SIMPLICITY AND REALITY

The juxtaposition of several events this past weekend made me start thinking about the concept of simplicity and how it applies to fashion, art, perfume, and life in general. From Friday through Sunday I participated in a holiday pop-up shop where vendors were selling everything from taxidermied animals, high-end hipster clothing, chandeliers, crude wooden shelves and knick-knacks, handmade chocolates, antique china and cactus plants to various forms of jewelry and, of course, perfumes.

As I passed in and out of my area, I kept going by a display by jewelry maker and metal artist Faris DuGraf, where one necklace particularly caught my eye. On the morning of the second day I ended up buying it. It’s a good thing I did because it turned out to be one-of-a-kind. I was particularly impressed by Faris’s creations because they fall into the category of “deceptively simple” – things that have clean and simple lines without being bland, boring or consciously contrived to make an obvious statement.

After I’d bought the necklace and was wearing it, I recommended Faris to a customer who was looking for a gift for her sister. The customer seemed indignant that I would suggest anything from the pop-up shop, saying “my sister only wears diamonds. She only wears REAL jewelry”. Of course this immediately conjured up images of ugly, ornate, traditional, outrageously expensive diamond jewelry, the sole purpose of which is to flaunt the wealth of a woman’s male caretaker. This, of course, opened the worm-box question of what “real” anything is. Is it real only if it costs someone’s life savings? Is it real only if it conforms to the exact image of what one has been taught to expect? Is it real only if it consists entirely of natural materials? Is it real only if it is manufactured by a large corporation and sold in a large retail store? Is anything real if you make it yourself, or does the fact that it is made by someone else lend a stamp of authenticity to it even if you could make something better? This question is just as valid for perfume as jewelry, so it made me wonder what this woman would consider “real perfume” – what would her sister wear?

The second phase of considering the whole concept of simplicity came when I read a review of my new fragrance, Woodcut”, in which the reviewer wrote, “Radical in its seeming simplicity ...”. I found these words to be some of the most flattering that he could possibly have written, because “seeming simplicity” is one of the hardest tricks of any trade. Doing simplicity well is much harder than doing ornate. Playing a simple Mozart piece well is much harder to do than playing a fast piece with big, crashing chords. There’s some sort of sweet spot where things are so simple that they’re boring - a solid white canvas posing as art simply because of its price tag, or the “solichem” fragrances like ambroxan and Iso E that have been exploited for a while in the name of trendiness. At the other end of the spectrum are the overly complex creations that end up being just plain ugly. This is especially a danger in making natural perfumes, because mixed materials can quickly create a “muddy” result.

Then there’s the other dimension of crude versus polished. Sometimes crude can be beautiful, as in the case of natural, found objects that are displayed as is. Other times, it simply looks (or smells) like an inexpert or bungled job. At the polished end of the spectrum are creations that are so contrived from the outset as to be embarrassingly obvious in their cleverness. We all walk a fine line between the extremes, and everyone’s sweet spot at the intersection of all these dimensions is in a slightly different place.

What’s particularly interesting is the observation of how often we as artists unconsciously make a statement and don’t realize it until afterwards. I didn’t create Woodcut with the idea of making an environmental statement, but when I finally ended up writing a description of it, I realized that it did make a strong statement. Einsof, in writing about it in his review, amplified the statement and made me realize some things that I hadn’t thought of myself. 

Here are my questions for you: What "real" perfume would you equate to “only wearing diamonds”? What is your take on the issue of simplicity vs complexity and “real” vs “not real”?

Leave a comment and be entered in a drawing for a travel spray of Woodcut. 

[Necklace and madrone photos are mine; diamond ring and plastic cuckoo clock photos are from Wikimedia] 

GROWING PAINS

Things are growing outside, not least of which is the black bamboo. The canes this year are thicker than I’ve ever seen them, which means the new ones are going to be even taller than old ones, which are already taller than the mature alder trees that grow next to them. Today there’s a huge one pushing its way through the asphalt of the driveway despite the supposedly bamboo-proof barrier that is buried 18 inches into the ground. The canes grow a foot a day, more on the rare days when there’s some sun.

