem with all of this is how much more complex human research is, and the desperate lack of funding for olfactory research.

It seems that olfactory research has not been thought of as important even though research for our other senses is. Although we are really looking at fields of biology and psychology, this area is under-funded and could do with a boost. Perhaps it isn’t thought of as vital because people with olfactory disorders can still work and survive in society – or perhaps is seen as too frivolous and unnecessary. It doesn’t bode well for stronger studies in this area and Erox corporation will probably carry on doing quite well out of AND and EST.

Further on the topics discussed:

The Smelly Mystery of Human Pheromones TED talk

The search for human pheromones: the lost decades and the necessity of returning to first principles

MHC-correlated odour preferences in humans and the use of oral contraceptives

The Scent of a Man: to attract a woman by wearing scent, a man must first attract himself

Sexing up the human pheromone story: how a corporation started a scientific myth

Pheromones and Animal Behavior

How animals communicate via pheromones

Pheromone parties

Bombykol

Disclaimer & credits

Any mistakes in this text are mine. Getty Images pictures used under their free embed scheme. Sorry about the ads you might see below (this blog is hosted on the free WordPress servers). This post is based on Dr. Tristram Wyatt’s talk at the Royal Society of Chemistry, arranged jointly by the British Society of Perfumers and Society of Cosmetic Scientists.

BSP One Day Symposium 2014

I was at the 32nd BSP One Day Symposium last week, and it was a day packed with interesting materials and interesting conversations. When perfume raw material manufacturers show off their latest creations, it’s not too unlike a fashion show. The models (example products) are fitted out with the new outfits (new materials), and the audience (perfumers, buyers, evaluators, competitors…) gathers to admire, and learn more. And, like with haute couture, not everyone is in the position to buy the new creations straight away, and must wait until they filter down to the High Street (run out of patent and are made in bulk by others). The metaphor is somewhat wobbly, but it’s the best way I can explain the frustration of being shown a wonderful new material by a big company, only to know that the minimum pack size is 25kg (or 180kg!), and that our use of it would probably not justify such a purchase. Alas! All is not lost, because many of the presentations were also of materials entirely within reach. I orderd a few samples for our lab, and look forward to trying them out in development formulas.

What tends to happen, particularly with potent aroma chemicals (not usually with naturals), is that the perfume ingredient manufacturers create “demo formulas” – fragrance formulas representative of the scents one would find in the product category intended for the raw material. The demo formulas are then embellished with the new material(s), sometimes at different dosages, to show what effect the material has on the fragrance. There is a ‘blank’ demo formula, with none of the (new) material in it, and one or more examples which contain the (new) material(s). We were shown examples of fabric conditioners, shampoos, soaps and lotions with both Symrise and PFW.

Both presentations were engaging, and Symrise always goes out of their way to represent their ‘haute couture’ in a highly polished way (I may be able to show you their videos at a later date if I get hold of them, so more on that to follow). PFW, on the other hand, played a trick on us, and it was such a clever way of showing off a material that I won’t say more about it, should they wish to repeat the performance elsewhere (so no spoilers). PFW was also celebrating its 100th anniversary and we all had some cake during the coffee break. PFW’s own mascot, Pierre the Perfumer was there, too, of course (unfortunately I did not get a photo).

Natural raw materials tend to be shown au naturelle (pardon the pun), though the people from Axxence had set their natural aromas in coloured gel suspension, which was a safe and pleasant way to show them off. Their natural methyl anthranilate and natural indole were my particular favourites; so smooth. As an aside, sniffing and admiring the indole led to a conversation around our table, of how at one point or another, we’d all stopped thinking of indole as a ‘bad’ smell. Once you’ve been working with it for a while, your brain constructs the flower around it when you smell it in isolation. Whether you’ve been working with orange blossom, jasmine or any white flower accords, indole will have become a close ally. The synthetic version has more of a harsh mothball nuance, whereas the natural (which I smelled for the first time at this event) was much softer. I suppose it’s a fun marketing tactic to tell a sort of horror story of “ooh, aah, guess what, the jasmine you love so much contains a chemical that is also found in faeces” and watch the audience cringe; I’ll admit to having done that, too. Nevertheless, it’s nowhere near the worst material in the perfumer’s palette (never mind what the flavourists have to work with – some of the flavour raw materials are absolutely horrific; various meat, fish and cheese flavours are made up using indescribably obnoxious chemicals).

We also saw some beautiful naturals from Floral Concept, and Omega Ingredients. I was charmed by the rather animalic orange blossom absolute from Floral Concept (and I’ll admit, I seem to have developed a thing for animalic notes), and the cascarilla bark from Omega was so fascinating, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it ever since.

Penny Williams from Orchadia/The International Perfume Acedemy was also there. I am currently 1/3 of the way through her IFRA course. She provides a unique blend of consultancy and set training courses, some of which can be done via distance-study.

I didn’t stay for the dinner, but perhaps next year I ought to; it always feels like there is not enough time to finish all the conversations which start in-between presentations. The next big event in the fragrance industry calendar is IFEAT, Rome (and a lucky colleague is attending that one!).

Why is the fragrance industry so secretive?

Smoke in a jar

(This is a follow-up post to the earlier article: “What is a perfumer and how to become one.”)

Why aren’t perfume ingredients listed in full?

Why do we have to rely on a generic list of everything that could possibly be in fragrance, issued by IFRA (which rather puts a dampener on the scaremongers who claim that fragrances are full of “secret chemicals”. Having said that, the list is probably not exhaustive – the rise of kitchen sink amateur perfumery, and of independent natural perfumery means that there are people tincturing, distilling and otherwise producing some of their own materials).
Why does the fragrance industry insist on apparently circumventing laws which affect other cosmetic products (fine fragrances are, after all, classed as cosmetics as far as regulators go)? Or food – let’s look at food. Why should fragrances earn special treatment when food companies must list all of their ingredients?

With gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), surely every competitor will know what is in the fragrance anyway?

Good questions. However, there are some answers which may shed light on the reasons. I don’t pretend to know all of them, nor do I wish to attempt to defend, or speak for the industry as such, but there are many reasons why fragrance remains a special case.

Two magicians

The cooking analogy seems so attractive. There seems to be no difference between cooking and perfumery. Except, of course there is. Some rather big differences, actually. Flavours in processed food can be hidden from us, much the same way as fragrances can be in cosmetics or household products. “Natural flavour” on the ingredients list could mean a complex formula, and there are good commercial reasons for keeping them secret. What would happen to the Coca Cola company if they had to list their flavour on the bottle? We all know that other cola brands exist, and while they’re all recognisably ‘cola’ (a mix of citrus and spice), none of them taste like Coca Cola*.

With food, if you start with cheap ingredients, you may be able to transform them to something edible (and some cheap ingredients like lentils are actually very good for you), but if you took a piece of cheap meat, you’d never transform it into a good steak. With cooking, one usually can tell what one is eating (unless you’re eating a very clever dish from Heston Blumenthal). With perfumery, the whole concept is based on a kind of olfactory illusion. Good perfumers are illusionists. They exploit the combinational nature of our olfactory perception, and create accords; mixtures of ingredients which together smell of their own smell, rather than of an obvious combination of the materials used. In other words, a perfume is greater than a sum of its parts. The cost of ingredients doesn’t necessarily determine the finesse of the finished fragrance.

Accords form the basis of conventional fragrance families (chypre, oriental, fougere and so on). When we perceive a fragrance, our brains create a cognitive construct of the smell based on many factors, including our genetic make-up, scent memories, cultural preferences and so on (about which I wrote extensively for ODOU, Issue 1). Everyone’s cognitive construct is slightly different, and will recall familiar smells, imagery, emotions and events unique to that person.

Ask yourself – would it be fair for us to insist that before we go to see an illusionist, or a stage macician, we should be given full disclosure of exactly the tools and techniques used to achieve their magic? Would it enhance their performance, or ruin it? Would it affect their earning potential?

Safety is a consideration, of course. Perfume safety is mostly looked after by an industry-controlled body, IFRA, which responds to the recommendations of an independent research body (RIFM), and tries to communicate with regulators to reach reasonable conclusions about fragrance safety. Unfortunately, this process hasn’t been perfect, and has left fragrances needlessly over-regulated. There are many conspiracy theories about IFRA, too, one of the most popular ones being a ‘destruction of naturals so that the main members can take over the market with synthetic alternatives’ which doesn’t ring true the moment one explores the topic further. Just check out the revenue each of the main IFRA members earns from the production and distribution of natural materials, and think whether it would make good business sense to kill that part of the industry. Never mind the astronomical cost to fragrance manufacturers, should everything have to be re-formulated (that’s right – the cost of reformulation has to be covered by the fragrance supply house, not the downstream users). I will write more about that another time. Nevertheless, this post is also partly an attempt to explain the need for an industry-controlled body; there should be reasonable expectations to keep certain things a trade secret, providing consumers are protected. While the interface between the industry and law-makers leaves a lot to be desired (talk about cracking a walnut with a hammer, anyone?), the current system could still be a basis for a healthier appreciation of real risk vs. just banning fragrance outright (which could happen if scaremongering organisations like the Environmental Working Group get their way – this is the type of lobbying* which leads to EU and international pressure to ban and over-regulate fragrances). We must promote scientific literacy, and proper evaluation of risk (context and dose matter). For example, we all know that radioactivity is bad, right? However, all living things are radioactive. Ruh-oh! Now what? Ban all the things!

Ban all the things

Perfumes can create extraordinary associations for us. Scents can instantly remind us of things. That, combined with the suggestibility of the human mind (and its preference for narrative structure to information) means that perfume marketing has always been full of stories and fantasy. We love stories, and they help sell products. When the scent of a consumer product matches expectations, its users perceive the product to be more effective. This has been studied – give people two identical shampoo formulas, and the one with a successful fragrance will be perceived as having left the hair cleaner and shinier than the other.

A hypnotist

Listing ingredients for a perfume is about as informative as listing every paint used to paint a picture.

Actually, even less. By the time colours have been blended, they will look different to the prime colours they originally were. Mona Lisa contains blue, green, yellow, red, black and white. Can you tell, based on that, what it looks like and whether you’ll like it?
Lily of the valley

Good perfumers also know that rose oil doesn’t smell of roses in bloom, it smells of rose oil, and to construct a rose-in-bloom, one must construct a rose accord (which can be enhanced by the use of natural rose oil, of course). To construct a lily-of-the-valley, one must use many synthetic materials because the flowers don’t yield an essential oil. Using a little bit of bergamot or ylang-ylang in a lily-of-the-valley accord can enhance it. If one were to list ylang-ylang on the ingredient list of the finished product, one could put off a consumer who loathes the smell of ylang-ylang itself. In a well-built lily-of-the-valley accord, the ylang-ylang would not stand out, and would instead form part of the rich, floral aspect of the lily-of-the-valley scent.

A good perfumer can make cheap materials smell expensive, and a bad perfumer can make expensive materials smell cheap. (There is a breaking point with the former; if you have an extremely low budget, or are developing a fragrance for a hostile base product, say bleach, you’re a bit stuffed).

Cooking is a basic survival skill, and simple forms of cooking should be taught to all. Perfuming things is more of a frivolity, and not essential to survival (though I have many friends who would disagree), so the skills to make fragrances for consumer products have not been essential general knowledge. On the other hand, in Victorian times, cooks were regularly concocting fragranced creams and other products in the kitchen, and barbers might also have been perfumers, and amateur perfumery is once again on the rise. I don’t think the industry has considered this aspect of fragrance safety enough, and it might be better to find ways to reliably inform the general public without giving too many trade secrets away, than risk a kind of perfumery black market, which is already establishing itself.

