Today, I will continue there where I stopped yesterday: Packing some perfume. The picture to the left gives you an idea how this is done: Take the bottled fragrance, put an inlay into the metal box, put the silver cardboard paper with my signature on top before closing the box, seal it all with the large sticker,add a little lot label and put it all into the cellophane plastic bag. Do all this 24 times and then we have the storage unit of packed perfumes filled: Cardboard boxes, holding 24 units each. In theory I try to have some stock of packed fragrance. I practice I don’t have much stock.

Actually, looking at things: quite an effort, and on the side, quite an expensive effort.  Thus, in a sense, it was a welcome reminder of a couple of things when I got my order from Caldey.

I ordered their lavender eau de toilette and got it yesterday. It is lovely, straightforward, a high quality lavender, very much praised by Luca Turin, and I wanted to get it. Smelling it was quite a strong reminder of my love for lavender. And looking at their packaging reminded me very much that at the end, at the very end, ultimately, all that matters is the juice. At least my nose works like that.

A nice reminder.

On the other hand, an opulent and dramatic  fragrance like Rose chyprée needs some sort of a packaging celebration. Thus, the world is complex, both sides are relevant and true.

So I mixed Incense rosé and Miriam yesterday. Both juices are in a safe guarded place now and mature. After mixing, carrying the two aluminum bottles with me (you see how they look in today’s picture), I realized that I actually carry quite a bit of money with me; my bookkeeper tells me so, too. We got the invoice for the latest raw material order, and I will need to order more in the coming weeks. Although, on a side note, I am shifting slightly my priorities: From availability of perfumes to cash flow. This means that I rather don’t have a fragrance in stock than blowing up my stock and reducing my company cash. This is a lesson I learned last year: We had 100% availability all year of all fragrances. This meant that my stock was always very high and that I had a lot of money blocked in stock. This year, with a couple of investments in mind and a lot of uncertainty about the markets and how the financial crisis will be dripping down, I want to have a bit less stock.

Anyhow. I just wanted to mention this issue on the side, showing you the  multitude of questions that even a very little business brings up.

Thus, the last order consisted of Iso E, Okoumal, Ambroxan, irone alpha, linalool, rose absolute, cardamom oil, Clementine oil, rose oil, ylang oil, and cistus ladaniferus essential oil &extract.

The last natural is a thrilling raw material. I mentioned it yesterday, as it is an essential part of Incense rosé. I use it since years in some of my compositions, among other things you find it in the Air du désert marocain, too. It is rather expensive, around 3000-4000 $US per kilogram. I use a quality of cistus essential oil that is standardized. It is basically the steam distilled essential oil of twigs from Cistus ladaniferus plus a bit extra added for standardization. The standardization is made by adding some of the extract that results as by product /waste in the steam distillation process. Thus, the producer adjusts each batch by adding more or less extract to make sure it smells the same, and the extract adds extra fixation power.

The scent of this raw material: Warm and woody-spicy. Not sweet balsamic like you know it from Labdanum absolute. This essential oil is more on the wild-leathery-spicy side. Very dry and warm, if this makes sense. Actually, if all goes well I will use it later today again, together with cypriol, to test an idea I have since days in my mind but not mixed in a test bottle, yet. But first things first: The travel agency tauer continues booking flights and trains and more. So far I have booked Munich, Rome, Paris, Paris again, and Rome again.  It is going to be a busy spring, a touch too busy.

Welcome to 2012 and welcome to my blog in 2012. The last few days of 2011 saw us looking into the books, counting stocks and looking at numbers. I need the stock to close the books. Although I work in the industry of dreams if you so wish, creating fragrances, little fragrant dreams, at the end of the day, I need to count Francs and Euro and Dollar and see whether I can pay the bills and whether I can afford to move on. Like every year, I need to look deeply into the numbers of 2011 trying to understand what happened and coming up with an idea of where we are right now and where we might go in the first months of 2012.

I look back to a reasonably successful year when it comes to numbers. Not fairy tale numbers, but sufficient in the moment. The outlook for 2012 is blur, however. I am convinced that we all have to get used to the idea that we are walking at the rim of a volcano that is bubbling down there and sends stinky gases up here. If we want we can actually smell them. The march along the rim brings a spectacular view, but we better be careful up there. We will see what 2012 brings in terms of economics and Euro values and trust in a banking system that seems more rotten every month. I am not very optimistic there.

I look back to a 2011 that was the most creative year I ever had in my entire life. 2012 will demand answers where to go with this creative venture of mine and how to add more  threads into the Tauer fabric. Not an easy task. The Tauer fabric is already very dense and complex. 2012 will start with a lot of meetings and writing up of  ideas, trying to imagine how my venture might look in a year or two from now. Where I can move on, where do I need to move back and where might I need to cut? I am very much looking forward into doing so.