Right now getting my business up and running is not progressing at as fast a rate as the bamboo. The response to my offer of a free goodie box was immediate and a little overwhelming. I got way more than 5 requests within the first day, and intend to fill them all. Of course, as luck would have it, last week was the time when everyone in the world ordered orchids, too, so I spent most of the weekend packing plants. In between the orchids and the work that I have to do for the “day job”, I’ve been putting together perfume sample packs and other items, but it’s going at a slow rate, partly because I’ve been waiting for some supplies that were very slow to arrive after I ordered them. To complicate matters even more, my brother-in-law is visiting for the Independence Day weekend, and he’s staying in the room that provides the only access to my perfume “lab”. He goes to bed early, so that cuts into my prime working time. The boxes will arrive, but later than I had hoped. The benefit of this exercise is that I’m finding out things I need to know before I start shipping real orders. Today I learned that the labels I had planned to use on the 2-ml vials don’t work well, so I’m going to have to redo those. Slowly it’s all coming together, and I look forward to the day when shipping fragrance products becomes as routine as shipping orchid plants.

BULBOPHYLLUM ORCHIDS AND LUZONICA FRAGRANCE

It’s Bulbophyllum season in my greenhouse right now, so a description of some of these bizarre orchids seems in order, especially since I have made a Bulbophyllum-inspired fragrance, Luzonica. Bulbos grow like weeds in Southeast Asia where they live as epiphytes on tree trunks and tree branches. The flowers are often pollinated by flies. If you think about what flies are attracted to, you can begin to imagine the typical scents of Bulbos - feces, dead meat, rotten fruit, mostly. A few have pleasant scents, although they’re not your standard florals.

One of the species that I have blooming now is B frostii, with flowers that are usually described as being shaped like wooden clogs. They’re light green with maroon spots, and have a mobile lip that looks just like a maroon tongue. The purpose of the lip is to jiggle in the breeze and attract the fly, then act like a springboard and smash it up against the pollen, which sticks to its back. This pollination system is characteristic of the genus. The “fragrance” of B frostii orchid is like - you guessed it - rotten meat.

Another species that’s blooming right now is B biflorum, shown in the photo at the left. Actually it’s almost always blooming. The flowers look like long dark pink streamers and smell like - you guessed it again - rotten meat.

The third species that’s in bloom right now is B patens. It has shiny, dark maroon flowers that smell like - surprise - cinnamon! It's the one shown in the photo at the very top of this post.

B macranthum is one of the Bulbos that smell like fruit. The first time it bloomed I walked into my greenhouse to find that the whole space smelled like tropical fruit salad, but fruit salad with a dark side. It took me a while to identify the source because this orchid has such tremendous sillage. To make a perfume based on this species, I used a mix of tropical fruit scents, a few tropical florals, and a pinch of funky spice and put it all on a base that’s not anything like your usual girly fruity-floral scent. The base includes “oriental” things like resins, labdanum, and amber, with some animalic notes thrown in by green spikenard and (synthetic) castoreum. It’s interesting that Luzonica seems to be well-liked by all of the men who have tried it so far. I suppose it could be described as a masculine fruity-floral. The effect of Luzonica in soap is interesting because it seems lighter and fruiter and “cleaner” than the fragrance itself. We are testing it in the shower now, and have been enjoying it very much. I think the light, clean fruitiness works well as a bath product, so I lucked out.

DISPENSING PERFUME: SPRAY, ROLL, OR DAB?

I did not intend for today’s post to be a rant against malfunctioning perfume sprayers. Unfortunately the little sample sprayer that Xerjoff’s Dhajala came in was broken or malfunctioning, so I struggled with it, finally managing to coax out a few uncontrolled dribbles to test. This is why I hate sprayers, especially the crimped or crammed ones. With a malfunctioning screw-top sprayer, the top can easily be removed to dab the perfume, or the sprayer cap can be replaced altogether. The Xerjoff samples are in the cram-top sprayer vials where the sprayer is pushed tightly down over the vial, making it really difficult to remove. Crimp-top sprayers are even worse because it takes manly tools to get them off if they break. A more civilized way is to remove the spray top and try to get at the perfume through the top of the tiny piece of tubing that feeds into the sprayer, but that’s not very satisfactory. Sprayers almost seem like planned obsolescence. Sprayer breaks, throw away 100 ml bottle with remaining 90 ml of perfume and buy a new one. Surely I’m not the only one who has encountered a faulty spray bottle or vial.