Ingredient lists

Familiarity and the feeling of safety are essential when marketing products.

Listing the names of natural materials that the accords in the fragrance are meant to represent is much more effective than listing the ingredients used to create the effect.
Consumers are far more likely to have positive feelings towards a product which lists “lily of the valley” as an ingredient, than a product which lists “hydroxycitronellal, citronellol, alpha-terpineol, phenylethyl alcohol, indole, lilial, florosa…”. Another issue is practicality. I made a very simple lily-of-the-valley accord last week, and the ingredients ran to over a dozen (about 15, if I remember correctly). If I were to use that fragrance base at, let’s say, 1% in a fragrance compound consisting of 10 ingredients, I’d end up with a list of 25 ingredients before I even added the finished fragrance to a product. The product itself might have 20 ingredients, so you’d end up with a list of 45 ingredients on a label. Not only would they be highly unlikely to fit on a label, the long list would needlessly scare consumers who have been taught that a) “simple is best”, b) “chemicals are bad” and c) “unless you can pronounce the ingredient, it’s bad for you”. (a) everything is made up of chemicals, b) not necessarily, c) try some of these).

We all love the idea of natural materials. The concept is just so safe and… wholesome. Natural jasmine absolute smells wonderful, and can do wonderful things to a fragrance. Natural oakmoss is tough to mimic. All-natural perfumery seems like a superior concept; safer, unaltered from how Nature intended (replace that with God if you’re religious). Marketers and product manufacturers have always appealed to our emotions. We instinctively gravitate towards the word “natural”. There are silent words between-the-lines. Natural = safe, in our minds.

Say, would you like some natural arsenic?

In safety terms, and in terms of appropriate use, “natural” is a meaningless concept. We shouldn’t confuse an emotional and aesthetic argument with one about safety.

There are, therefore, some parallels with the cosmetic industry here; many ingredients on cosmetic product labels sound very scary and synthetic, but are actually there just to perform a function, rather than to do anything for the consumer. Waxes, opacifiers, thickeners, emulsifiers, foaming agents and preservatives are needed to create cosmetic products, and the role of these materials is to make the product what it is. The list of active ingredients (let’s say, a humectant like hyaluronic acid), can actually be quite small. It can be difficult to reassure consumers that a preservative is a necessary evil, or that some scary chemical-sounding ingredient is actually a completely benign wax, used to thicken the product.

Rose

In an ideal world, everyone would be scientifically literate; we’d all be comfortable evaluating risk and context, and we’d skip and hop through fields, not only naming the plants we’re seeing along the way, but knowing that they’re all little chemical factories. In this ideal world, we would be more comfortable about labelling all products in a totally transparent way. It could be an interesting experiment to insist natural products are labelled similarly, as per the James Kennedy example. Rose oil is made up of hundreds of chemicals, though (over 300, I believe), so it could get logistically impossible.

In fact, the main argument over the several dozen new fragrance ‘allergens’ identified by the SCCS is about how manufactures will label their products with the total number of ingredients and ‘allergens’ which must be listed soon running into silly numbers. There has been some talk about listing everything on a peel-off label, or on websites, but there has not been a decision yet at the time of writing.

An alchemist

Back before gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) became commonplace in the fragrance industry, chemists and the fragrance material producers they worked with, were able to create chemicals and mixtures with deliberately obscure trade names, in an attempt to mask the true nature of the substances in question. That’s why ‘aldehyde C14’ is not really an aldehyde, for example (it’s really a lactone, gamma undecalactone, to be precise).

However, even with a GC-MS machine and a good database, a skillful operator is needed – the readouts can be matched to entries in a database, but it takes a knowledgeable person to identify what the likely answers are. A single peak can be matched to several potential molecules. In natural materials, certain chemicals go together (biological processes and chemical reactions create recognisable chemical “fingerprints”). So if you’re analysing a natural oil which contains anethole, you should also find estragole (methyl chavicol).

Perfume bottles

Fragrance mixtures can’t be patented or trademarked.

This is a problem for an industry which relies on selling fragrance mixtures to brands and product manufacturers. There are various methods with which to make copying fragrances tougher. Even a simple fragrance formula can contain one or two proprietary chemicals (that is, fragrance molecules developed by the company manufacturing the fragrance compound. New molecules can be patented and held “captive” for the duration of the patent, thereby giving the producer of said molecule a commercial advantage). I don’t think it is unreasonable to ask that a company whose income relies on creating and selling formulas to a third party (whilst said formulas cannot be patented or trademarked) should be allowed to keep aspects of the formula secret (allergens and IFRA-regulated constituents have to be revealed).

Bases are a common other trick – let’s say I wanted to make a floral fragrance and use some of the lily-of-the-valley accord I made earlier; I could add that, plus a two or three other bases to a skeleton formula. The finished fragrance compound could end up with a hundred ingredients or more, many of them present at just  trace in the finished (diluted) product. There are many fragrance materials which impart a noticeable effect on the smell, even at trace amounts (aldehydes, animalic materials and lactones, for example), but when they are present at low quantities, the GC-MS trace will have numerous small peaks, which can be tricky to analyse correctly. The trace is not like a Tesco receipt; it takes skill and a good-quality database to interpret it correctly.

A technical perfumer, quality controller, evaluator or a chemist can perform the GC-MS analysis, and the job has to be finished by a creative perfumer, who may be able to create a more convincing reconstruction by smelling the scent. Deliberately inducing selective anosmia is a popular trick for copying fragrances.

The fragrance industry is somewhat peculiar, also, in how many of the competitors are each others’ customers. A perfumer in one company may wish to use a material created by another company. One company might specialise in natural materials, while another is strong on aroma chemicals. I’ve listened to sales conversations in which both participants are selling something to oneanother. One person is buying in a base, and at the same time, selling a natural absolute to the other.