And I am looking forward to sharing this process with you, my readers.

The newspapers tend to bring rosy, happy articles with a cheerful note when looking into the new year. Thus, I want to bring a rosy note into this post, too. The picture to the left shows you a little sketch of “roses and pine needles”, drawn on the ipad real quick. This afternoon, after having finished stocking up Miriam from Tableau de Parfums and Air du désert marocain, will see me playing with rose. Again.

I hope that 2012 will see more roses from Tauer coming, painted or in little bottles.

On our way back by train from Oldenburg, where we presented us and our way of creating perfumes to a crowd of interested perfume lovers, we stopped in Hannover. I discovered a sweets vending machine, spent a few scents, entered the wrong numbers, and ended up with a Salamini Calzone, whereby SALAMINI is a registered brand name. The colors in the picture to the left match reality quite well. I have 5 more months to decide whether I want to go ahead and actually eat it. This little yellow (think bread) and red (think salami) piece of plastic is a reason to praise vegetarianism.

And artisanal, indie salami making and hand crafted food. Real food.

But you won’t find these in a vending machine. And they don’t come for 50 Euro cents a piece. The same is true for fragrances.

Although when it comes to fragrances and their marketing, there are some differences to salami. Right now is perfume marketing high season. And based on what I see there, perfume comes with a higher erotic factor than salami. The ads: Cliché. Lips open and eyes in search of anybody to copulate immediately with , the perfect SHE reclines in a position that seems utterly uncomfortable with  a perfume flacon nearby.

Perfume is everywhere. Too much for my gusto. Ads everywhere and little articles about scents and how to pick fragrances as gifts. The problem: Perfumes are not an optimal gift. I always say: The perfect gift is a few hours, together, in a perfumery, and the promise to pay whatever is picked as the perfect scent. Being a somewhat interested observer you wonder… The city is plastered with poster sized ads. And you wonder who is going to pay all this.

And again, it is the same for Salamini(R) calzones: Who is going to buy the salamini calzones before they become trash?

Today, I finished another rose mix that will go into the molten glycerine soap, that will go into the soap pouring frame, allowing me to pour 48 soaps at once and come up with soap bars. Rose scented soap bars. The mixture is actually quite simple, consisting of 10 ingredients, rose absolute (r. damascena from Bulgaria), Bergamot essential oil and geranium (Bourbon quality) being the naturals.

This soap like all my soaps cannot be bought. It is made to exist in the moment, as a gift and a sign of appreciation, for special moments. And -to be frank- from a commercial point of view these soaps would not make sense. Too much work  goes into the preparation of them, too much expensive raw material is inside. In a sense, these soaps are the most luxurious product I have. It is so luxurious that not even an oligarch can get it, if you know what I mean.

Right now, I am still sitting at home, writing these lines, but as soon as they disappear in the e-universe and as soon as the paper to wrap the soaps later is printed (my printer is not keeping up with my speed) I will ride my bike to hit the little 2 room factory of mine and start melting and pouring. And thinking about Wednesday. Then I will be in Oldenburg (yes…where is Oldenburg? Think  Bremen and move a bit more to the West) and will try to make sense on the topic “Perfumery, manufacturing, composing and creative venture”. Sort of. It is a Duftsalon, a getting together, scheduled for Wednesday, 19.30, with perfume lovers, organized by the Duftcontor in Oldenburg. One of the few German hotspots for selective perfumes and perfumery. Actually, I am really, really looking forward to this.

I will for sure bring a rose absolute with me, to show to the perfume loving crowd.

Thus, I am sitting here with my little scent strip, dipped into the rose concentrate soap mixture and I wish I had a touch more time right now. I would love, love, love so much to play a bit with it: play on the lines of a rose fragrance with this rose at is center, aldehydic, with hints of maybe tuberose in the head, a hint of muscs and woods, a trace of sandalwood maybe….

Yesterday’s post brought up another question: are the criteria for what is a “grand parfum” changing over time? And if so: What would the changes be? I answered to Marianne’s comment but am not entirely sure about my answer. I feel, that the criteria may stay, but the weight we give each criteria might change. Thus Roudnitska’s criteria remain intact, but their mutual importance and weight might be subject to changes. What was voluminous yesterday might be weepy  today and what is character today might be over the top tomorrow.

Of course, this brings us right into the heart of many other questions, such as: In which direction are we heading these days? What do we find beautiful and grand and why? I am convinced that all creations of mankind have to be considered in their context. The context of today is: We live in a multiverse, although already close to 1 bio people are unified on facebook, we are fragmented like never before, physically very isolated,  we consume and appreciate things in a long tail and we live the longer the more without historical context as the new media flood all levels of our cultural palimpsest that might allow us reaching back into our past.

