A New Nose in Two Hours!
Awake your sleeping sense of smell at the Studio des Parfums in Paris' Marais district! Two hours is all it takes to create your very own perfume and receive your “Student Parfumier” diploma. Ready your handkerchiefs!
Step One: The Knowledge
The place: la rue du Bourg-Tibourg, in the heart of the Marais, forever known as an historic quarter and hot-bed for new ideas. Here, just a few metres from “Mariage Frères”, le Studio des Parfums opens its doors to share its professional perfume prowess. It is here that the apprentice nose first learns the fundamental principals of fragrance making - primary materials, olfactory families and balance between component elements, all so important in the process. One does not enter a perfumery as if it is a factory! Knowledge is precious and is dispensed according to the rules of the art. Absolute mastery of the 150 fragrance “notes” is required - the “head” notes for lightness, the “heart” notes for personality, and the “base” notes for sustainability - in order to understand the secrets of a perfume.
Step Two: Creation
Now for total immersion in the as yet undiscovered aromatic world, offering the double-benefit of increasing any smell and taste related activity. Tea, chocolate, wine, biscuits - all these are present and enrich the realm of aroma. Our senses awakened, we are at last ready to develop a fragrance, whether it be intense, sweet or floral... Our teacher steers us without ever restraining personal taste. It is to be my perfume, created by me, to become my signature note, my apprentice creator's artistic tendencies have been given free rein! Two hours later, in trembling hands, each student receives an antique flask containing an original fragrance: each of us has a little bit of ourselves dissolved in 50ml of precious fluid. It doesn't take much to flatter our senses... and our egos!
Juin 2008