Buying in materials directly from the source is a fantastic way for a supplier to ensure a competitive edge, but it’s wise to keep the sources to oneself or a competitor might snap up next season’s crop. Natural materials do run out all the time – and natural material suppliers offer opportunities to reserve a part of the season’s supply for important customers. Keeping various internal networks and relationships secret therefore doesn’t stretch to just the fragrance supplier-(brand)-consumer; it is absolutely vital to certain aspects of how the industry operates internally.

All of the above goes some way towards explaining why the industry relies on relationships and a degree of secrecy to stay viable. There are many situations in which it would be detrimental to the whole industry to ‘let the cat out of the bag’ to the degree that many campaigners seem to want.

This represents a difficult entry to the world of perfumery for people who attempt to study it on their own.

Rubber band ball

Self-studying perfumery is like trying to accurately describe the inside of a ball of rubber bands, whilst only being able to see the outside of it.

Or like looking for a needle in a haystack, complete with several fake needles and fake haystacks. Or like the Indian parable of blind men and an elephant. Not knowing what you don’t know can lead to mistakes, frustration, and to incorrect assumptions about the true nature of things.
The main benefit of getting mentored by a conventionally-trained perfumer, is the passing down of insider knowledge, and of known combinations and good accords. A perfumery tutor today carries the knowledge of decades of experimentation. You could spend a week trying to create the creamiest possible incarnation between vanillin and ethylvanillin, when an experienced perfumer, carrying in his or her head the received wisdom of all the generations before, could tell you in seconds what works. And once you know the basics, it’s easier to be creative. Amateur-would-be-indie perfumers are at a disadvantage because they have to re-invent everything, and much of the information in the public domain is outdated, misleading or plain wrong. Those who make it, and produce beautiful, commercially successful perfumers despite of this, are a celebration of human creativity and endeavour.

The biggest obstacle to amateur perfumery is time.

I think it’s fair for perfumery to retain some of its magic. I think it’s fine for the notes lists in perfumery marketing materials to be somewhat fictitious (but I don’t think it’s fine to lie to consumers that a product which contains synthetic materials is “all-natural” because that only goes towards creating a false divide between natural and synthetic chemicals).

What the industry needs, however, is far more accessible education for both consumers and people who wish to work in it (independently or not).

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Copyright Pia Long. You may not reproduce this article in any publication without explicit prior written permission. If you want to use this post for staff training, or for any internal educational purpose (at a school, university or any other organisation), please use it under these conditions: 1) it must remain complete, unaltered and include this notice, 2) you must include the complete URL to this page and my name, 3) you must not include it as part of any training for which you are charging a fee (without explicit prior written permission).

This was a follow-up post to the earlier article: “What is a perfumer and how to become one.”

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* The Coca Cola point was added by Walter Paget in a lively discussion about this article on the Perfumer & Flavorist LinkedIn page.

* Please take everything you see at the EWG with a pinch of salt. Its mission seems to be to scare consumers, not to inform them. Whilst some of the data they use is undoubtedly of interest, the way it’s represented is not designed to help anyone make correct judgements – it seems to be designed to scare consumers into buying “safe shopping” guides, and into making donations. The way many of their articles are written seems to suggest that safety is a binary condition; that things are either safe or not safe. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Water is safe until you drink too much of it in one sitting (at which point your salt balance goes out of whack, your brain swells and you die), or end up with a thimbleful in your lungs (at which point you could drown).

What is a perfumer and how to become one

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Twenty years ago, the perfumer was a mysterious creature; probably male, probably French and not usually wheeled out to market his creations. That wasn’t quite true, even then, but the image of the perfumer in the public consciousness has shifted considerably since those days. As have the ways in which fragrances are marketed. The Internet changed many things, including how accessible information (and misinformation) became; and how easy it has been for a whole new movement of independent perfumers to establish themselves, without the traditional structure of a fragrance house -> brand -> consumer. Now perfumer-business owners or brand owner-marketers have direct access to consumers, and the doors are open for anyone to swing through. This has created a scenario in which everyone and their mum is calling themselves a perfumer and it has made some of those old French blokes a bit baffled, or even cross.

So, let’s look at the semantics of the word. What is a perfumer, exactly?

There are several kinds. That’s the trouble. I would propose, that for clarity, we ought to start using some qualifying terms to differentiate between the kinds that exist. On the other hand, if you don’t care about sticking with current convention (a valid argument; things evolve), then we should accept that the semantics of the word “perfumer” have now changed to include a much wider scope of activities. So, let’s have a look.

At this point, I would start with a dictionary definition, but the copy of 1) Concise Oxford English Dictionary does not have an entry for perfumer. The 2) Penguin Complete English Dictionary is no better. Both of them include an entry for “perfumery”:

1) The process of producing and selling perfumes. A shop that sells perfumes.

2) The manufacture of perfumes. A place where perfumes are made or sold (perfumer, noun).

Technically correct, of course. So why would anyone get frustrated if an independent person, self-taught, buys some materials, blends them, bottles them, sells them, and calls themselves a perfumer? That’s because within the industry, a perfumer is a term with a very specific meaning. It’s a job description.

