Welcome to day 6 of the advent calendar. Today, for the first time this season, my little jasmine bush is blooming.

It’s scent: Amazing, wonderful creamy and rich, but less intense compared to a jasmine flower in the wild. Mine lives a wild life only in summer and then, by mid October, the plant needs to go inside and waits with us for the spring sun, for many months.

So it starts blooming and I call this perfect timing: Right in time for our scented gathering where we will sniff some Jasmine absolute, and orange blossom and tuberose absolute. Ideal to compare the real thing with the extraction of the scent, made by humans, in a very smart and clever way, but still: A human piece of work. Like an abstraction. Thus, today’s prize for today’s draw: A sample of a fragrance where I use a lot of white flowers, Orange blossom and Tuberose absolute,…. LORETTA, from Tableau de Parfum, an ongoing collaboration with Memphis based indie movie maker Brian Pera, where I create scents that are inspired and directed by the moving pictures, the characters, their moods and the lights and colors of Brian’s art.

And as it is December 6, with the Santa Claus hopping around in this part of the world: I am picking three winners for a 1.5 ml spray sample each, wrapped in a little poster of Loretta. And as always: Good luck to you all.

Participating is easy today : Just leave a comment and, if you wish, tell me what you think about jasmine.  A happy St. Nicolas day to you all!

Comments closed. See day 7 of the advent calendar. Thank you!

I guess I have used today’s blog title a couple of times the last few years. I am back from LA, since yesterday morning. Yeah. It sure was a great week, and I come back fully (re) energized and a hundred ideas that I collected while hiking up and down the hills in Joshua Tree National Park, or while just being there. From time to time it is important to be, and not do.

So I was in a to be mode for a while, and thought about a lot of things that happened to me the last few months in one way or another. Although I run this company, the scent selling enterprise Tauer Perfumes -and yeah: It is still pretty much a one man show!-  I consider myself sometimes and the longer the more a guy who creates than a guy who sells. I guess leaving from time to time for a few days allows me to keep this delicate balance: The constant dance on the needle’s tip, trying to get a living out of what I do by offering my creations in an industry that runs havoc, and creating whatever comes through my mind.

So I am back in Zurich, missing the bright light of southern California, and getting back to normal: Filling bottles (Vetiver dance today), shipping orders, and getting ready for the next adventure. As this dance on the needle’s tip makes me think not only about new forms, inspirations and shapes and colors of scents, but also about how to offer my bottled creations optimally, we will do some more packaging loops. It is like an artist who lives by selling his illustrations: At some point it makes a difference in which gallery and how you present your paintings  Thus, after a few days with a lot of time to get inspired in the dry crisp and bright desert air of Joshua Tree, after meeting friends and perfume lovers at Luckyscent’s scentbar, and coming up with ideas for the next year and Tableau de Parfums with Brian Pera in Los Angeles, I will hop into another airplane tomorrow, and head for Luxepack in Monaco. THE packaging fair for luxury items such as perfumes.

So I had a few days to come up with new fragrant ideas and I am looking forward to sharing these with you. And I had a wonderful scent gathering at the Scentbar, where I presented LORETTA  ,the latest offering of Tableau de Parfums (by the way: A great new location! You can do a virtual tour here. Check it out!), and LYS DU DÉSERT, my contribution to Luckyscent’s 10 year anniversary. I am looking forward to talking about this scent that I created specifically for Luckyscent, that is exclusively available there, and that was a secret project for more than a year now.

FINALLY, I can talk about it. Uff!

I guess I will do so in the coming day(s) and will do a draw for it. So stay tuned. And in case you have not participated yet: Do not miss your chance (three winners will be picked!) to win a full bottle of my range and to watch Brian Pera’s perfume spot on my blog: Click here to get to the post.

But first things first: Packing perfumes and a suitcase for Monaco. Let’s go!

Fragrant greetings from 29 Palms!

This post brings you a draw and three short perfume spots, created by Brian Pera, highly talented indie film maker from Memphis, father of Tableau de Parfums and a really smart writer. The draw happens on Evelyn Avenue’s blog, and by clicking here you get there.

There, three winners will be picked by Brian October 22. You can win a fragrance from my line of scents (including Tableau de Parfums) by watching the short films , -perfume spots-, commenting there and picking your favorite spot. All these three spots are mirroring Loretta, in a sense it is like the scent is reflected in the lense of the camera of the movie maker who created the underlining film Woman’s Picture. Fun, and interesting!

I turned off commenting here, not because I do not like your comments, but just to make sure that there is no misunderstanding where to comment.

After 2 days here, in 29 Palsm, I will head for LA and our scent gathering Friday, October 19th, at the Luckycent Scentbar. See you there!

