Perfumistas will want to take note of two special events hosted by the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program in Washington, DC this coming February:
The Art of Fragrance (In Collaboration with the Embassy of France With Sparkling Wine Toast) with Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, Friday, 5 February at 6:45 pm:
Tonight, we cut through the usual perfume-babble to illuminate the art of fragrance…
Friday afternoon I scoped the downtown department stores for something new and interesting to smell. At one department store, the sales associate showed me lots of recent but ultimately uninspiring perfumes — all Angel rip-offs or fruit-ridden musks. We ended the tour at the Trish McEvoy counter where she raved about one of them that ended up smelling like a baby-shampoo-scented candle on me. At Macy’s, the sales associate said there weren’t any new releases for women, only for men. “Maybe Shalimar L’Oiseau de Paradis?” I tried, thinking I could at least look at a pretty bottle. “We didn’t get that one,” she said and turned her back, leaving me neglected in a forest of celebrity fragrances. Discouraged, I returned home to a surefire remedy for mediocrity and bad manners: Millot Crêpe de Chine.
Crêpe de Chine is a floral aldehydic chypre with top notes of bergamot, lemon, neroli, and orange; a heart of jasmine, rose, lilac, ylang ylang, and carnation; and a base of oak moss, vetiver, benzoin, labdanum, patchouli, musk, and leather…
The power of olfactory perception to suggest and evoke, to trigger an association or a faraway memory, enables every aromatic essence to create its own world, enveloping us in a private realm of impressions and images, harmonies and desires. Manipulating our most intimate sense, the parfumeur becomes the architect of emotional spaces, a painter on the canvas of imagination, a sculptor in an intangible material that works at the deepest level of sensibility.
— From Scents and Sensibility, an article at France Today about the Osmothèque perfume museum in Versailles.
Ever wondered what Napoleon smelled like? Or what perfume the Romans wore to dinner?
The answers lie at The Osmotheque — a fragrance conservatory in Versailles, France that collects, catalogues and recreates perfumes of the past.
Many of the 1,700 fragrances are reproduced from the original formulas.
Correspondent Susan Stone of NPR goes to the Osmotheque and talks to its founder, Jean Kerléo…
There is a nice interview with Jean Kerléo in the Business Standard (link no longer working, sorry!) covering various topics, including recent changes in the perfume industry. Kerléo was the house nose for Jean Patou from 1967 until 1998, a period that saw the release of such classics as Sublime and 1000. He is also the founder of the Osmotheque, the living perfume museum in Versailles. On the state of modern perfumery:
There is a nice interview with Jean Kerléo in the Business Standard (link no longer working, sorry!) covering various topics, including recent changes in the perfume industry. Kerléo was the house nose for Jean Patou from 1967 until 1998, a period that saw the release of such classics as Sublime and 1000. He is also the founder of the Osmotheque, the living perfume museum in Versailles. On the state of modern perfumery:
Perfume has become a mass product, he says. Fragrances are banal and there is too much choice…
Stella McCartney in conversation with Alexandra Shulman (video, talks about new scent L.I.L.Y) http://t.co/VAKYigvK "French parfumier Guerlain on trial over 'race slurs'" article at Telegraph http://t.co/lVDxoZMi Vote for NST's Mood Board on FB and win a Zoya Nail Polish collection! http://t.co/MXHMN7I3