Perfumer – conventional; industry

A conventional commercial perfumer is a person whose main job it is to produce scents for varying product categories. Functional fragrance: air fresheners, candles, cosmetics, detergents, laundry care, kitty litter, panty liners… Fine fragrance: (usually) alcoholic fragrance blends; eaux de toilettes, colognes, perfumes. Functional fragrance perfumery dominates the industry and is responsible for the vast majority of perfume compound sales within it. Just take a moment to think about how many products (and environments) around you are scented. That’s the work of perfumers. The perceived effectiveness of a product is greatly influenced by the correct choice of fragrance; and in some cases fragrance forms part or all of the product’s function (air care; deodorants). The usual process for creating a fragrance starts when a client (a brand, or a manufacturer) approaches a fragrance house (or several fragrance houses) with a brief for a scent. The perfumer(s) are given the brief, or may even be directly involved in talks with the client about it. The perfumer(s) submit fragrances for review, and depending on the structure and size of the fragrance house, there can be additional layers to the process (evaluators, consumer panels and so on). Once the client is happy with the smell and the cost of the fragrance, and once its suitability for the intended application has been tested (you can’t just do whatever you like with a scent going into a toilet cleaner, for example; the harsh base product will limit the fragrance materials which can be used), the fragrance is approved and sold. The client manufactures (or contract manufactures) the product, includes the fragrance compound, and usually does not disclose where the fragrance compound came from.

With fine fragrances, disclosing the perfumer and the fragrance house has become more usual in the recent years but it’s still an anomaly in the mainstream industry. Many fine fragrances are made to a tight deadline and budget, and share similar bases and accords – partly to save time and partly because the brief might have included a reference to a popular scent – “We would like it to be Angel-type” or “It should be an oudh.”

Training for a perfumer working this way takes years and never stops. According to IFRA, there were 3059 materials used in the scents for fine fragrances and consumer products in 2011. It would be fairly unusual for one perfumer to know all of them, but it’s typical for an experienced perfumer to be aware of and to have worked with hundreds of materials. To get to know a material, you need to understand its nuances; its development; its appropriate use level; substantivity. Some materials smell obnoxious at 100%, so you must dilute them to 10%, 1% or sometimes even less to understand them and use them in a laboratory setting. Some materials are fleeting; some stay on a scent strip for weeks. Some materials are not at their best when fresh (many natural materials have an unpleasant, vegetative “still note” when just made, and need to be left to air for some time before they become usable); some materials improve considerably when aged; some go off very quickly. Some materials need to be blended with a solvent (like dipropylene glycol) before they’re easy to work with (resinoids); some come in crystal form and need to be solubilised. Some materials discolour the finished product (vanillin; indole) and some materials react with others to form new chemical compounds, once blended (Shiff’s Base).

Once you begin working with fragrance blends, you learn about what happens when you blend material X with material Y, and how to modify it. You learn what gives that awful off-note, or what adds a nuance of freshness to an otherwise turgid scent. You learn how to lift a fragrance; how to make it last; how to get a fragrance which sells a product in the shop (when the consumer sniffs the bottle) and performs well in use (when wet, for example). Many (if not all) perfumers develop their own shorthand and, inevitably, their own signature style – as much for time-saving as for artistic flair. Perfumers working for large fragrance houses are also usually restricted to only using materials from their own catalogue. Eventually perfumers get to a stage where they don’t even work with the raw materials directly – they’ll write up the formula (or suggest modifications to an existing scent from a range of hundreds or even thousands), and an assistant will compound the scent. Some projects require the use of new raw materials which may need to be learned, and it’s not a bad idea to occasionally visit the perfume organ to re-smell things because every new project requires looking at materials through its own brief. It is possible for a single fragrance project to require hundreds of modifications (small experiments and adjustments to test what works best) and patience is needed. Learning never stops.

A major part of the job for a conventional fragrance house is administrative and bureaucratic. The regulations (which I wrote about separately; too vast a topic to include here) are easier to deal with for larger companies but are in danger of suffocating smaller businesses. Chemical regulations, health and safety regulations, transport regulations, packaging and labelling regulations – all affect the industry and take up considerable resources. A perfumer needs to be aware of fragrance material restrictions and regulations. IFRA, as crazy it may sound, is actually trying to prevent the over-regulation of perfumery. The problem is the EU, and people who don’t understand the industry trying to regulate fragrances out of existence. IFRA is acting as (currently the only) industry voice, negotiating directly with the EU for reasonable restrictions, rather than outright bans. Yes, IFRA would probably like to see its recommendations adopted into local laws (and this has happened in some places). One can argue about how IFRA is not perfect either, and it certainly isn’t, but as things currently stand, it’s our best hope for maintaining certain materials on the palette of perfumers.

Conventional industry perfumers may have worked their way up from lab assistants, compounders or evaluators – or have come straight into the industry from having completed a degree in chemistry. A perfumer does not have to be a chemist, but there are specialist jobs in the industry for chemists; including roles in large fragrance houses who also develop their own scent molecules. A perfumer working for IFF or Givaudan may have access to new, patented materials at cost price (or before they are released to others), which gives them an edge over others. Once a material is out of patent, generic versions begin to pop up everywhere. That’s one of the reasons why there will suddenly be a “trend” for a particular accord or a note in mainstream scents – a perfume material might just have become more widely available and the trickle-down process begins. You can now get scented candles and body sprays fragranced with materials which featured heavily in fine fragrances in the early 90s.

Another way to become a conventional perfumer is to apply to one of the in-house perfume schools (Givaudan, Mane, IFF, Firmenich), or to ISIPCA for training, and to hopefully then gain a placement direct from such a school. Knowledge of chemistry is an advantage, as is fluency in French. If you want to apply to some of the perfume houses in other roles (e.g. lab assistant, manufacturing, evaluation, marketing), you may be able to get straight in after your A-levels or university. It’s worth a try – I met someone the other day who walked straight into a sales role at a major international fragrance house after completing her A-levels. The International Federation of Aroma Trades and Plymouth University offer an “MBA in perfumery” – ICATS Diploma In Aroma Trades Studies; a distance-study course for people already working in the industry. It’s an overview of every aspect of the industry and covers chemistry, marketing, origin of raw materials, the briefing process, regulatory issues and more.

So the recommended route to conventional commercial perfumery could be summarised as: 1) Ideal but not necessary: degree in chemistry, 2) Useful but not necessary: ISIPCA, 3) Find a way to demonstrate your interest and seriousness about the industry through work experience and relevant education, 4) Find any job in a fragrance house, 5) Apply to internal perfumery schools or internal programs until you get trained.