And now: Enjoy the perfume spots and good luck in the draw!

Tonight, I will give a presentation for the Rotary Club, a ladies evening, with one theme: Air du désert marocain. I was asked to give this speech about 7 months ago and gladly accepted the invitation as I soon found out that I am not only welcome to talk for 45 minutes about how and why I became a perfumer, and how it is to be an artist in this domain. But I was also welcomed to indulge the senses and show some fragrant treats. So, I will show rose and jasmine, some wood and ambra, and give a talk about my life of the last few years.

And I will give a goodie to the 30 attendants: A discovery set with five samples. Including Une Rose chyprée, Incense rosé, Rose vermeille, Orange Star and L’air du désert marocain(TM). Today’s picture shows you how they appear out of the dark of the night, yesterday, when I was preparing them. The attentive reader of this blog might realize today, that “L’AIR DU DÉSERT MAROCAIN” appears the first time with a TM. So, yes….

I applied for protection of the mark, starting in the US. This scent is on the market since 7 years now. Amazing! And it became very important to me. It has become an integral part of my range and I could probably stop with every other perfume, but not with this one. As I am on the market in the US since 7 years, I have some pretty good protection of the name anyhow. But by registration of the brand name, I want to make very clear that this is mine. And that I will defend the mark and the brand. You might also look at it as a reaction to being copied a bit too much. And all the nonsense about the flattery being copied: Please no: It is simply not right. The W.-factor always says that words do not belong to anybody. But actually this is not true. Words belong to those who use them for their products the first time and who are protecting them. That’s the name of the game.

To some extend I hate it to spend thousands of $ yearly to protect marks and ideas. I ‘d prefer to invest in scents and bottles. But then, again, that’s the name of the game.

So… I will give a speach. And while I talk about desert air, Brian Pera , indie movie maker from memphis, father of Tableau de Parfums and the creator of the universe of the movie Woman’s Picture speaks on the blog of Ronny -Scents and Sensibility- about perfume, film, our collaboration and how to conceptualize perfume in film.  It is sure worth a read and I do not mind if you leave this blog now. In the contrary: Byebye, now!

And yes, Scent and Sensibility offers the Tableau de Parfums scents in the UK now. Thus, finally, all of you who wanted to test and sample them, can do so in a few days from now.

What I always realize when reading Brian talk about our collaboration and the perfumes and his way of looking into them, and their relation to the film, the characters, the mood, the colors, the sound therein: I am actually clueless when it comes to my scents. It is not really modesty: I learn from Brian and others who experience my creations and who reflect about them that I do not have the tool kit at hand to explain them. I guess the bottom line really is:

Do not ask the creator about his creations.

While waiting for the train later in the afternoon, bringing me to the Rotary Club, I will work on a few ideas, following my inspiration, without even trying to understand.

I figured, it is time to make an announcement for the Loretta launch event in Los Angeles at the Scentbar of Luckyscent.

Mark your calender and please come by and stop for a drink and a whiff of the newest release from Tableau de Parfums.

I hope you will be equally excited as we are.

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October 19, Friday, afternoon after 4 pm, Scentbar at 7405 Beverly Blvd, 90036 Los Angeles.

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I am sure it will be a fun event and a great opportunity to finally meet Loretta, the fragrance, and to talk to Brian Pera, Memphis based movie maker, who created Woman’s Picture, the anthology film inspired by classic women’s films of the thirties, forties, and fifties. And I am sure we get lots of opportunity to smell and talk about the movie characters and how they inspired me to create the fragrances, Miriam (launched 2011) and Loretta.

See you soon. We are  very much looking forward to.

Please check the Luckyscent events page and register for their newsletter for updates and information on other events.

Thank you.

Today’s picture shows you the Tableau de Parfums purse spray that I will soon fill with DARK PASSAGE, the super limited edition that is only available in March through the Kickstarter campaign for ONLY CHILD. Afterwards , when the financing and support campaign for Brian Pera’s latest film project comes to an end, then the perfume will be gone. ONLY CHILD is the next Evelyn Avenue full feature film project. I was lucky enough to read the script and love it. It is mysterious, noir and continues there where the Loretta story ended in Woman’s Picture.

You can get the fragrance here, on Kickstarter. Just check out the various pledges and follow the process through. The mechanics behind it is all done by Amazon.com. Thus, it is super safe and easy. Click here to get to the campaign page.

And yes, besides DARK PASSAGE, you find other treats  there, too. Some of them are fragrant. Like the Loretta soap (more on this tomorrow). Some of them are film and other arts related. And more is to come. Thus, you might from time to time visit again, either Kickstarter, or follow the story developing on Evelyn Avenue’s blog. And of course Facebook, and twitter.