This leads to the whole issue of the best ways to package and apply perfume. Many times I read comments on the forums indicating that people are squeamish about dabbing with their finger because they are afraid of contaminating their perfume with microorganisms, skin cells, or some other unspecified, unspeakable, unsanitary things. Really, folks, how much filth do you have on your hands? How much of it will actually get into your perfume bottle? Do you know that 95% ethanol will kill and sterilize almost anything that might make its way in, including those poor little stray skin cells that are dead to begin with? Is a dipstick or rollerball really any better, since it touches your skin anyway, probably much more vigorously than your finger would, and simply gives the illusion of being dainty and “hands-off”?

I will concede that some things are better sprayed, like eau de Cologne, some eaux de toilette, and anything that’s so weak that you have to saturate yourself with it to get a decent effect. Annick Goutal’s Eau d’Hadrien comes to mind as a perfect example. For those sorts of preparations I would use a sprayer, not caring how much I dispensed or where it landed since it will not have much smell to begin with and will be gone in an hour anyway. Otherwise, I really prefer to dab perfume. Sprayers almost always dispense too much, too erratically, in a shotgun approach. They malfunction and shoot out much more or less than intended - usually more, so I end up reeking or scrubbing. They break. This is why most of my collection is samples or minis - they generally come in open containers that I can dab from in small amounts. I hate rollerballs with a passion, just because they’re a pointless and unnecessary barrier between me and the perfume.

In deciding how to package my perfumes, I’ve come up with a sort of compromise based on my own likes and dislikes and what I know the general public is used to and wants. There will be no rollerballs. The pure perfume will be in small “splash” bottles for controlled dabbing, since it’s strong. The EdP concentration will be available in both splash bottles and spray bottles, so customers can have their choice. The spray bottles are all screw-top, not crammed or crimped so that if a sprayer should malfunction there is still easy access to the perfume, and the sprayer can be replaced (I intend to provide replacement parts, should this happen). The sprayer can even be refilled if the perfume is used up. It will be interesting to see which packaging formats are most popular.

AMBER AND FOSSILIZED AMBER

Amber is probably one of the most confusing terms in perfumery. It is used to refer to at least three completely different classes of scents, one of which is an accord (mixture) made of highly variable materials including benzoin, vanilla, labdanum, and a host of other things. The components of the “amber” accord can be either natural or synthetic. This accord in all its various guises is by far the most common “amber” in perfumery and is used as a base in a wide variety of perfumes, including orientals. I have formulated my own signature amber accord that I use alone when I'm craving a big dose of labdanum, or as a base in other perfumes. It seems that amber accords are often sold with the claim that they are the “essential oil of amber” even though the components have nothing to do with true amber.

“Amber” is also sometimes used to refer to ambergris, real or synthetic. My impression, from what I’ve read and from the perfumes with an ambergris note that I’ve sampled, is that ambergris has a salty, ocean-like, animalic scent that bears no resemblance to the amber accord. At some point I want to get my hands on some real, pure ambergris to try, but it’s not that easy to come by, especially on a limited budget, since it depends on sperm whales coughing it up and letting it age for a long time in the ocean before it washes up somewhere on a beach.

True amber, the one that we see in jewelry, is actually fossilized tree resin, sap secreted by plants millions of years ago and gradually petrified. Sometimes it contains insects or other inclusions. Scientists have even found bees with orchid pollen on their backs embedded in amber. Some time back I acquired a small vial of fossilized amber oil from Eden Botanicals, and have since gone on to purchase enough to use in formulating a perfume. According to their website, this oil is extracted from “Himalayan fossilized tree resin (35,000,000 years old) and found at an elevation of about 2,500 meters”. The oil is dark brown and extremely viscous. It has a distinctive smoky, slightly resinous scent that will make a unique perfume base. It’s a little like the ashes of a campfire and a little like the rosin that I remember my mother using on her violin bow. One of my current projects is to create a limited edition all-natural perfume using fossilized amber as the featured note.

