In the Hive.

Perfumery101

Sniff Sniff Sniff! I had a crash course in basic perfumery at Science Park today! I wasn't particularly interested in this training initially but it turned out to be real fun and insightful. It was conducted by a Senior French Perfumer who looked like Professor Dumbledore when he talked about the history of fragrance, assisted by a young, poised french lady. I learnt quite a bit such as how pple extract fragrance ingredients, visualize fragrance, evaluate fragrance and finally, concoct my very own perfume! We had to smell different family of fragrance which was around 25 raw ingredients (of cos, to perfumer, that's less than 1% of what they usually deal with). I had a tough time smelling Hedione (synthetic floral) but i was told that some pple just unable to smell certain fragrance due to their genes (and I thought my nose had went bad after the mass smelling, hee). To my surprise, rose and berries belong to the same family of plant. Next, he went on to let us smell many different fine fragrances in the market (see above picture), from the classic ones to the modern smells and identifying the notes. I was fascinated when he described how poetic the fragrances were and the stories behind some of them. After all the sniffings, rubbing the nose and cups of coffee beans (to clear the nose), my 2 favorites were Paris from YSL (1983) and Drakkar Noir from Guy Laroche (1982). I always thought I would prefer more citrus smells but I was really enticed to the velvety Paris which was made of Rose and Violet, and Drakkar Noir which was in the Fougere family. At the end of the lecture, we had a mini competition to concoct Fantasy of Jasmine. I felt like a junior unqualified perfumer :P With 15 raw materials in front of us, I chose the nicest, sweetest smelling and mixed them in propotion. I wanted to add in Veltol Plus (smell of candy floss) so much that I overdid. My first attempt made me wanna puke. It was until the third try that a decent, soft, light jasmine was created, Serene No. 9! Lol. School of Perfumery is something very new to me and perfumers are like artists. Voila!