WHERE TO BEGIN?

Where to begin? It’s been so long since I really had time to post anything here that I’ve kind of lost my place and need to start over again from scratch.

The academic year is over, my grades were turned in yesterday, and the summer can now officially begin. June has been its usual cold, damp, grey self, with lots of clouds but not much rain. For two weeks it constantly looked like it was about to rain but never really did, so I have to water the bonsai trees and other outdoor plants that would dry out and die if left unsupervised. Some people claim to suffer from “seasonal affective disorder” in the winter when the days are very short, but I don’t mind that so much. What I find depressing is when the summer solstice comes, I know the days will start getting shorter again, and it’s still cloudy, damp, and cold. The real summer doesn’t usually start here until the first week of July.

Today was sunny, with little probability of any rain in the near future. We’re having the exterior of our house painted, and yesterday was the beginning of the big event. I spent the day inside, with plastic sheets taped over the windows as they spray-painted the walls – by far the most efficient way to paint a house, I’ve learned. The painters have been trampling around all over the vegetation near the house, but I have decided to close my eyes and block it from my mind while they’re here and evaluate the damage once they’re gone.

The next four days on my calendar are perfectly clear, so I’m going to use them to finish up some writing projects that I’ve been working on, go running for the first time in months, and actually start working on some new perfumes – the ultimate treat.

FRAGments in LA was a wonderful experience. Maggie Mahboubian did a fantastic job organizing it. It was less than 2 weeks ago, but after being back in Seattle, it seems like it’s in the remote past. There’s something about scrambling to get caught up on shipping orders and grading students’ papers that wipes the brain clean of everything else.

FRAGments took place in a designer’s studio, sort of an industrial space with tool benches (or workbenches) that were fitted out with small stands for the perfumers. I tend to always bring too much to a show, so Maggie’s limiting each of us to 5 fragrances was a smart move on her part and really made me appreciate the value of keeping things simple. The venue was crowded almost all day, with people even dropping in as they randomly walked by on the street. As always, it was great to see familiar faces and meet new people. Next month it’s San Francisco, for an event at Tigerlily Perfumery on the evening of July 17.

Even if it's not particularly inspired, it feels good to write a blog post again!

[Top photo from Wikimedia, but near where I live. It perfectly expresses the typical June atmosphere. Others are mine.]

LUXURY - WHY BOTHER?

I've been so busy with my multiple other lives that it's been near-impossible to post regularly this spring. However, today I'm featuring a guest post by my friend Gail, who blogs throughout the perfume world under the name AZAR. Here's what she has to say:

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Oscar de la Renta's series of fragrances entitled the "Essential Luxuries Collection" is available exclusively at Macy's.  I have sampled the entire line, found them all rather pleasant, and promptly forgotten what they smell like. But the name of the series keeps returning to my mind.  There is something disturbing about the slogan and the faux exclusivity that goes beyond the simple-minded dichotomy of the advertising message, reflecting social values and conjuring up images of starving French peasants and aristocratic parasites stuffing themselves with cake. The idea of "Essential Luxuries" has prompted me to reflect on my own obsession with fragrance, the nature of what society perceives as luxury and with issues of morality, economics and social justice.

Pondering "Essential Luxuries" led me to the new perfumes from "Nomad". Their website "NomadTwoWorlds" proclaims that they have discovered "Meaningful Luxury" and are proud to announce that "We partner with indigenous and marginalized artists and communities around the world to bring you culturally inspired products and art” WOW!  A gold mine! A politically correct and at the same time sustainable form of exploitation!

Nomad Two Worlds is pulling out all the stops for this venture, contracting the nose of world renowned perfumer Harry Fremont, the power of the Clinton Global Initiative, and every bit of market research they can muster "to assist in the commercialization of novel ingredients and to champion and showcase these ingredients to our consumer market…" no doubt with the helping hand and bankroll of Firminich, their proclaimed partner.  Is this the kind of green luxury that has a purpose (other than making money) or luxury that I can feel good about?  Nomad's marketing not only packs the insider/outsider - I am better that you are - punch but also brings in the perceived value of precious obscurity utilizing current trends in green product marketing.  How can I possibly trust Nomad's intentions when all they appear to be doing is resurrecting a business model from the days of empire? [see Ellen's footnote]

Vladas Griskevicius of the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management has this to say: "Green purchases are often motivated by status…Many green purchases are rooted in the evolutionary idea of competitive altruism, the notion that people compete for status by trying to appear more altruistic." Unfortunately this competitive altruism in the purchase of "Meaningful Luxury" seems no more than a ploy to use our own insecurities against the very people we mean to support.

So why does the advertising slogan "Essential Luxuries" in reference to perfume bother me so much? Is there some residual guilt about owning something as "useless" as a lovely scent?  Is it that I see relatively expensive fragrances giving some consumers the illusion that their noses are more refined than the snouts of the rabble who buy and use celebrity frags? Does over-priced perfume work like an invisible shield keeping inferior noses (now which noses are those?) at an intellectual distance and, like the understated logo on a $3000.00 handbag, help the beautiful people recognize one other?

Ranting usually helps me clarify my thoughts.  I know that I don't buy many of the so-called luxury items simply because I can't afford their embarrassing prices and because I don't need these possessions as a logo, a shield or a validation of my humanity.  Expensive clutter and overpriced experiences are not essential to a beautiful life.  I am old and I see the real essential luxury as simply the time to enjoy my life, comfortably, without excess, free from worry about money, status, power, style, schedules, timelines and manufactured responsibilities.