The thought of wearing perfume that contains sap from long-extinct plants that grew in prehistoric times seems daunting until I think about the fact that prehistoric plant materials are burned every day in enormous quantities in petroleum products and coal. OK, so much for that mystique. I prefer to think of fossilized amber oil as a liquid jewel, the spirit of those ancient trees that shed their blood into the primordial ooze, where it turned to stone. I may call the perfume "Petrified Forest", but am open to suggestions.

PERFUME AND RUNNING

At this point in my life I’m what you would call a recreational runner, someone who goes out a couple of times a week and trots around the neighborhood just for the fun of being outside and staying in shape, at least at some minimal level. As I run around my neighborhood, I’m always aware of the odors that I pass through, both the bad and the good. On the bad side, there’s the choking smell of car exhaust, fabric softener spewing from people’s dryers, or the smell of the pesticides and fertilizers that people dump on their lawns to keep them an obscenely green monoculture. On the good side, there’s the smell of the occasional flower - lilacs, roses, wisteria, whatever is blooming at the moment. There’s the smell of wet dirt and vegetation during or after a rain. The smell of wood burning in stoves and fireplaces in winter. All of these odors are an integral part of the landscape that I enjoy while running.

A whole different issue is running while wearing perfume, which I have been doing more and more lately as I test and formulate scents. The other day I went running while wearing Balenciaga Cristobal, a perfectly nice vanilla-based scent. The weather was warm, and I was sweating a little. Often I don’t notice the perfume I’m wearing given that I’m moving forward, albeit at a slow pace. However, on this run the fumes of the Cristobal were rising up from my body, making me almost nauseated. Apparently vanilla is not a running-friendly scent. This has gotten me to wondering whether certain scents can not only make running more or less pleasant, but actually have the capacity to impair or enhance performance.

Over the next months I’m going to do some research and experimentation with single notes to see which ones might improve the running experience, or even promote running farther and/or faster. Stay tuned for occasional updates on what I find out. Who knows - I might even really get in shape and start racing again using my secret weapon. I'm not sure yet whether it should boost my own speed or leave my competitors gagging in my sillage! Maybe if I'm lucky it'll do both.

PHOTOGRAPHING PLANTS AND PERFUMES

One of the tasks I have to do as a purveyor of orchid plants and a soon-to-be purveyor of perfumes is photograph the subjects so that the buyer has a realistic visual impression of what he or she is getting. Over the years I’ve developed a set of techniques for photographing flowers and plants using an inexpensive automatic camera (Canon Powershot A520). Although many of the same principles apply, photographing perfumes and other inanimate products presents some different challenges, which I’m in the process of working through.

The first thing I quickly learned about both types of photography is that flash is the ultimate evil. I prefer to have the subject in natural light in my sunroom, preferably on a very cloudy day (the great gel in the sky, as one film person I know calls clouds). Often the clouds produce the perfect lighting conditions - medium strong uniform light, no visible shadows. Sometimes it’s too bright, so I create a “light tent” using a white drape above the subject or wait until the sun is low in the sky, behind the trees. I suppose I could go out and buy a lot of fancy lighting equipment, but so far nature and a white sheet has worked well in this respect.


My camera has a “flower” setting that I use for both orchids and perfumes. It’s a cheap and dirty substitute for a closeup lens. It works fairly well for most things except tiny flowers against a deep background.

The second thing I learned the hard way was that I need a background that isn’t shiny. Velvet would seem like the best possible drape, but if there are any folds at all they catch the light and shine. The top photo was taken against velvet, and you can see light reflecting from a small fold at the left side of the picture. The lower photo was taken against black fleece. I like black fleece for the orchids, since it isn’t reflective. The downside is that it tends to collect bits of debris, but Photoshop is a wonderful cleanup tool for this sort of thing. Nearly all flowers look wonderful against a black background, perfumes not so much. I’m currently trying a couple of different white backgrounds, a gauzy white curtain and a plain white sheet. I think the white sheet is going to be the winner.

There’s not too much I can say about composition, except that it’s something that you achieve through trial and error and trusting your eye. I often prop the orchid plants up in bizarre positions to show off the flowers to the best advantage and get the right mug shot. I drape their ugly plastic pots with black fleece. Perfumes are a little easier, since they’re not odd-shaped, sprawling about, or jiggling in the slightest breeze. I usually take a dozen shots of everything, in slightly different positions and from slightly different angles, in order to get the best possible shot. Cropping is my friend.