Other things that certainly help: 1) Fluency in French, 2) Willingness to relocate anywhere, 3) A good network.

Here is a list of some international fragrance houses (in alphabetical order):

Bell Flavors and Fragrances

CPL Aromas

Firmenich

Givaudan (largest company in the industry)

International Flavours and Fragrances

Mane

Robertet

Symrise

Takasago

To learn more about how the mainstream perfume industry is structured; and about people’s careers within it, I recommend British Perfumery – A Fragrant History (read my Basenotes review for more detail).

Working in the conventional mainstream perfume industry teaches you vast amounts about the technical aspects of perfumery; about working with a variety of base products (if you’re doing functional fragrances), and about the industry in general. You will also have access to a substantial catalogue of materials (something which is very tough to do as an independent, unless you have unlimited cash at your disposal). However, it is rare to get the chance to work on costly formulas, and so it’s not so self-indulgent or hedonistic; more about being practical, productive and creative within tight constraints.

Perfumer – Independent

Sub-categories: Artisan; Natural

The indie perfume scene has exploded in the last few years. Angela Flanders, the Cotswold Perfumery and Pecksniffs represent some of the forerunners of this category in the UK, but brands such as Miller Harris and Ormonde Jayne have helped to popularise it. Penhaligon’s, Floris and Trumper’s have become known through the perfume enthusiasts’ voracious interest in non-mainstream brands, tradition and independent perfumery (though, of course, scents for many indie brands are actually made in fragrance houses, by conventional industry perfumers – even though some don’t advertise the fact).

Globally, there are entire movements – the Natural Perfumer’s Guild, for example – and groups (Yahoo Perfume Making), dedicated to networking and supporting the self-study process of independent perfumers. Basenotes has a DIY section. Many perfume courses (of varying quality and depth) have popped up. Books have been written and published about perfumes and perfumery; Perfumes, the A-Z Guide probably being one of the most significant works in raising interest in perfumes to the status of a legitimate hobby. Whatever your opinion of that book may be, it was a turning point in the marketing of perfumes, and an inspiration to many writers, bloggers and perfumers (and a headache to many marketers; a gift to others).

One can now obtain perfume materials directly, in small minimum order quantities, from a variety of suppliers (buyer beware, though – the more middle-men your material goes through, the more likely it is to be adulterated somewhere along the way). Some indie brands get their fragrances made by indie perfumers who are set up with a lab, materials and the administrative side of getting everything to comply with regulations, and safety-assessed (so the brand owner isn’t always necessarily the perfumer).

Frederic-Malle

Image via Frederic Malle

Frederic Malle is a great example of a brand whose ethos changed how perfumers were used in marketing. Frederic set himself up very clearly as the artistic director and curator of his collection, but allowed perfumers some freedom of interpretation – and put their names on the bottles. This was quite a departure when the range first launched. There are also indie perfume brands which set up the brand figurehead as a “perfumer” in their marketing efforts, even though their scents are manufactured for them by a traditional fragrance house. This is still the norm, not the exception, but it’s beginning to be viewed as old-fashioned by many.

There are, of course, many pros and cons about wheeling perfumers out to participate in the marketing of a brand. Many perfumers are much happier being behind-the-scenes, and being allowed to get on with it, rather than pushed to cultivate a public presence.

Some indie perfumers have built everything up from scratch by themselves – two worth mentioning are, of course Andy Tauer and the (world’s first?) crowdfunded perfume start-up 4160 Tuesdays by Sarah McCartney. Some conventionally-trained perfumers who have worked in the industry set up their own brands later. Ruth Mastenbroek is a perfect example (and her fragrances are glorious). There are many, many more – and this trend is set to continue. Of course many perfumer legends were self-taught and not products of a perfumery school. With a growing interest in fragrance as a hobby; as a form of artistic expression and as something talk about, the lines between commercial, niche, indie and artisan perfumery are blurring.

This represents a bit of a nightmare in semantics: Indie perfumer, self-taught; indie perfumer, not-really-a-perfumer; indie perfumer, ex-industry…

If a self-taught indie perfumer says “I’m a perfumer” to a functional fragrance industry perfumer; they’ll be met with a blank stare. If an industry perfumer says “I’m a perfumer” to a member of the general public, it might evoke romantic scenes of sniffing roses and vanilla pods all day long, when the daily reality for that perfumer could be figuring out a cheap but still attractive scent which doesn’t fall apart in a new type of detergent product.

Self-study of perfumery is fraught with difficulties.

The Internet is both a blessing and a curse. Other people are both a blessing and a curse. One of the advantages – maybe the biggest advantage – of formal perfumery training, is the ability to learn from experienced perfumers; to be mentored and to learn the short-cuts; the problems; the dilutions; the accords. On the other hand, most self-taught indie perfumers focus exclusively on making fine fragrances, which means technical knowledge is not nearly as important. It also means that self-taught indie perfumers can approach their work with the eye of a novice, which can sometimes lead to wonderful discoveries and genuine creativity. Ideally, you want a sweet spot between naivety and experience – to have some tricks up your sleeve, but not be afraid to do things differently; to experiment. Many traditionally-trained perfumers struggle to break away from known accords and the sense of “this is how it’s done.” On the other hand, many self-taught perfumers are not able express quite what they want to through their work, lacking fluency in the language of perfume.

The trouble is that ideas are cheap: creativity is the easy part. Learning how to speak the language of perfume is much harder. The technical expertise of constructing a fragrance that hangs together, doesn’t have any gaps, does what the perfumer intended it to do, conveys the message, doesn’t give the consumer a burning rash, doesn’t discolour or curdle the product – now that’s much more like learning to become a software developer. Perfumery is a mixture of art, science and technology and the best perfumers have spent considerable time practicing their craft.

