Some new things are immediately, obviously useful, some reveal their brilliance in time (e.g. many Apple devices in my experience). A month ago I posted about Ponk, a subscription service that sends themed perfumery raw material samples by mail. They kindly sent more. This time the Module 5 collection of small samples, as ever beautifully packaged, was of woody-ambers, which have seen an extraordinary arms race in recent years. With a smell […]
This post is about good sound, how wonderful it is (as good as good perfume, I think), how everyone can appreciate it —the look on my 3-yr old daughter’s face when she first heard it said everything. It makes a huge difference and you don’t have to spend a crazy amount of money to get it. So 1- Forget loudspeakers. The cost of good sound is exponentially related to power, therefore 2- Use […]
When smelling Hiram Green’s Shangri-La I was struck by the powerful note of gamma-undecalactone , a molecule first introduced in perfumery in 1908 by its discoverers, Russian chemists Zhukov and Shestakov. Hiram Green describes his fragrances as all-natural, so I wrote to ask what this archetypal synthetic was doing in there. He kindly explained that this was EU Natural undecalactone. A little searching revealed that EU Naturals are defined as molecules that “must have been […]
Christophe Laudamiel, in my opinion the greatest inventor of novel perfume structures working today, will be giving a talk at the PerfumeSchool in New York on July 27. The subject will be the Osmothèque collection of painstakingly reconstituted marvels from perfumery’s past. I’ve heard Christophe give lectures: passion, brilliance and fun in equal parts. Plus you’ll get to smell some of the oldies. Pic credit
Blogger Kafkaesque expressed dismay at the fact that I was handing out four stars to fragrances which cannot stand comparison with the four stars in the Perfume Guide. Let me explain. 1- I am doing a little affirmative action here for artisan and niche perfumers who mostly do not have access to the huge technical resources of mainstream perfumery. 2- The name of my blog constrained me somewhat because I […]
Today I cracked and ordered online something I thought I’d never live to see: Rondini sandals. Rondini is a small shop situated Rue Georges Clémenceau in Saint-Tropez, where my parents used to go on holidays when I was a kid. There are two sandal makers in St Tropez, Rondini (est. 1927) and Keklikian (est. 1933). The differences between them are millimetric, but to the trained eye Keklikian sandals are beautiful, […]
I got a mysterious little box this morning from an outfit called Ponk. It said Module 4 on it and contained five carefully wrapped, numbered little phials, well-sealed with what felt like Teflon tape, and a square envelope that said “The Reveal Inside.” I naturally opened it, whereupon it turned out the phials contained five raw materials. Aphermate (1-(3,3-dimethyl cyclohexyl) ethyl formate, see pic), an unusual ester of formic acid that smells typically […]
Yesterday I finally got the first notice of payment for the ads that had been turned on some time back. It turns out the payment per view is $ 0.0015. I find the whole thing lacking in transparency and in any event consider the income not worth the ugliness. I’ll turn them back on if one day I officially become, to paraphrase William Safire, the Prime Prattling Panjandrum of Perfume Positivism, with an audience […]
It’s been alarmingly hot these last few days in Athens, last Fri on the way back from work my scooter was showing an ambient 43C near the airport, soon after this pic was taken. Impossible in this heat to drink red wine or smell perfumes: everything smells like it’s falling apart and wilting. More soon, global warming permitting. Update: Btw, the sand on my scooter comes all the way from […]
Some years ago I got an email from a not-very-bright Art History professor in a Boston university, asking me to join a Panel on Olfactory Art at a gathering of his tribe. He casually remarked that “there is nearly no consciousness of using smell in art– several one-off works, sure, but no sustained practices that I know of.” I reminded him of the sustained practice of perfumery, to which his reply was “Sure, perfumers are artists […]
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