In a sense, the new media, we as contributing part of the new media, flood ourselves with pseudo news allowing us not to think about where we come from and where we are heading. As a dear friend of mine mentioned the other day: We are amusing us to death, but in a different way than anticipated.

Anyhow, while we are still amusing us:  I still wonder how to define the Roudnitska criterium “character” of a perfume today. I guess by looking back in time the question finds an answer.

Today’s picture shows you a scan of a ripe chestnut, found yesterday on the river where I had lunch. A promise for a spring with new sprouts.

Did you know that ivy actually blooms for a few days in the year and has a wonderful thick, green, honey like, sweet, dark perfume? It is an amazingly intense fragrance, in light of the little yellow flower and it attract bees in mass. Now, the ivy around the house lost its flowers and the picture today shows you an ivy twig with the little green berries that will turn into real fruits over the next weeks.

This year, the ivy around the house bloomed all at once and was intense like I do not remember it from the past. The weather these days sure helped. We have the most amazing sunny warm days.  But soon, I am afraid, this period will be over and at the latest by then I will take the Jasmine bush inside. A few weeks later it will explode in little flowers. Here again, amazing little fragrant flowers, with so much bigger scent then themselves.Yet, in all the intensity of their fragrance, there remains something delicate about it, a simplicity and clarity.

Talking delicate clarity, yesterday, when finishing the interview that I had to write, I crossed the roads with Edmond Roudnitska again.  I mentioned in the interview that I wrote years ago Edmond  Roudnitska’s criteria on piece of paper sitting always next to me on my desk. These criteria guide me and I check every fragrance with them and I am very often disappointed about my creations in this light.

These are his criteria for “les qualités fondamentales du grand parfum: caractère, vigueur, pouvoir diffusant, délicatesse, clarté, volume, persistance.”

Today’s picture shows you a look into the Pitti Fragranze hall from behing the decorative fabric that hung from the ceiling to cover the walls of what used to be a train coach maintenance hall of a train station. I find it always very interesting to look behind things, or from behind. Looking back to Pitti from a distance, I realize (again) how many brands there are in the world of “niche” and how many perfumes there are in this world, presented by these brands. Actually, I discussed this aspect also with Michael Edwards, the author of “Fragrances of the world”, THE perfume compendium. His book gets bigger and bigger every year. In Munich, we ended discussing the never ending flow of new launches and brands, too and in a sense I came to a conclusion.

Almost nobody, not even the professionals, can fully follow the tide of scents and concepts. The perfume lover is out there in this ocean of bottles and ideas, sort of lost sometimes. Thus, what do you do? You look for peers. Folks you trust, selecting and providing guidance. I feel this is where the blogs and communities come in. The longer the more. Of course, this role as peer comes with a responsibility.

And this is where selective perfumeries and selective online shops come in. Selective in the sense: We bring you just the best. Beyond what you get everywhere. This may have different meanings in different regions, though. I wait for the day until Amazon discovers niche perfumes.

Anyhow. Here is a little treat, in case you have not seen it yet. Me packing Miriam. And talking about why and how. It is a bit on the long side but I figured you might find it interesting.

You can watch it here, on my vimeo channel. Actually, it is a packing video, complementing some unpacking video that you find on youtube.  Enjoy, while I pack some Tauer Perfumes in the same location.

Fragrant greetings on this bright day. Two more days (or one, depending on counting) before we for the Pitti Fragranze niche perfume show in Florence. Thus, as you may imagine:  a lot of last minute preparations! But today, I will  talk about composing and not about presenting fragrances.

I cleaned up the other day, throwing away plastic pipettes that I used to mix a few trials (they are reusable in principle for a while, but I do not reuse them too often). Smelling them, after mixing was such a delight and reminded me to share with you the facts and figures of composing a fragrance.

The fact: So many times, the simple individual raw ingredients smell so much better and more intense then the mixture. Thus, what is left on the pipette tips is heaven on earth, but what you mixed with them is blunt, boring, dull, grey.

Figures: You may safely assume that a standard mixture for me consists of at least 30 ingredients., (exceptions apply) and you may safely assume that for a final fragrance I make between 2 and 100 trials. Yep: 2 is the easy way, the perfect way, the mother of all perfume creative experiments. 100 is the nightmare over 5 years. But the standard is somewhere in between.

