This is a byebye for a day or two. Tomorrow, we will be driving and then I will be standing at the exhibition stand at Pitti Fragranze.

And today, it is last minute preparations day.

Thus, I leave you to reading other blogs and news and there we go with the recommended posts of today:
Elene publishes the second chapter of the Miriam Novelette, and an interview with me on some of the core factors when building Miriam  that you will for sure find interesting. You find here post here.

And Persolaise published the first film interview as part of the blogging round. And you can win a sample on his blog. Please see the interview here on his blog.

I wish you fun reading and watching and send you fragrant greetings.

Today’ s picture taken from the terrace of our hotel room, booked early and amazingly affordable, shows you the sun over the Arno, taken last year from our hotel in Florence, and guess in which hotel we are staying this time. Yes!

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.

In three weeks I will get ready for Pitti Fragranze in Florence. With this in mind, I visited my bike mechanic guy to announce my bike for repairs. I used it on a daily basis and hence figured that these 5 days where I am at Pitti might be ideal to get my bike’s age related its and bits fixed. The mechanic’s workshop looks and smells like you would expect it. A lot of metal parts, grease on fabric, and their typical smell. Actually, a bike mechanic workshop smells better than a car workshop. It might be a difference in grease, the missing gasoline aspect, who knows?

He, the mechanic was very happy. Finally a client who announces his broken bike early enough. And I am happily looking forward to riding a shiny all functional bike again. And the workshop brought back memories of my Hyacinth and a mechanic experimental scent. (Reviews of this experiment see this search on : Google.com ) This together with my fiddling lately for a fragrance for Ingrid, the third woman portrait on Woman’s picture.

I am sort of very unhappy there and I realized today, while dreaming in sample making stasis, that I need to rethink my previous work. I always felt that what I had worked on was not right, but could not pinpoint it. I tried to build a fragrance for this third woman picture around hyacinth. But I come to the conclusion that this starting point is wrong. Thus, I feel I will go to field zero there.  The moment I realized this (sniffing the latest versions on my wrist) I was relieved.  By knowing what not to do, I know what to do next.

To be frank with you, my dear reader, I remain somewhat obscure here, worrying that I start confusing you. We have not even launched the first fragrance from Tableau de Parfums, and yet I am talking about the third one. But this I can tell you: Ingrid is a very sensual woman. There is something very deep and a sad note in her face. She for sure can wear a rich, oriental, musky, dark fragrance.  Thus, I am working on Ingrid’s fragrance, but do not like to talk too much about it, as it still far away.

On the other hand, this is reality. Perfumes do not fall from heaven. When I started discussing the whole Tableau de Parfums project idea, I always underlined that creating perfumes is not easy and sometimes takes a lot of time. The W.-factor always says (he got it from somewhere) “it is 95 % transpiration and 5% inspiration.  Right now I am sweating. But the 5% told me today “Myrrh”. And Sandalwood. And the rest we will see.

Today’s picture: Another rose scan. I am a big rose lover!

We are back from Pitti wonderland.

What a great place Florence is. I wished I had seen a bit more than the Pitti halls and the hotel room.

But then: We come back 2011….

NOW:

back in Tauer land we have a few boxes and flacons and a more issues waiting.

Actually, on of the issues is funny, dealing with a total mess customs has done with our parcels. They mixed up parcels and invoices and sent things to the wrong address (we got ours, though) and we are trying to explain folks what should go where when and why…

Anyhow: Tatata! We proudly presented in Florence the new 30 ml size HOMAGE flacon for the 30 ml UNE ROSE VERMEILLE and the 30 ml UNE ROSE CHYPRÉE. And folks loved it.

The new products will end up on the shop in a second and we are all very excited. Thus, I will upload the new products with shaky fingers in the next hours. Here a little teaser photo. More to follow…

Enjoy!

The new 30 ml size UNE ROSE VERMEILLE

We are entering in full last minute preparation mode these minutes: Pitti Fragranze is ante portas, and on Thursday we hit the train to Florence (hence the picture, although the train in the photo is the Bernina express train, seen 10 days ago).  In order to get into the Italian grove we went to the movies yesterday and watched “mine vaganti (click here for the trailer)” . Not the average Italian family, though. But it was good entertainment and distraction from boxing and packing.

The next two days see us making more stock , and getting ready for the days after Pitti. Then, we will engage into soap making mode, as I got an order for my X-mas soap that -my efforts paid- ends up as X-mas for a Zurich pharmacy. I consider it a test ground for my capacity in soap scenting and pouring (how many can we possibly make in a day?), and I hope it will turn into a cool marketing return for the brand, and a nice X-mas gift of the pharmacy for its top clients.

They have a lot of clients.

We need to get 100 kg soap and do so today.

This is the official PR for the new Tauer launches, on Now Smell This. Click here for Robin’s post.

And here my contribution to this PR fact (click on image for larger version).

It is strange. You think about it, prepare for it, see it coming with eyes wide open . Yet, once it is here, you are amazed. Today, we continue making more samples for the Italian perfume exhibition Pitti Fragranze, and assembling everything for the two palettes that the truck is going to pick up tomorrow.  We work with Schenker and as these guys are reliable, we know that by 10 am the palettes need to be ready.

Another amazing development, that I think about, see it coming with open eyes and that totally amazes me every year: Autumn is getting here. The light has changed, the mornings are different, the fruits ripening on the bushes and trees. EEEK! Summer is almost over. In a sense, it feels like Tauer’s fruits will be ripe by Pitti. Let us hope they survive the transport.

Talking berries and fruits. Here’s another information bit on the EAU D’ÉPICES. One of the axis being spices, it features in one of is corners cinnamon (essential oil), being part of a spicy head notes bouquet. Cinnamon is strictly restricted and I stick to the recommendations there (as it is a sensitizer, sensitizing your skin). I use a couple of molecules to pump it up, one of them: ETHYLCINNAMATE. This molecule smells like cinnamon, red berries and is somewhat sweet. By its red berries tonality it softens the spices’ harsh corners and it supports the cinnamon. You see… a lot of  strands to follow.

I was talking about WEB corners, and AXES, and HEAD/HEART/BODY notes a lot. I will come back to these different ways of looking into a construction.  But not today!; today is palette day.