CRITICISM, HALF-BAKED RELEASES, AND REFORMULATION

The other day when I was sampling Lush/Gorilla Perfumes’ Old Delhi Station, I wanted to read the official list of notes and what others said about it so, as usual, I did an internet search. The first bona fide review that came up was this one. It was not just a review, it was a philosophical discourse on the art of reviewing perfumes and speaking one’s mind. It’s an old post, but it’s still an enjoyable and thought-provoking read.

Unfortunately, as a perfumer, I have to be very careful about speaking my mind about other people's perfumes unless they ask me to, not wanting any appearance of a conflict of interest. However, as a consumer, one can say anything about anything. It's always refreshing to hear honest words, and I hope that all of those reviewers who are consumers feel free to exercise the wonderful freedom they have to speak their minds, never feeling guilty about doing so.

In any case, no one should be offended by honest criticism in an art/craft where value is highly subjective. Fans of a perfume or a brand should realize that others may not share their enthusiasm for it, and criticism is no reflection on their taste. Perfumers should know that if they produce anything other than bland, mainstream compositions, some people will not like them.

Perfume means something different to each person who smells it, and a cheap floral fragrance oil mixed with clove may be just as evocative to one person as an artistically conceived, superbly executed high-end composition is to someone else. However, there's no harm in calling each what it is and objectively comparing value with price. Some people love mass-produced, spray-painted garden gnomes. Others would prefer to have an original Henry Moore sculpture on their lawn. The only time there’s a problem with this is when garden gnomes are sold at Henry Moore prices. And yes, it does happen in sculpture, art, perfume, and every other area of endeavor.

A second issue raised in the post was that of perfumers releasing perfumes that are not finished products, with an individual perfumers’ work showing evidence of a learning curve. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), perfumers (like other artists) never stop learning and developing. As new materials become available, we learn to incorporate them into our palettes. As old materials disappear, we learn how to substitute for them. The longer we work in perfumery, the more our skills increase and our tastes change. We constantly want to try new things and set new challenges for ourselves. I agree that there are too many half-baked releases, and I know I am guilty of some of them. I take this criticism to heart.

This post has inspired me to do something that’s been bugging me for a long time, and that is to reformulate Little Stars, the first perfume that I ever released, making it better without changing its essential character. Little Stars has been a nagging theme playing at the back of my mind for a long time because I haven’t been satisfied with it and know I could make a better version of it today. Over the next few weeks, the reformulation will be a project that I’ll report on from time to time here. 

[Little stars bottle and flower photos are mine; garden gnomes and Henry Moore sculpture photos are from Wikimedia]

BRASSAVOLA ORCHIDS AND LITTLE STARS

It seems like time to write about another one of my creations, so what better place to begin than with the orchid that started it all, Brassavola Little Stars? Brassavola orchids are native to Central and South America, where they grow as epiphytes on tree trunks and branches. They have cylindrical, spiky leaves and masses of thick, exposed roots that most people would consider ugly, but when they bloom, what a show! Little Stars is a hybrid between two different species, B nodosa and B cordata, and it was the first Brassavola that I grew, back before I knew much about orchid growing. The first time it ever flowered, I walked into the house one night and smelled the most amazing and unexpected fragrance, something like ylang-ylang spiced with cloves. I had no idea what it was or where it was coming from, but it didn’t take long to trace it to my blooming orchid plant with its sprays of green and white flowers.

To make a long story short, the plant bloomed repeatedly over the years, each time producing the same exquisite fragrance, but only at night. Since then I’ve grown other white, night-fragrant orchids, native to both the Old World and New World, and found that most of them have a similar fragrance, a stunning example of parallel evolution.

Every time I smelled my night-fragrant orchids I thought how wonderful it would be to create a perfume that was like their scent. Eventually I had to try, starting with the ylang-ylang and cloves that seemed to be the basis of the Little Stars fragrance. It was then that I quickly discovered the principle of top notes! Both ylang-ylang and clove are fairly short-lived fragrances, so the mix would be gone within an hour. I then had to experiment with base notes, trying to come up with something that would hold the scent on the skin for a reasonable amount of time. I won’t bore you, dear reader, with all of my trials and errors up and down the learning curve, but in the end I settled upon a base that contained several different resins, spikenard, cedarwood, and a little synthetic agarwood (oud). The rest of the mix includes some citrus, green tea, and a few other floral notes. I would say that in the end, the blend is about 80% natural and 20% synthetic.

In the end, because of the constraints of perfumery, the fragrance isn’t exactly Brassavola Little Stars, but rather its dark and brooding cousin. It has the delicate, sweet and spicy top notes of my Little Stars’ flowers, but they’re riding on the strong shoulders of a woody, earthy base. Several people who have tried it describe it as a “goth” fragrance. Maybe that’s fitting for a flower that only comes out at night.