Now, how is it possible that mixture can be dull if the individual ingredients are shining beauties?, you might ask. Actually, this is quite simple: it is an effect that you find everywhere. Annihilation. Some ingredients eat each other up and what is left is ****. Dull, flat mixtures. You can compare it to painting where mixing too many colors gives you a grayish brown.

What was I mixing a while ago: An all natural eau de toilette-eau de cologne like twitter. A fresh, all botanical, yummie further development of my cologne series, a gentleman’s water if you wish,  with green herbs, spices, neroli, and woods (incl. sandalwood from Australia) and ambra and a fine patchouli in the base.  And this time, the mixture turned out as nice as the stuff that went inside. The concentrated mixture has well matured and a  few milliliters go into dilution now.  Please do not ask me when and how I will launch this. The fragrant world in Tauerville is turning too fast right now.  But I like sharing my experiments. And I think it is important to play with scents without always having a sales and $ sign in front of the nose and inside the brain.

Actually, that’s a nice last sentence, to keep in mind when going to a sales show like Pitti: It is important to play with scents without always having a sales and $ sign in front of the nose and inside the brain.

It is a question of style and of exclusivity: Vintage perfumes are pointers and gateways into a past we seem to remember but cannot really grasp. A post that is gone. A world that is different to our world. Today’s post is , as promised, on Miriam, the first fragrance of the Tableau de Parfum series, built up together with Brian Pera, around Woman’s picture. If you are new to the concept: I invite you to visit Evelyn Avenue, as it is on Evelyn Avenue where you find all information and more. There, we are building a world of moving pictures, perfumes and words, a gateway into a past as we remember it.

I mentioned a couple of times that I constructed Miriam like a vintage fragrance. Maybe of the 40-ies. But what is a vintage fragrance like? Any ideas?

First, and I feel this is important, vintage perfumes are for us like a door opener to a time long gone. They evoke memories of aunts, or grand mas, of actors and a world of long gone celebrities, vintage perfumes bring back ads that are so different, evoking reveries of style and true passion, of a better life, maybe.

Imagine the world right after WWII. A world of winners and losers, and of great poverty. Europe in ashes and most of the money gone, and a lot of other, ideal values, too. Perfume back then was true luxury. Not the cheap bling bling pseudo luxury of LV bags and other stuff and the plastic surgery equivalent of joy you are getting when leaving your $ on the counter to buy them. We live in a world where perfume has become a commodity, and a spritz every day from the flacon of the most expensive brands cost you less than your Starbucks latte grande every morning.

Why were perfumes so expensive? They were made in lower quantities, using exclusive ingredients, in a much less integrated economy, where energy was precious, paper was precious, glass was precious. Perfumes were not sold by millions, not packed in low wage corners of the world.

But there is another difference. It is about fragrant languages or dialects of a period. Look back 30 years: Back then perfumes spoke to us in a different language. In the past perfumes were constructed differently, and in the future they will speak a different dialect, too. The further we dig into the fragrant languages of the past, the more different they get to what we are used to. Perfumes of the 40-ies and beyond feature true head, heart, base notes, often with head notes singing loud and brilliant but never offensive, an immense citrus choir that you do not get today anymore, except in natural colognes; they shine differently, partly because the artificial bright light of certain molecules was not invented yet. Perfumers constructing perfumes in the 30-ies used bases that you do not get anymore. And they were braver. Perfumes made 50 years ago or 100 years ago were braver; today perfumes are shocking by their marketing. They are labelled with names that remind you of a quote from a dirty street corner, they are said to smell of blood, semen, and other juices, they play with sexy images without sex appeal. The sexy marketing lines cannot cover, however, their nature.

Vintage perfumes are often very brave constructions; equivalent courage and style you find today if you are lucky in nicher niche.

And perfumers used raw materials that either do not exist anymore or are hard to get; or perfumers used expensive raw materials in quantities that you do not find in modern day perfumes because modern day perfumes are made to serve many more clients.

Of course, Miriam is not a vintage perfume. It points back in time. I used raw materials such as sandalwood or violet leaf absolute in quantities that you do not get on a daily basis. I composed it in a way that feels like 40-ies to me. I tried to pack it in a way that feels vintage to me. But of course, it is not a real vintage. It can never be. The 40-ies are gone.

To finish this post, here is a description of Miriam, as I see it and how I described it to Brian a couple of months ago.

—

MIRIAM:
The dream of a hug, the vivid bitter sweet memory of her perfume,
her hair shining golden in the morning sun, so fine,
the violets from the garden in her hand,
freshly picked with the dew pearls dropping one after the other,
the green May roses on the table, lasting forever.
It is a dream of days long gone, with a smile on my lips.

—

Today’s  picture: The front of the Miriam flacon, inside the cardboard inlay, sitting on a wireless keyboard.