Episode 3 of St Patrick's Avenue ~ only on PerfumeCritic.com

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Episode 3 of St Patrick's Avenue.

The Demise of Frankincense.

It is just an ordinary Sunday morning for Cassie.

She never really looks forward to her stoic visits to her father, but it's the only day she is permitted to see the old man at all and so she has learned to make the most of it. Her father is able bodied enough but he employs a home help who comes in three times a week to do his shopping, washing and cleaning....

Read on

The Emperors New Perfumes

Remember that story of "The Emperors New Clothes" by Hans Christian Anderson? The two tailors said about their work, "we are two very good tailors and after many years of research we have invented an extraordinary method to weave a cloth so light and fine that it looks invisible. As a matter of fact it is invisible to anyone who is too stupid and incompetent to appreciate its quality."

When they were finished their work they said, "we're almost finished, but we need a lot more gold thread. Here, Excellency! Admire the colors, feel the softness!"

The Prime Minister was afraid to look stupid so he agreed that the cloth was everything the tailors said. But to himself he thought "I can't see anything, if I see nothing, that means I'm stupid! Or, worse, incompetent!" If the prime minister admitted that he didn't see anything, he would be discharged from his office.

As a novice natural perfumer I fell into that same trap that the Prime Minister fell into.

To cut a long story short, I have a nose, I smell a perfume, I either like it or I don't, but I know if it's a good perfume. Take Mandy Aftel's Perfumes for instance, most of them I adore, they are good perfumes. She is a brilliant perfumer and she is successful because she makes amazing perfumes.

But there is a "certain perfumers" natural blends which made me recoil the first time I smelled them. I let my friends and neighbors smell them, they too recoiled. I let my husband smell them and he warned me never to wear them. One of the perfumes got a unanimous "it smells like the toilet cleaner they use in our school" from a group of teenagers (interestingly they were each of them alone when they smelled it and each one said exactly the same thing- and they all attended the same school! ) They are familiar with what natural perfumes smell like and love most of the ones I have from the Aftelier range (I have over 12 of Mandy's perfumes in samples) and the gorgeous perfumes I have from Strange Invisible Perfumes. One woman I was creating a solid perfume for smelled a bunch of the samples I had. She adored Pink Lotus by Aftelier and Lyric Rain by SIP but she recoiled when she smelled this "certain perfumers" blends, all 4 of of them. She said "they smell as if something is gone off."

I had similar thoughts, but like the Prime Minister in the story I felt that I would look ignorant of real artisan natural perfumes if I said, "hey, these ARE pure shite" so I waffled on about them, ad nauseum. I said how they were SO this and SO that.

I could go back now and write something different about them, taking back what I had originally said (the waffle, the praise, the testimonials). But I think it is far more fitting to call a spade a spade and say, at least I only said they were good, I think I even said I found one of them healing because that's what the 'certain perfumer' told me it was supposed to be, but I never actually wore any out in public, God forbid. Somebody might think I worked as a janitor for a living or that I had been staying with crusty hippies for a few months helping to milk the goats.

So what's the point? Let's smell what we are actually smelling, the bottom line is perfumes are supposed to make you smell good. If they don't then they aren't perfumes.
As an old wizard once said "if in doubt follow your nose".

Over the learning curve

Funny what kids teach us. I have a 6 year old son who is learning how to draw. He is very intent on learning and sometimes he gets frustrated because he can't draw what he wants, how he wants. I remember being advised by a very good art teacher to "draw what I see and not what I think I see". I relayed that message to my son and set him up with some exercises to help him practice. He knows he has to make mistakes so that he can learn. So, he was drawing Spiderman and he was doing a very good job as he had beside him a print-out of Spiderman that he could look at.

"Draw what you see", I kept thinking it and then later on I took that idea into my studio. Yesterday evening I was at the rough end of a learning curve and I was feeling frustrated. I needed to look at the art of natural perfumery differently if I was going to move up to the next level. So "Make what I smell, not what I think I smell?" how might that work? I suppose I could take a perfume, smell it and try and copy it...but I didn't want to do that.

Then, I thought again of my son and what he might do if he didn't have a print out of spiderman to copy. He would look for something that might inspire him. He might look for a theme. I would think of a theme, so I thought SPRING THEME. Then I began to build up a picture in my head and on paper of a spring theme. The daffodils, the primroses, the tulips, the frogs laying eggs in the pond, fresh breeze's and cool earthy smells of new growth.
I began to look at my organ then & I chose the following essences: Alpine Cedarwood, Rosemary, and Glabanum, jasmine, ylang ylang and nutmeg, vetivert oakmoss and french tarragon absolute.
The result was startling. I can see the mistakes in probably the same way as my six year old can spot how his version of Spiderman is not identical to the print-out version. I can smell how what I have made is a little rough around the edges, a little heavy where it could be lighter, a little sweet where it could be fresher. But now I have an understanding and a measure of where it is going and what it's going to be like when it gets there.

As a side note: When I was choosing the essences, some were like old friends to me. I knew their make up and how they were going to react with the others. The ones I didn't know so well were the: galbanum, the tarragon absolute and the rosemary. My next step is getting to know these ones better.