Photography, like everything else, is a continual learning process. As I work to get my perfumes documented for the website, I’m sure I’ll learn more about photographing that sort of still life composition and will share any interesting insights that I have.

RED CATTLEYA

I thought it would be good to start today's post with a little bit of information about the orchid whose photo is shown in yesterday's post. One of my favorite hybrid orchids is Laeliocattleya Netrasiri. This plant is not much to look at in the summer, just a bunch of big, sprawling, succulent stems and leaves, but it miraculously bursts into bloom every year around the winter solstice with a profusion of velvety dark red flowers that are intensely fragrant. There is nothing better than these flowers to brighten up the dark, cold, rainy days of a Pacific Northwest winter. Goodbye, seasonal affective disorder! Hello tropical jungle!

Cattleya orchids are the kind that used to be used for the orchid corsages that were popular in the early to mid 20th century. Most of the orchids grown for corsage flowers were lavender or white, but cattleyas come in every imaginable color. Because they are pollinated by day-flying bees and butterflies, they are not only colorful, but emit wonderful fragrances that are strongest in the early part of the day. A few will switch to a totally different scent at night, but that’s a story for another time.

Red Cattleya was the second orchid fragrance that I attempted to formulate. The first orchid fragrance that I made was fairly simple, so I thought the scent of Red Cattleya would be just as easy to duplicate. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Most cattleyas have a characteristic soft, moist, floral, slightly fruity fragrance, but it is extremely elusive. It took many attempts to produce something that resembled the actual flower and was also wearable as a perfume. When I finally had a formula that seemed close, I considered it a major triumph. An especially nice feature of the formula that I finally came up with is that it works equally well in perfume or soap.

In terms of the scent, Red Cattleya has been described by those who have tried it as like walking into a hothouse packed with the most exotic orchid species, originally brought back by explorers from jungles all over the world. The blooming cattleyas envelop you with a cloud of soft, sumptuous fruity-floral fragrance that is incredibly sexy. The perfume notes include citrus, spices, peach, apricot, hyacinth, gardenia, violets and lilac. At the base is a dark current of musk, exotic woods and vanilla. This perfume was released for local sale in December 2009, and will be one of the signature Orchid Scents available on the website.

Watch for the upcoming orchid fragrance contest and post a comment for a chance to win a Red Cattleya gift set!

It has to start somewhere!

Ever since I can remember I’ve been fascinated by smells - the smell of the house we lived in when I was a toddler, the smell of flowers and plants in the garden, the smell of things cooking, the smells of people with and without perfume, the smell of rain or the ocean, stones, wax crayons - anything and everything that had an odor. Once I was old enough to buy things for myself, I gradually amassed a huge collection of essential oils and whatever mainstream perfume minis were available in the shops that sold them. At that point I was more interested in opening them and sniffing them than actually wearing them.

Despite this obsession with sniffing things, my path to perfumery was not direct. In fact, it was a completely different interest that led me to it. I grow orchids commercially, selling them at local shows and through an online nursery business, Olympic Orchids. In the process of taking care of the orchids, I noticed that when they bloomed, the different varieties had completely different fragrances, and realized that they might make wonderful perfumes unlike any others that are on the market.

At first I experimented just for myself, using the essential oils that I had in my collection to try to recreate the different fragrances. It quickly became apparent that essential oils alone are not sufficient to accurately duplicate flower scents, so I started selectively tweaking with absolutes, infusions, tinctures, and synthetics to get the effects that I wanted. Once I came close, I realized that the scent of an orchid is being constantly renewed with top notes secreted by the flower, something that cannot happen in a perfume that’s only applied once and allowed to evaporate. This meant that I had to adapt the orchids’ scents to create perfumes with a traditional top, middle and base note structure. It’s been a long process of experimentation and learning, but I now have a basic set of orchid-inspired perfumes as well as a good many others. My general philosophy is to use natural materials whenever possible, resorting to synthetics only when nothing else will work.

It’s exciting to write the first post for my blog, and look forward to posting on a near-daily basis.