There is much more misinformation about how to make perfumes online, than there is really useful information. Many of the early books on perfumery contain deliberate red herrings. Trying to approach perfumery from a position of complete ignorance (not knowing what you don’t know) is a difficult task. Mistakes will inevitably be made in the beginning. Self-taught indie perfumery is an expensive pursuit and many of the mistakes might be costly. The barrier to entry is much higher than for many other professions. Just to get started, you’ll need a fairly substantial financial investment (materials, equipment, regulatory support, money to certify your products safe to sell, money for marketing, packaging, bottles, closures), and many materials and other equipment are sold only in large quantities (1kg is a usual minimum order quantity for most perfume materials; less for some costly materials – and many bottle and closure suppliers only supply in bulk). Initially, it’s hard to make a profit. Economies of scale mean that the larger manufacturers have an advantage, not  just because of in-house expertise. It is a completely valid strategy to decide that what you actually want to do, is to sell and market a brand; and to leave the physical manufacturing process to a company or an individual already set up to do it.

Being an indie perfumer is easier if you have substantial financial freedom, but it’s not impossible to set yourself up without it, too. One of the hardest parts of indie perfumery is getting yourself known; raising above the general hubbub and getting the sales in. For many, indie perfumery remains an expensive hobby rather than a viable business, but there are some excellent examples of good businesses, too. My advice would be to find a mentor, and to really go through your business plan, cost of goods, cost of labour, cost of distribution, and to decide whether you can make it work as a business before you start. Don’t ignore the regulatory and administrative burden – if you sell your products to the general public, you must follow the same laws and regulations as the bigger businesses, but without the same resources to handle them.

If you want to be a perfumer, the first thing to consider is: what kind? The day-to-day life of a commercial perfumer and an indie perfumer is very different, even though there is some crossover. If you are desperate to express yourself in scent, and want to use it as a creative medium, you may be better off heading towards indie perfumery (though heading there via training and a career in commercial perfumery is a great way of doing it, if you’ve got time, luck and tenacity). If you love scents and can’t get enough of them; love to follow trends and be up on what has been launched recently, you may actually find a career as an evaluator more satisfying. If you are analytical, methodical, patient, tenacious, driven, determined – as well as enthusiastic about using smells as a medium (but quite happy to take direction and do work for projects which don’t necessarily match your personal taste) – you might be happier in commercial perfumery.

When you work as a commercial perfumer for a fragrance supply house, you get to do creative and technical work with scents, but hand the project over to the client at the end of it and don’t nurture it out in the marketplace. Then you move on to the next project, and the next. In a top tier fragrance house, you compete against perfumers from your own house, as well as those from other suppliers and you have to be prepared to be constantly rejected and lose more than you win, yet keep going anyway. If that sounds like an advantage (and would motivate you instead of crush you), and project-based work, correctly interpreting the client’s ideas to scent and working within creative constraints sound appealing, this could be the career path for you.

Of course many indie perfumers work much like commercial perfumers because that’s been their background in the first place – now they just take on the projects they choose for themselves. So the semantics issue raises its head again; it’s not clear cut by any means.

Whatever kind of perfumer you want to be, you should not just be okay with, but really get a kick out of lifelong learning. The good news is that once you understand the basic concepts, the rest is just hard work and practice. The bad news is that there are no shortcuts: to become a skilled perfumer takes an obscene amount of work and repeated exposure to problems. This is not a career for the lazy.

Some perfume manufacturers for indie fragrance brands in the UK:

Phoenix Fragrances

Seven Scent

Quintessence Fragrances

One of the great things about the recent surge in interest for this discipline is the increased availability of perfume making courses where anyone can turn up and try it out without spending hundreds (or even thousands), setting themselves up with a lab and materials, only to realise it’s not for them.

Some of the independent training on offer:

Before you spend thousands of pounds on raw materials and possibly years of your life in frustrated pursuit of a dream that may in the end come crashing down – I strongly recommend investing a few hundred pounds and a few weeks or months of your time in some independent training on offer. If you still want to create perfumes after that, you will then better-equipped to decide whether what you’ll really want is an expensive hobby (just to make fragrances for your own enjoyment) or whether you really want to launch your own brand and jump through all the legal, regulatory and other hoops that requires. In any case, I strongly recommend doing your due diligence, reading up on what kind of training is on offer and taking at least one, but possibly even more than one course available before you begin. You can also get self-study kits now from places like Perfumer’s Apprentice and Olfactik – these are a great way to explore fragrance materials at your own pace and test your nose.

I have listed some training on offer below. I do not endorse any of these courses as I have not personally vetted any of them (with the exception of Penny’s distance-study course at Orchadia), but I have spoken to people who have attended the training courses listed here and can at least say with some degree of confidence that these seem like good places to start your studies.

  • If you can’t get into ISIPCA or the Givaudan perfumery school (or want to head down the indie road from the start), the Grasse Institute of Perfumery might not be a bad choice (they offer summer schools and longer courses).
  • Perfume courses (now also online – though in-person is always best, for the aforementioned reasons) by Karen Gilbert
  • Perfume courses at the Cotswold Perfumery
  • Perfume training offered by Penny Williams at Orchadia (whose Advanced Perfume Training course is a good foundation for further study, but does not teach you how to make perfume).
  • Perfumer’s World offers training in various locations and sells raw materials, too.

You’ll also sometimes see perfume courses pop up at the London College of Fashion, and by other providers – check whether the course is aimed at sales and marketing people or wannabe-perfumers, and whether the person giving the course has some commercial perfumery experience (it may be your only chance as a self-taught indie to get taught by someone who has).