So… the fragrance Dark Passage SNAPSHOT is here to stay for a couple of days only and then it will be gone. And -like it or not- the same is true for most fragrances that see the world today. They are gone tomorrow. Tomorrow might be a few months or years.  But most of them are gone within a year. For me this first SNAPSHOT fragrance comes as a relief. Finally, I can do a fragrance that does not need to go through any distribution and sales machinery and EU registration and other investments. It is just here. If you are interested in it: Get it.

I think I will not even answer mails about it when March and Dark Passage is gone.

It is refreshing: Think about it for a couple of months, create it during a couple of months, offer it for a month, and then forget it and make room for new creations and ideas. An artist’s dream come true.

Uff. that was quite a week. And guess what I will do tonight? Watch movies! And try to read a few things and smell a few its and bits all into the weekend.

In case you feel like me after a long week, here a few hints, and announcements and wishes.

Miriam, the film section from the Woman’s Picture movie that inspired the fragrance with the same name is now available as Video On Demand (VOD) on Evelyn Avenue or on Luckyscent.com. I have seen Miriam about 10 times and love this movie by Brian Pera and will soon see it again. Click here for the movie on Evelyn Avenue, or here for the same on Luckyscent.

If you wish to do some reading: Why not start with Vanessa Musson’s thoughts on things to think before starting a perfume blog. Even if you do not want to start your own blog:  It is very worth reading, it is on  Now Smell This and I hope to see more from Vanessa there. Click here for the article.

And if you want to smell a soap that you cannot buy and that I created for Brian’s launch of his Evelyn Avenue shop, a rose scented soap, that is green and spicy and rosy, well then you might consider getting Miriam, the fragrance (purse spray size or the 50 ml flacon) or a DVD in Evelyn Avenue’s shop. These days, any order of these products come with a complimentary soap, made by myself, as long as supply lasts. Click her for the Evelyn Avenue store.

And now, after the commercial interruption, comes the wishes section: I wish you a lovely weekend and hope it will be fragrant.

Enjoy!

This is actually a happy post although the title let ‘s you guess it might not be. The postman was busy yesterday, bringing me a lot of things: fragrant raw materials that I have been waiting for since….October 2011!  Finally, I have (almost) all ready to mix Loretta, the second fragrance from the Tableau de Parfums series. These fragrances in the Tableau de Parfums series are  inspired by movie portraits in Woman’s Picture, a film created by Brian Pera, but -contrary to what I read the other day in a comment- they are not celebrity scents or perfume made for a particular human being. I think that’s important to mention again.

Loretta will launch in autumn 2012 and it is getting time to produce it. One message from this post is: if you see a fragrance in the shelfs in autumn 2012, its logistics and production started eventually 12 months ago. Add another 12-24 months for its creation and you have timeline from start to launch of 2-3 years.  Frightening, isn’t it? Right now, I am waiting for one last molecule. In the mean time, I make all ready for the launch of Miriam, the first fragrance from Tableau de Parfums, in Italy, where we plan to present it early May at Campomarzio, in Rome. I am really, very much, looking forward to presenting Miriam in Italy. I feel that Miriam will find a lot of fans in the south.

Bringing Miriam to Italy translates into some translation work, too. With the 50 ml size Miriam comes a novelette, written by Brian Pera. This novelette, called “From the desk of Miram Masterson”, shows an other sides of the character Miriam and goes beyond the movie part. Both, the story and the movie, are part of the Miriam 50 ml packaging, by the way. And for those who missed it all: Here is the Miriam packaging explained in a little vimeo video, by Andy Tauer. Just click here to get to vimeo. Thus, we will translate the novelette for Italy, and print it specifically for Italy. I insisted on this because I think the novelette it is important to fully appreciate the fragrance and the character who inspired it.

I remembered all this when I was testing the digital foto frame yesterday. Yes, there we go: I am coming to the title of this post in a second. I wanted the movie part of Tableau de Parfums to be somehow visible to perfume lovers in perfumeries in Italy. Therefore, I figured out that I will -together with my Italian partner who takes care of my fragrant babies in Italy, ProfumImport in Milano- make a display that presents Tableau de Parfums and Miriam and that shows little sections of film clips, highlighting together with text what Tableau de Parfums and Woman’s Picture and Miriam is all about.

The display will be produced in Switzerland, it will be about 50×30 cm, super expensive, and integrate a digital foto frame, 10” size, and will be really cool. I visited the company producing it all by hand, using wood, iron, cardboard, printed fabric and the digital frame. From a commercial point of view it might not make sense. In a sense that I will not get it paid back in a year or two. But I think from an artistic and communication point of view it makes much sense. And not everything I do must make sense from a commercial point of view. That’s my privilege. And that’s – by the way- why you get 1,2 fragrances in my line that are ridiculously expensive to produce and do not entirely make sense from a commercial point of view.  At least not for the price tag that I mark them with. But that’s another story.

