Perfume - A Man's Armor

Once in conversation a friend expressed the opinion that, in the business world, a man's suit was his armor. With his suit on a man takes on the world, just as the knights of old wore armor to do battle. I had never seen men's suits in this light (my father bought and sold men's suits for a living) but I was fascinated by my friend's thought. The idea that we do things in the morning before we leave the house to brace ourselves for the tricky tides and currents we may confront during the day.

This thought about girding ourselves in armor before heading to the office came back to me the other day but it wasn't men's suits I was thinking of, it was a men's fragrance called Toxic.

I created Toxic for sensory stimulation alone, not for seduction or office appropriate. Once the initial exposure has been absorbed, women tolerate it; men say grows on them. But perhaps because I've never warmed to the big brands of men's colognes, I find Toxic quite pleasant and, as I said, it provides sensory stimulation.

But I was noticing that on days when I really want a boost I find myself reaching for Toxic in the morning, long before my first cup of coffee. Toxic seems to set me up for the day and I think I'm using it in the same way my friend saw men using suits -- as armor, protection, a psychological tool in physical form, a preparation to do battle.

The funny thing about the composition of Toxic is that, with the exception of one essential oil (which gives it it's unique quality), the rest of the ingredients would more likely be found in a woman's perfume than in a man's cologne. Perhaps that's why it agrees with me. I do love perfume on women. Once your nose sorts out the smell a bit, Topic is richer and more complex than what so many men slap on in the morning to please their women (and bomb out their co-workers!) But I can picture Toxic on Wall Street, just as I can picture it on a ragged poet. Of course there are a lot of in between situations where a whiff of Toxic would stir many feathers.

What do we mean by "good" perfume?

My wife and I were at a wine tasting in California and our hostess gave this definition of "good" wine. "Good wine is wine you like."

Yes, it's as simple as that. Good perfume is perfume you like.

But why then would Edmond Roudnitska spend all those years creating but a handful of perfumes? Why would he write about perfume so passionately?

The answer, obvious to thoughtful people, is that there are levels of taste and what defines "good" for the person at one level can be quite different that what defines "good" for the person at another.

We tend to think of these levels having a hierarchy. The more we know about the subject, the more sophisticated we become, the "higher" we regard our level of taste. People who see themselves at the "higher" level tend to dictate the rules of aesthetics. It's our human vanity.

I have on my desk an 8-1/2 inch high metal fabrication. I am convinced that some would regard it as an artwork and strive to discover its meaning. Indeed, it sits on my desk because I personally take inspiration from it through a sort of zen contemplation. I've even adopted the view that it's creator really is an artist and I hope to acquire additional pieces from him when they are available.

Yet I know the origin of this piece. I know that it was "created" not through purpose or design but rather through three days of arc welding lessons graciously given to a neophyte who just wanted to learn to weld. Perhaps its a little like "art" produced by an elephant with a paint brush. The result might be beautiful and through provoking but that doesn't make the elephant an artist.

I came across a blog entry recently posted by Angela stating "Good perfume, like good wine, isn't easy to love." I had made some similar comments in my Perfume Maker's Club Newsletter ( #71, January 31, 2011.) What we were both writing about was the training that defines "good." Angela's point, in which I am in agreement, is that the "good" is recognized because the nose (actually the brain) has been trained to recognize and celebrate the qualities that, to experts, represent the good.

But I've also taken (lightly perhaps) the point of view that this training is (at least for some so-called perfumistas) is simply Pavlovian. They have been trained to bark when they detect certain qualities -- the very qualities they've been trained to detect. The judgment of "good" is not their independent judgment. It's simply a response to their training.

Good perfume is perfume you like. End of story.

But look now, if you accept to some degree my Pavlovian analogy, what happens to a new and UNIQUE perfume by some unknown perfumer that falls outside the parameters of what perfume appreciation training has identified as "good"?

This new and unique perfume would have as much chance of being called "good" as would Van Gogh's paintings by the Academie. I once showed a sample of Toxic to an IFF veteran and he gave me a very strange look.

Like any art form, it's hard to approach perfume with a truly open mind. We rely heavily on our education. But, only by trying to approach perfume with an open mine and, perhaps, thinking less about what is good and what is not good and instead asking our minds -- our brains -- whether the scent is INTERESTING ... whether it can PROVOKE ... whether it can STIMULATE the mind and the imagination of the person wearing it ... whether it can do all this AND be beautiful ... only then can we begin a really deep discussion about the virtues of perfume.

Why should anyone want perfume?

Perfume gives pleasure. It's as simple as that.

It gives pleasure to the woman who wears it. It gives pleasure to those who pass her by -- or stop.

Sometimes we make too much of perfume. We demand excellence in the graphics and packaging. The bottle's shape must be pleasing (even though it's just paper and glass and has no scent itself!) The brand and associations, the company or the personality, the advertising and "perfume reviews." It all gets into our head and we THINK. But perfume wasn't made for thinking. In thinking we lose the pleasure.

