Translating scent into words – come see me at the Free Word Centre

The Free Word Centre in London is hosting an evening of language and scent exploration on the 2nd of June. I’ll be joining the panel discussion on translating scent into words and we’ll hear about a new autobiography told in smells from the author Philip Claudel himself.

Translating smells into words (and the other way around) is very close to my heart and I am looking forward to seeing how the panel and the audience respond to this topic and what we uncover.

There will be a writing exercise at the end where participants will receive scented jars (kindly on loan from Orchadia Solutions) and will be challenged to write about what they are smelling.

I am really looking forward to the evening – it starts at 18:45 and tickets are only a fiver. Maybe see some of you there?

Armpit sweat and Fragrancestein (or the 33rd BSP annual symposium)

Move over, scent strips! The new way to experience potent aroma chemicals in their pure state is…BRAIIIIIIINS!

The 33rd One Day Symposium by the British Society of Perfumers was unusually stinky this year: armpit sweat and skatole overdoses, oh my! It’s an important date in the UK perfume calendar and this year’s event was once again held at Whittlebury Hall in Towcester, to a full audience of perfumers, evaluators, sales and marketing people. I was lucky to be put in the same group as Karen Gilbert with whom we had only just sniffed some gorgeous Osmotheque recreations, so the day offered us plenty of opportunities to compare notes.

The first item on the agenda was a talk by a bright, young PhD candidate Caroline Allen, who, with the help of Kate Williams (who was elected as the new BSP president during the AGM that followed), has been researching the effect of artificial fragrances on our ability to advertise and judge body odour. A few years ago another talk at the BSP explained the human major histocompatibility complex and its role in mate selection, so Caroline’s research is a perfect follow-up. Since it’s been shown that we prefer the scent of potential mates with an MHC type that is different to our own, how does using, say, underarm deodorant affect this?

What seems to be happening is that when people are left to choose their own fragrance, they pick a scent which enhances (advertises) their natural body odour in a good way, meaning that potential mates will not be thrown off scent. If a scent is randomly allocated (you wear something your gran bought you for Christmas even though you don’t like it, for instance), our own odour fingerprint still comes through, but not as well.

Caroline roped us into helping her by making us smell cotton pads soaked in armpit sweat. By recording our impressions using descriptive words (musky, sweet, floral… or in the case of one of the samples, onion, cumin…), we were able to contribute to the odour mapping work that Kate and her team have been doing at Seven Scent.

Incidentally, sample 32 (I think) smelled of sweet musk and fruit to me, and I felt very happy sniffing it – whereas others who sniffed it didn’t have the same reaction. Everyone’s impressions of each sample varied greatly, which in itself was fascinating.

These days follow a similar format – fragrance raw material suppliers present a selection of new materials or existing materials used in new ways. Presentations include demonstration formulae in various bases (candles, body creams, shampoos, detergents, fine fragrance and so on) and some go to great lengths to be creative with the way in which they show their materials off.

None more so than PFW who always seem to come up with an off-the-wall presentation. This year, their mascot Master Perfumer, Pierre the Perfumer was the star of a truly frightening film-slash-demo formula, FRAGRANCESTEIN.

Keen-eyed readers will note the massive skatole overdose, and keen-nosed ones will know that it truly smells of excrement. Where indole has a mothball quality and flip-flops between poop and mothballs (and where with indole, once you’ve worked on enough floral accords containing it, your brain starts to construct a flower around it, so it no longer smells bad after a while)… with skatole, I am yet to arrive at such a happy state (and wonder if it’ll ever happen). It really does smell bad. So the challenge was – how to hide the ‘monster’ and create an accord that would not only be acceptable but pleasant and desirable to consumers.

Bit by bit, we followed Pierre on the silver screen as he tried to tame the monster. Body parts were replaced, the formula tweaked, and we could smell the transformation. Perhaps a little too influenced by the initial horror, many in the room did struggle to find the final accord pleasant, but that’s where being a trained nose can sometimes trip you up; if you smell the construction rather than the naive overall effect, you can sometimes miss an interesting piece of work.

I’d like to put in a request to PFW: could we see Pierre the Perfumer in “The Man With Two Brains”, please?

I missed out on a PFW goodiebag (what was in there? Dare I ask?) because there wasn’t one on my chair, but did come home with lots of goodies. BSP has its own tote bag now, too!

It wasn’t the only tote of the day; DRT, a company producing impressive volumes of a variety of chemicals all from trees gave us this lovely forest-themed tote:Two materials which really stuck in my mind from the Nactis/Synarome presentation were Oudharome and Agarome (the former having a lovely orris-type character more so than oudh, really); both made me want to rush into the lab and use them in something.

IFF‘s presentation of Amber Xtreme was another highlight of the day for me – they’d gone to real effort to make the session interactive and demonstrate the material in use. We experienced a floor cleaning application, laundry care, hair care and fine fragrance – all at different concentrations; all very effective. I was a ‘volunteer’ (read: everyone else suddenly found the ceiling really interesting). My job was to cover a large floor tile with suds.

At least it didn’t turn out to be an ice bucket challenge!

This material is POTENT. I see where the Xtreme comes in, really – a trace in fine fragrance still somewhat dominated the blend, and very small amounts had noticeable effects in other applications. I also love the jaunty whale illustration. It almost has a Japanese quality to it. “Here I am, sending my magic poop into the ocean!”

We were also given generous goodiebags with a new perfumer’s fragrance ingredients compendium, demo bottles of Amber Xtreme and a pen.

The day went by fast and I am already looking forward to next year’s symposium. There will be other BSP events before then, of course, and it’s worth keeping an eye out for additions to the calendar – even if you are not a member but happen to be interested in this crazy, poop and sweat-scented world!

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!).

Symrise presentation all laid out – we were shown four materials.

Materials are often shown in demo products.

Symrise always creates visually interesting displays to go with their aroma molecule presentations.

Every material had its own visual representation.

The materials from Axxence were presented to us in coloured gel suspension. It was a good way for us to experience them.

This is what we smelled.

Treatt showed us specialist high-impact natural materials.

PFW showed us a surprise material…

Omega Ingredients showed us some interesting naturals.

Aims of the BSP.

TIPA stand in the break room.

Penny Williams of the TIPA, speaking with Virginie Daniau of Parfum Parfait.

We saw some lovely natural materials from Floral Concept.

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.