Here you see the first draft for the display that I made, asking the company to offer me 25 of these displays.

A simple sketch of the display from the side.

In the mean time, we started working seriously on it and for that I ordered the first digital frame to build the display around it. I also made a little test video to see whether it does play MPEG4 video. It arrived. It worked, but unfortunately, the screen has one line that is not ok. The frame is a simple out of the box failure and needs to be replaced. See the picture going with today’s post. There you see a little green line in the LCD display.

However, as time is short, I will ask Intenso, the company producing it, whether we can keep it for a month and then ask for a replacement, to build the prototype. I am curious to hear what they say.

Another parcel that I got: A new headphone. For my ipod and for traveling. I got it in pristine condition and can cut the world off my ears now. It feels like meditation, but without the intense work needed to find the inner calm.

Today is mixing day. And today’s picture to the left shows you the aluminum bottles from the fridge that I took out yesterday, allowing the contents to come to room temperature over night. This is important to avoid condensing water inside the bottles. I store all citrus oils, all flower absolutes, and a few specialties such as rose oil, neroli in the fridge.

I store the rest of my raw materials  in a storage room that is cool, but not cold. Part of the other material that goes into the mix you see below. The orange labels with the X mark raw materials that are dangerous for the environment if spilled in larger amounts; like natural sweet fennel oil.

Today, I will mix another batch of Miriam for use in late spring, as we start with Tableau de Parfums in Italy in spring. It is quite a rich formula and the most expensive fragrance I have in my collection. It is 25 ingredients, 14 of which are natural, including rose oil, violet leaves absolute, sandalwood, cistus oil and extract. Actually, this natural Cistus ladaniferus essential oil might be worth another post. For those of you new here: Miriam is the first fragrance of a series, called Tableau de Parfums. It is an ongoing collaboration with filmmaker Brian Pera. These scents are portraits inspired by the shorts of Brian’s ongoing film series, Woman’s Picture. Actually, these days Brian has published a series of interesting posts on Evelyn Avenue, looking back into the past year, the collaboration and some details on the movie making part. You find all this and more here, on Evelyn Avenue.

more bottles with fragrant raw materials. The white powder: Ambroxan.

And I will mix another batch of Incense rosé, lot number 007. For this I had to check all the papers, certificates for each ingredient, for compliance with the (internally defined) standards on EU allergens, appearance etc. The mixing itself is not such a big effort. You just want to make sure that you do not mess it all up as some of those ingredients like rose absolute (3500$/kg) or rose oil (12’000$/kg) are costly. The mix goes into a 12 liter aluminum can, and goes into the fridge, waiting there for 30 days, until it is going to be diluted with Ethanol and needs to wait another month.

During mixing, I need to write down all the ingredient’s lot numbers, too. These lot numbers are important for traceability; in a worst case scenario I can always pinpoint which lot of which raw material was used in what lot of what fragrance. I write it all down into a large excel and store it for 10 years on a save server online.

If you looking for the day 8 advent calendar giveaway: It is here on the blog of Brian Pera. Click here to get there. This post is NOT the day 8 of the advent calendar.

This is a serious post on a few things developing in front of my nose or eyes that I feel like sharing today. We have been busy stocking up. Air, Le Maroc, Carillon, you name it. And next will be -after a short trip abroad next week- soaps for friends and family. The Mandarines ambrées soaps need to be poured and packed like every year as little gift together with a holidays card.

I finally came up with this year’s holidays card. I am sort of tired already and have seen an overdose of candles, fir twigs, deers, stars, and more. Thus, I will do the holiday cards totally different this year. You see to the left an all white Origami prototype. Later, I will used different paper, of course.  I was told it is a Pochibukuro, and is actually used to give money to children in small decorated envelopes. I will put inside a simple card saying “Merry holidays and a happy 2012″. Thus, the coming days will see us folding paper.I am looking forward to it.

On Saturday, we will have the Scent Apero get together in Zurich and I need to dilute the few essential oils that I will show, such as Marjoram and Dill etc. and label the bottles and get some things organized there. I am so much looking forward to this event. It is casual, fragrant and it is about saying thank you. And then, next week, I will be for 2.5 days in Paris. We will have to see how this advent calendar of ours will do doing these days.

Talking about it, if you are still here reading: It is about time you get there, to day 8 of the advent calendar 2011, and leave your comment there. Not here. And watch that short silent movie by Brian Pera. I love it.