Try it. Make a Zen exercise out of it. Study the perfume alone.

Use it. On a smelling strip perhaps. And then forget it. Until the scent makes itself know, after you had forgotten it was there.

Then you're smelling the perfume. The perfume alone, and it gives pleasure.

Is it pineapple?

I'm working on a fragrance for men. It has passed the first test; several people liked it. So now my job is to refine it so that lots of people like it and many people love it, love it enough to buy it. But that's not my story today.

My story today is about how we smell and what we recognize, or fail to recognize, in an odor. In my new fragrance for men I wanted to add a “fruit” note. This would be an experiment for me. The idea had been suggested by a friend. But I wasn't making a bubble gum perfume for little kids. I wanted a note that would work with adult males and find favor with their wives or lovers.

Going through my inventory of “fruity” aroma materials I found myself rejecting one after another. This was too obvious. That didn't smell quite right. Finally I found one that had promise, an aroma material I had not worked with before.

So what does this note smell like? My own instant reaction was “pineapple.” But when I shared this view with a few others who had smelled my trials they were puzzled by this description. Apparently it didn't say “pineapple” to them.

This gave me pause. Was I smelling pineapple or did the aroma somehow trigger a memory that suggested pineapple? I wasn't sure. So I tried to imagine what a pineapple should smell like. We only buy pineapples a few times a year and working backwards, from the thought of pineapple to the aroma of pineapple didn't work at for me at all. It seems that “pineapple” -- the concept of a pineapple -- didn't trigger any intellectual scent recollections.

Ultimately my curiosity got the better of me and I went to several fragrance house catalogs to see how they described this aroma material. I was startled by what I found. One after another they all described it's odor as “pineapple.”

Now this response I had tells me something of the nature of perfume. Perfume -- aroma -- scent -- can penetrate the brain lightening fast ... faster than the brain can reason. Scientists explain that how scent is one of our most immediate reactions. My “pineapple” note was proof of that to me.

And this reaction -- this way the brain has of seizing on a scent and responding to it without thinking ... flashing “P I N E A P P L E” in big letters for me instantly in a way that I couldn't explain -- shows the power of perfume ... the power to get inside someone's head with scent. The reaction is immediate and unreasoning.

The perfumer's challenge is to find the notes to unlock memories -- memories so strong, so immediate, that before the person can think, the scent says “You want me! You must have me. Buy me now!” It's all that simple.

What should a men's fragrance smell like?

If you were a perfumer working for a large fragrance house, you would know exactly what a men's fragrance should smell like. It should smell like something that women -- and men -- expect it to smell like. It should have a familiar smell that says, "men's cologne," to both women and men. How do we know what smell says "men's cologne" to both women and men? We simply look, for reference, to the hundreds of men's colognes that have already -- over the past 200 years -- been put on the market. Today they define what a men's cologne -- and all men's fragrances -- should smell like.

It wasn't always that simple. There was a time when a perfumer could create what he thought was a men's fragrance only to discover that it sold very poorly to men but was fast becoming a favorite with women. I'm thinking of Aime Guerlain's Jicky (1889).

On the other hand, Coty's Chypre (1917) was a woman's fragrance. Yet from it arose a modern, highly popular style, of colognes for men.

Today it is unlikely that any new, mass market intended fragrance for men will take us in a radical direction. Yet where is it written in stone that men must smell of citrus (bergamot), lavender, or oakmoss? It's simply what we have come to accept; what we are used to.

But suppo9se a perfumer tries something different and creates a Blackberry or a Toxic? How would Michael Edwards categorize these? will it take men 40 years to adjust their smell prejudices before these become a new, accepted, men's fragrance styles?

A Tale of Two Women

As I was slapping some Toxic on the other morning, my wife "admitted" that originally she had not cared much for Toxic but her feelings toward it were changing. "It grows on you," was her comment. I've long felt the same way. The more I encounter it, the more I enjoy it. As I've said before, it's like a work of modern art that starts out as a scandal but, with time, become mainstream, perhaps even classic.

Yesterday I learned that my wife wasn't the only women who has found that both Toxic and Blackberry can grow on you. I received an email from a customer I had recently met face-to-face at our 2010 5-Day Perfumery Workshop with Steve Dowthwaite. This customer had used both Toxic and Blackberry and, when we met face to face, made some funny passing mention of them. But then, in our email conversation after the workshop, he told me that he did use them and that his wife was finding that "they grew on her."

Two women don't make up a mass movement. I'm not holding my breath waiting for Coty, Estee Lauder, or Elizabeth Arden to come begging me to let them market my men's fragrances. But I do believe there is a future for men's fragrances that lies outside the parameters of what is currently accepted.

After all, shouldn't a men's fragrance be interesting? Shouldn't it stimulate the imagination? Shouldn't we strive for more than just "meat and potatoes" fragrances, even for men?

What if, in striving and creating, our creations for men are a little out of sync with our times? So we make a little less money. It's vanity perhaps but I like to think of Toxic and Blackberry as being ahead of out times ... but not so far ahead that some bold men will not take the trouble to enjoy them.

