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Custom Perfume Making on CBC-TV

Ayala Moriel Parfums will be featured on TV today, 1pm PST on Living Vancouver, demonstrating the process of fragrance consultation and custom perfume creation for Margaret Gallagher.
You can also watch it online (it will be on CBC website for the next 3 months).

For those of you curious about the perfume I made for Margaret - it turned out beautifully, being equally fresh and sweet, floral and spicy!

I can't reveal all of Margaret's secret, all I will say is that her Signature Perfume contains these notes (among others):

Top notes: Wild Orange, Cardamom, Coriander
Heart notes: Orange Blossom, Jasmine Sambac, Cinnamon
Base notes: Amber, Vanilla, Cocoa

Scent for a Drowned City Re-Emerging


Bride of the Swamp: White Waterlily in Dark Water, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Paula Stratton olfactory description of New Orleans before Katrina has inspired me to do something more for New Orleans: create a new perfume especially for New Orleans. A perfume that will represent these beautiful fragrant moments of the city, and also help the city raise more funds for re-building it.

I read Paula’s description of the aroma of New Orleans, feeling all along the scent of the city surrounding me. A city which I haven’t visited yet, yet have affected my life without my notice. The music, the books, the food and finally –the perfumes of this city – have made their way to me on their own accord.

And now it’s time for me to do something in return. I don’t know when this perfume will be ready. I feel I do need to visit the city before I can truly create something in its name. But for now I am letting my imagination loose and just start pairing notes and building accords… And sniffing in between.

Paula’s letter to me about the aromas of New Orleans have provided me with excellent details, enough to start working and developing some ideas. And so I have been pairing magnolia with cypress, osmanthus with vetiver…

Some of the accords seem to be working beautifully:
Seaweed-Orange Blossom-Lemon
Vetiver-Vanilla-Cypress
Spikenard-Brown Oakmoss-Vetiver
Cassie-Osmnathus-Magnolia
Magnolia-Rose-Orris
Cypress-Osmanthus-Basil
Vanilla-Rose-Lemon
Lemon-Rosemary-Basil

Others are more problematic. Particularly using basil and rosemary with the florals. They balance the sweetness but also add complexity that takes away from the clarity of my olfactory vision for this perfume.

What do I want it to be? I want it to be beautiful. I want it to remind people of New Orleans. It has to have floral intensity that is uplifting and beautiful and at the same time the dirty depth of the swamps and the primordial ocean with its salty breath and the overall compliexity of something that gives life and consumes it at the same time. Fertile, rich soil that can grow these intense blossoms. Just like the waterlily in this image. That’s how I want it to be. The soil for the perfume has to be so dark as to create a backdrop upon which the florals will be strikingly bright and beautiful.

Recommended Reading: Custom Scents for Dead Celebs

If you skip all the vanilla-is-sexy-talk and hidden-advertising of some new celebrity scents, and go straight to the very bottom of this article, you will find a few ideas that famous noses have come up with in response to Marian Bendeth request to "If they could choose any deceased personality and create a custom blend for that person".

While I had hard time connecting to most of the ideas brought up by these noses (Marlene Ditrich wearing a woody floral with strawberries, and an aquatic floral for Marie Antoinette!), one idea particularly caught my attention - Maurice Roucel brief for Julius Caesar's fragrance:

"(Julius Caesar) was a true sportsman overseeing the Olympic Games (...) I would want this to be the smell of a winner (...) I feel the Mediterranean Sea and the Olympic Games, where laurel-leaf and olive-leaf crowns were handed to the winners as symbols of masculinity(...) It would be an aromatic fragrance centred around an essential note of laurel leaf. Then I would add outdoorsy notes based around woody scents -- chypre (sandalwood), oak-moss, fougere (fern-like) -- with touches of spicy, herbal and fresh essential notes of rosemary, basil, thyme, hyssop and artemisia".

Perhaps I am too biased, being a natural perfumer, to understand the rationale behind using aquatic notes for a fragrance for a lady who wore wigs as high as her palace, and has been the one to dictate fashion trends, including wearing plenty of violet, orris and musk.

Perhaps I also need to hear more specific notes in order to fully understand how a scent will smell, rather than just fragrance categories. To me, the particular notes make all the difference in terms of being able to smell a scent in my imagination...

I would love to hear what you thought of those briefs, and especially - what do you think of the idea of Jesus wearing a powdery floral comprising of heliotrope, violet, orris and woods (also Maurice Roucel's idea, which most likely will mean that I would wear this perfume, regardless of my religious views or non-views).
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