What is the Perfume Project?

This blog is a constantly evolving forum for thoughts on perfume, perfume-making, plants (especially orchids and flora of the Pacific Northwest) and life in general. It started out chronicling the adventures of Olympic Orchids Perfumes, established in July 2010, and has expanded in other directions. A big part of the blog is thinking about the ongoing process of learning and experimentation that leads to new perfumes, the exploration of perfumery materials, the theory and practice of perfume making, the challenges of marketing perfumes and other fragrance products, and random observations on philosophy and society. Spam comments will be marked as such and deleted; any comments that go beyond the boundaries of civil discourse will also be deleted. I am grateful to all of you, the readers, who contribute to the blog by commenting and making this a truly interactive perfume project.

Monday, June 19, 2017

THE MONDAY GIVEAWAY: SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT, AND LAST WEEK'S WINNER

The winner of last week's random drawing was

JADA E

To claim your prize, please send your correct and complete shipping address to: olympicorchids at gmail dot com, or leave a PM on the Olympic Orchids Facebook page. If not claimed by Monday, June 26, the goodies will go into the following week's jackpot.

For this week's giveaway, I've got something a little different. Earlier this spring I participated in a really fun event at Tigerlily Perfumery in San Francisco – Skunk Works Weekend. This was an assembly of perfumers from all over the place, from Switzerland (Andy Tauer, who had a meet-and greet the first evening) the Bay Area, and various points along the US West Coast. The second day there was an amazing brunch at a nearby restaurant followed by a perfumers’ general discussion, culminating in Antonia Kohl’s inimitable cocktail-fueled sniff-and-buy event in the evening. I always love visiting San Francisco and Tigerlily.

The event was back in April, but because I’m always running around like  a madwoman, I had not finished unpacking my carry-on bag until yesterday. When I finally emptied it completely, I discovered two nice cloth tote bags with the Skunk Works logo on one side and Tigerlily’s logo on the other. The idea was that the bags would be used in a giveaway, so that’s what I’m going to do, albeit belatedly.

The giveaway is as follows:

Leave a comment about whether you would like to attend a festive event at a brick-and-mortar perfume shop and if so, what features of such an event you would particularly enjoy. There will be two winners of the random drawing.

1) One Skunk Works bag filled with the usual 100 g of random samples plus some other randomly chosen fragrant goodies;

2)  One Skunk Works bag containing three Olympic Orchids 5-ml travel sprays of your choice and one Olympic Orchids soap.

Both of these giveaways are US only due to the bulky nature of the package and the ridiculous cost of international shipping. Apologies to our international readers and friends!

[All photos are mine. The orchids that are blooming today are Promenea paranensis (top) and Phalaenopsis speciosa (bottom), both first-bloom seedlings; neither one is very fragrant, although the Phalaenopsis has a very light greenish scent. The Skunk Works bag pictured is the one you will receive.] 




18 comments:

  1. I would love to attend ANY event at a brick and mortar perfume shop! Love the idea of a vintage sniff event. Historical classes - ingredient / note classes and sniffs - perfume making... All of it!

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    1. Kitty J, I hope we can get all of these sorts of events going in the Seattle area this year. You're in the drawing.

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  2. Well, there is no hope of such an event on my sand dune, ever. My gallery is not at all interested in the olfactory arts, but I will keep at the board, and someday, they may say OK just to quiet me down! I'd love such an event as you describe, and I can see a mixed event with paintings or installations that pair with a perfume, and some aromatic edibles, as well. Plus, a few local poets could write a couple of sonnets to go with the various works, and do a reading while the guests sip their cava or champers! Then some awesome local musicians can jam and people can talk IRL for a change. But that's just me in my fantasy world-- Still, it could happen somewhere....

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    1. Marla, all of your multimedia ideas sound wonderful! You're in the drawing.

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  3. I would love to attend a fragrance event at a brick and mortar shop! I would love to learn about local niche fragrance houses, to sample and learn about the inspiration behind different fragrances. It would be lovely to mingle with fellow fragrance lovers!

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    1. Nelle25, these sorts of events really are fun! You are in the drawing.

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  4. I would love to attend a brick and mortar fragrance event. I would really like to learn more about the "raw ingredients", natural and synthetic, a perfumer uses to create scents. I think I'm getting better at picking out and blending individual notes but I want to learn from the professionals.

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    1. Anne, sometimes you can pick out individual perfume ingredient notes, but other times they blend together to create something very different from the sum of the parts. YOu're in the drawing.

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  5. I'm not big on events but a perfume event is something I would probably crawl out of my hole for. Luckily, there isn't a hope of a decent brick-and-mortar store coming to town so I won't have to face the challenge.

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    1. Liz K, the good thing about online stores as opposed to brick and mortar is that even in your "hole", wherever it is, you can still enjoy so many different types of perfumes. You're in the drawing.

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  6. I'd love to attend an event at a perfume shop! I'm a few hours away from the bay area and I'm always tempted to go to one. This might sound odd but one thing I would like to see is the different formulations a perfumer has created for a fragrance (if that makes sense). I'm so curious about that first concept for a perfume and to see (or smell) how it eventually evolved is fascinating to me.

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    1. Tarena, your question is going to be hard to answer because every perfumer works in a different way and every perfume goes through a different sort of evolution. You are in the drawing.

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  7. I have attended events at fragrance shops and enjoy them very much. Tarena mentioned learning about evolution of a perfume. I attended a workshop where I was able to experience something similar. What was really interesting was smelling the iterations that didn't make the cut and why the perfumer decided on a particular olfactory direction.

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    1. Triniti, often the choice of iterations has little to do with quality, but more with what effect the perfumer wants to create or the effect that the customer wants if it's a bespoke perfume or work made for hire. You're in the drawing.

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  8. I've never been to an olfactory event- the closet I can come is to drive over an hour to reach a mall where I can sniff ever more identical flankers of existing stuff. But there are so many things that could be offered! Vintage (including vintage versus the remade versions of the same scent- how fashion, laws, and scarcity have changed scent through the decades), themes (all musks, all florientals), modern trends, niche versus department store..

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  9. Laurie, you have lots of good suggestions for themes. The mall with all the flankers doesn't sound like it's worth an hour's travel time! You're in the drawing.

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  10. Would love to but prefer an online sale event as well If the event features a discount sale on your wonderful sounding products ( hope to place my first order today but hopelessly deadlocked on choices) even more appealing.

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    1. Rajesh, thank you for your comment and intention to check out Olympic Orchids Perfumes! You're in the drawing.

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