Perfume as Art :: Perfume as Commerce

I am sometimes torn trying to pull myself away from developing perfumes of my own and concentrate on BUSINESS, looking over my (many) resources and focusing on putting them to work to MAKE MONEY.

The great majority of people in the fragrance industry are focused on MAKING MONEY. This is a JOB for them and they go to work to bring home the bacon.

But perfume creation itself is, or can be, an ART. And those who are artists with smells follow their inner muse regardless. WHAT they create is of more importance to them than what they GAIN through their creations. Some, most likely, have never made enough money in the SALES of their perfumes to pay the cost of the raw materials that went into developing these fragrances. They hardly notice.

In both worlds there are the extreme personalities -- those who are so focused on commerce -- or on art -- that they can't appreciate or relate to those on the other side of the fence. But when you take a closer look at MOST of the people on either side -- art or commerce -- you'll find that they aren't so enclosed in their own worlds as you might think. The "artist" perfumers, for the most part, understand the need for money. Without it they can't pursue their love of perfume making. And the "nicest" money for many would be money from the sale of their own fragrances. This money is (or would be) more than just utilitarian. This money is the public's vote of appreciation for their fragrance creations.

On the commerce side, most of the successful men and women in the business are successful because of their love for fragrance. They are people with taste who know the difference between the great and the mundane.

But the crossed relationships go farther. The commercial side DEVELOPS cool new aroma chemicals, aroma chemicals that open doors for creating beautiful new fragrances, fragrances unlike anything the world has seen (smelled!) before.

On the commercial side these aroma chemicals get USED, they get out in the world and thus they INSPIRE the artist-perfumer to think in new directions and, where possible, acquire some of these new materials to make use of them in his or her own ARTISTIC fragrances.

Likewise the artist perfumer is often inspired by the MARKETING ideas developed by the commercial people. Some of these ideas can be morphed into marketing tools for the smaller companies and individuals. Artists are not stupid people.

And of course we see the reverse. People in the commercial world feed off ideas developed in the artist world. After all, ultimately we are all presenting our products to the same great public.

Buy by the box

What are we buying when we buy perfume? An image, a vision of what it will do for us. A box, the attractive packaging that surrounds it. A scent, the fragrance itself. What are our priorities?

There was a time, when markets were smaller and a company's own name meant something, that one bottle design might be used for one scent after another. The bottle, by its shape and design, helped identify the source -- the company behind the fragrance -- and brought credibility to the fragrance itself.

I was reading a designer interview in a fashion magazine the other day. I won't mention the designer's name as a friend works for that person. But the designer, late in the game, had launched a fragrance for the house and spoke of it with great pride. Its creation was, of course, shepherded by the designer.

But also of course the fragrance itself was created for the designer by a well known (in the fragrance industry) perfumer working for one of the top five international fragrance giants. This is how designers get "their" fragrances. While they can create the graphics for the box and suggest the graphics for the bottle (although this is usually done by bottle designers), there is nothing they can do to "design" the fragrance except attempt to describe, in words, what they think they want and then to say "yes," "no," or "maybe" to the samples that are presented to them and perhaps, in words again, suggest modifications. "Designing" a fragrance is a matter of aroma chemistry, of mixing molecules, of sniffing and balancing one chemical ingredient against another. It is not a graphic or visual process.


Now look at the buying decision again. Clearly the first step is to be attracted by the star power of the designer. If you've never heard the name, the fragrance becomes just one more out of dozens of new fragrances competing with a hundred plus older fragrances. So being attracted by the name is point number one.

Next, before sampling the fragrance, you see the box. The more interesting the packaging, the more favorably disposed you are toward this new fragrance before you've had a chance to smell it.

Now smelling the fragrance would be the logical next step, IF you are already attracted by the designer's name and the fragrance's packaging. And at this point we hit a stumbling point. Is a sampler bottle available? If it is, is it clearly marked so that you can be sure that what you are spraying is in fact your designer's perfume? I've noticed at perfume counters that bottles are often unmarked and not at all in the shapes of the standard bottles for the fragrances they represent -- probably to prevent theft.

Finally we look to see if there is a test blotter we can spray in case both our wrists have already been sprayed with a competitors' offerings. Here, quite frequently, if we do find a test blotter, it will be labeled for a competitor's perfume.

Now that we have gotten all this out of the way we try the scent -- the perfume itself. But can the scent -- will the scent -- drive us to open our wallets and withdraw the all important credit card and make the purchase ... while the sales person, if she hasn't yet rushed off already, is still be trying to sway us toward another perfume that she has been encouraged to promote.

Do you see by now that it's not the scent that is making the sale? The scent merely tips us to pay or not to pay but the tipping point has been reached by other means.

Every so often a perfume does hit the market that is so compelling that we have to sample it and are likely to buy, by the reputation of the fragrance itself. It happens perhaps once in five years. Or maybe once in twenty.