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[Ellen’s Footnote: Besides the issues mentioned by Azar, I find that a big turn-off with Nomad’s PR approach is their use of a Scandinavian-looking model in various conditions of semi-nudity and being smeared with dirt, apparently suggesting that the people they are helping are naked, dirty savages, but that hiring a blonde, blue-eyed model to play their role somehow helps those with the money relate to them. Nomad is by no means the first company to play the “feel-good and help the noble savage” card, a rationalization that has been used for all manner of purposes throughout the history of colonialism. A few years ago DKNY boasted that their “Pure” perfume contained “one drop of vanilla” sourced from poor farmers in Uganda. The significance of a single drop was hard to figure out, but it probably was truth in advertising masquerading as extreme rarity and exoticism, while at the same time promoting feelings of superiority and altruism and, of course making money for DKNY. At least the Oscar de la Renta campaign is bland and inoffensive, and doesn't make any pretense of being a charity operation.]

[Photos taken from various commercial websites] 

FRAGRANCE IN SEATTLE

This report is very late, but that’s what happens when you try to juggle four or five jobs at once.

The day of the Second Annual Seattle Artisan Fragrance Salon on May 4 wasn’t especially promising as everyone braved the cold and pouring rain to load in their exhibits. Once inside, though, the perfumers had a cozy spot in the space that everyone had to walk through on their way to and from the chocolate salon, which was concurrent with the fragrance salon, making for a lively day.

Traffic was nearly constant from opening to closing, with a mix of familiar and new faces from the perfumista community, familiar customers that I had an opportunity to meet in person for the first time, and many chocolate fans, most of whom were open to experiencing and learning about perfume. Just as I expected, Sakura was a hands-down favorite among the entry-level crowd, so I sold out before the day was over.

Stacey Gilbert provided expert help at my table, so I actually got to take a few minutes and check out some of the other exhibitors and trade samples with them. Here are a few photos I managed to snap on my phone.

Jen Siems of Sweet Tea Apothecary.

Karyn Gold-Reineke of Pirouette 

Kenneth Cory of On the Nose Fragrances

Rosarium Blends

The fact that we now have an annual fragrance event in Seattle underscores the emergence of the Pacific Northwest as a center for innovation in perfume.  I look forward to many more such events in future.

[All photos are mine except for the beautiful photo of Sakura, which was taken by Virginia Blanco for her blog Té de Violetas]. 

CATCHING UP

It’s been so long since I posted that I can’t even remember when the last time was. In any case, a lot has happened since then, so I’ll just do a quick summary to bring readers back up to speed, assuming there are any readers left!

I was in LA this past weekend, to attend the Institute for Art and Olfaction Awards event. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t disappointed that Blackbird wasn’t the ultimate winner, but realize that beyond the point of a perfume being competently made, all judgments are completely arbitrary and determined by many factors including personal taste. It was great to be a finalist, and I enjoyed meeting Saskia Wilson-Brown (green dress in photo at left) and others associated with the Institute, seeing fellow perfumers and getting to know them better, and enjoying sunny LA for a couple of days.

The Seattle Artisan Fragrance Salon is coming up this weekend, on May 4. If you’re in the Seattle area, please consider stopping by and checking it out. As last year, it’s in tandem with the Artisan Chocolate Salon, so you not only get to smell perfumes, you get to sample all kinds of chocolate. My plan is to do random drawings for 5-ml size perfumes and the blooming orchid plants that I use as props at my table, just as I did last year (photo at right).

At the Seattle salon I will be officially launching my two new fragrances, African Orchid and Sakura. They’re listed for pre-order on my old website orchidscents.com, but for some reason I can’t log on to my Shopify site to do anything. There’s an excellent review of them here, so no need to go into details myself. John Reasinger has said it better than I could have.  

The boxes for the 30 ml size of the new fragrances arrived on Thursday of last week, and the 30 ml bottles should be ready in time for the Seattle show. It will be down to the wire, but I’m still optimistic that it will happen.

My supplier of 100 ml bottles has not had them in stock for months now, and they tell me that it will be “several months” until they have them again. In the meantime, I only have 6 fragrances in the 100 ml size, but boxes for many more of them, and am frustrated that I can’t move forward with introducing this size to the whole line.

Salamanca is coming back by popular demand. I finally found a supplier of the mitti-vetiver co-distillation that I use in it. The material is fairly close in scent to the original one that I had, and the supplier is easy to deal with, especially for a company in India. A half-kilo of the stuff arrived on Thursday, so within a month or two, Salamanca will reappear in my online store.

I am planning to go to the second annual FRAGments show in LA on June 7, so if you’re in the LA area, you should definitely come check it out. It’s in a designer’s studio, entry is free, and there will be some sort of multi-media art installations and refreshments. It sounds like a fabulous time! Many thanks to Maggie Mahaboubian of Parfums Lalun for organizing it. Perfumery on the US West Coast is exploding with new growth as perfumers make their mark on the scene and events like this become more common.

As my (non-perfumery) book project nears completion, I hope I will have more time to write posts for the blog. My goal is to have at least one or two a week, more if I can. We’ll see. 

[All photos are mine]