MATERIALS ARE NOT EVERYTHING

The other day I was reading some posts on a perfume-making group that I follow, mostly as an observer, and was struck by a post advertising a new site that plans to sell perfume bases of various kinds. A base is a ready-made accord, for example, a synthetic rose, violet, oud, or leather scent, sort of a single-note perfume on its own. The post not only contains glowing descriptions of the bases that this company plans to sell, but makes it sound as if they’re miracle potions that will turn anyone and everyone into a master perfumer. Here’s a quote:

“This will help many people take the leap from consumer to producer. Also, in the upcoming years, there will be a huge increase in the quality of independent fragrances because of these exquisite bases which will be available to us  … Just imagine what we could accomplish with materials like these! This is the bridge which will eliminate the distinction between amateur and professional perfumes.”

Really? Everyone is going to be a professional perfumer? If everyone is a professional based on someone else’s work, then the only professional is the person who originally formulated the bases.

Now there’s nothing wrong with good-quality bases. I’ve formulated my share of them myself for use in my own creations, and am not averse to using a good commercial one if (and only if) it comes up to my standards and serves my intended purpose. However, the statement that having exceptionally good bases available for purchase will make everyone a great, or even competent, perfumer is kind of like saying that selling an electronic keyboard with synthesized sounds of a Steinway grand piano and Stradivarius violin to people with no musical training or talent will immediately enable them to make beautiful and original music with no study or practice.

Perfume, like music, is an art of composition. In skilled and imaginative hands, the simplest scales, rhythms, and chord progressions can be used to create an infinite number of beautiful, original, and evocative melodies and harmonies; in perfumery the simplest materials can be used to create beautiful, original, and evocative fragrances, but a certain amount of knowledge, skill, inspiration, and feeling for the art is required in ether case.

It may be that the ubiquity of useful and cost-effective commercial bases is one of the factors that already causes so many perfumes to smell so similar. If every musician used the same pre-programmed drum machine sequence and set of melodic samples, there would be a lot of similarity in the resulting compositions.

I suppose the idea expressed in the post is that even an unskilled person can take a beautiful ready-made mixture and use it as their own, but there are already many excellent materials available, including naturals, which are complex accords in their own right. Another implicit point is that having good quality raw materials to start with is essential to having a good finished product – a point in which I am in complete agreement. However, learning how to use raw materials to create something original and compelling is the real trick. That is why I find this post is so puzzling.

After writing this, I realize that it might be fun to start a Wednesday series on raw materials for perfumery, and will try to post on this topic as often as I can.

[Artistic images of "miracle potion" vendors by an anonymous 17th century artist, Rembrandt, and Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo; photographic images from Wikimedia]