Books that help with the appreciation, understanding and learning of perfumery

Level – enthusiast

Level – nose-nerd:

  • What the Nose Knows by Avery Gilbert (a fantastic book about the sense of smell).
  • The Secret of Scent by Luca Turin
  • Perfume Legends: French Feminine Fragrances by Michael Edwards (this beautiful book is a must-have for perfume enthusiasts, but it’s getting really hard to find, as it is out of print).
  • Fragrance by Edwin T. Morris (one of the best perfume history books around; out of print, so you need a bit of luck finding it).
  • Perfume, a Global History (a good, if somewhat disjointed collection of essays on perfume history, compiled for the MIP perfume museum in Grasse. I bought my copy from there for 50 Euros but looks like you can get it cheaper from Amazon).

Level – perfumer:

The above is, of course, just a small sample of books on the topic, but it ought to get you started. When working as a perfumer; particularly if on the side of perfume chemistry, many more technical books exist (Allured is a good publisher for these; as is Wiley).

So how did I become a perfumer?

The short answer: in a highly unorthodox manner and it feels like I’ve barely scratched the surface. Looking back, it’s easy to create a clear path which has led me to where I am today, but in reality, it’s been a process of searching, learning, experimentation and elimination. There are a few definite milestones on the journey. I was working for a cosmetics and fragrance distributor as a training manager in the mid-90s. One day, the Tiffany rep brought in a miniature “perfume organ” (which, of course, was a fantastic piece of sales theatre, containing only tiny bottles of expensive natural materials in an attractive wooden box). Even though I had sold perfumes as a teen; had worked with them at the distributor; had written training manuals on the topic – the process of making perfume had never been part of my world. I was fascinated. Who makes this stuff? How?

Alas, life got in the way (as did a foray into the IT industry, to see whether I would like to work there instead), so I didn’t return to these burning questions until 2005, when, seemingly out of the blue, I decided I would find out the answers. One day I had that jolt of a realisation – I think I might be a ‘nose’ – now what? I pieced together clues from the past and my yearning for something so interesting and diverse that I could dive into it and never come out (I am, what author Barbara Sher describes as a “scanner” – a person with many interests). I bought a couple of hundred fragrance materials (mostly essential oils and a few fragrance blends), stored them in brown boxes under my bed (I lived in a studio flat), and started experimenting, searching for literature on perfumery, and trying to satisfy my hunger for knowledge. I was looking for a needle in a 1000 haystacks, complete with several fake needles and fake haystacks.

My first blend felt like an attempt to speak a foreign language with a vocabulary of only a dozen words and no idea of correct syntax. I wanted to write a sonnet and I managed “Hello – I do pretty smell.”

Perfumery and writing are the only two disciplines which seem to have been ever-present. I naturally thought of making perfumes as writing them. Hence Volatile Fiction – to me, that’s what perfumes are. Perfumers are illusionists; telling us stories through smell.

Pia Long on the rose field -Turkey

Sniffing roses on the field in Senir, Turkey.

Happily I didn’t have to stop there. I was fortunate enough to work myself up the ranks at Lush to the position of a Junior Perfumer. I wrote about that here, so won’t go into it more now, but it was my first opportunity to create scents for consumer products (one of which I worked up to a fine fragrance which became an instant cult hit). Watching the products for which I had created perfumes become best-sellers in multiple countries was surreal, to say the least.

Since then I’ve worked for a fragrance and flavour material supplier as a technical manager, and for Penny Williams at Orchadia Solutions (a fragrance industry consultancy) as a perfumer and training manager. Both roles were varied and included perfumery for cosmetics, air care, household products and fine fragrance. Orchadia has now become a client and I consider Penny a dear friend and a mentor.

In fact, one of the perhaps less obvious aspects of why working in fragrance is so addictive are the people.

Throughout my perfume-obsession years (which really started when I was about 16, but I am referring here particularly to the must-become-a-perfumer-years, which started in 2005), I have participated in various perfume-enthusiast activities – Basenotes was transformative in particular. I think what Grant has done there is amazing, and a service to the entire industry; never mind to us smell-obsessed weirdos who were able to talk about the topic with others, at last. Since Basenotes, many scent-related projects and events have popped up and many prefer different communities (Fragrantica, for example). I’ve been a Basenotes contributor for a while, and have also written for many other websites and publications.

I was featured in “British Perfumery – a fragrant history”, the 50th anniversary book of the British Society of Perfumers as a very kind gesture by John Bailey, a current council member, BSP Ambassador and a past president of the Society. Turns out I participated in BSP events to such a degree that they thought I might as well help out behind-the-scenes, and so I am now a council member of the BSP.

Liam Moore, whom I met while we were both at Lush, asked me to contribute to ODOU magazine, and I have contributed to three of the four issues so far. I suppose one major advantage of having worked my way through part-time jobs behind the perfume counter as a teen; to training, marketing, perfumery direct at a brand; to behind-the-scenes at a fragrance supplier, and now to a fragrance industry consultancy, is that I have had an overview of almost the entire value chain first-hand. It helps to have a good idea of the sales, marketing and consumer side of perfumery; not just the technical aspects.

In the end, I’ve been geeking out about fragrance and writing about it so much that I’ve set up freelance and have plans afoot for some perfume projects (which are still under wraps), but in the meantime, I help other brands with strategy; their products; their dreams and, of course, their stories – and write for Perfumer & Flavorist, too.

I wrote this post in the hope that someone, somewhere, having that gut-wrenching eureka moment of “wait a minute, I think I should be a perfumer”, will have an easier time figuring out what kind of perfumer they might like to be, and how to get started. Good luck!

Copyright Pia Long. You may not reproduce this article in any publication without explicit prior written permission. If you want to use this post for staff training, or for any internal educational purpose (at a school, university or any other organisation), please use it under these conditions: 1) it must remain complete, unaltered and include this notice, 2) you must include the complete URL to this page and my name, 3) you must not include it as part of any training for which you are charging a fee.

EDITED TO ADD: I have recently visited the Givaudan perfumery school and am working on some features about what they look for in students and what it’s really like to study there. I’m also in the process of evaluating some of the courses available. Subscribe to this blog to keep up-to-date.