By now you are all probably dying to read what essences did we actually pick together?
Well, I can’t tell you everything, can I?

What I will tell you is that this Gentille Alouette perfume was going to be a violet and orange blossom scent with a big retro wink and one foot set in the forests of the Sunshine Coast, where Eliza prefers to spend her free time. It had to be very girly and at the same time have enough adventurous outroodsiness to it to save it from going totally frou-frou. This is just not who Eliza is, and it’s not what Gentille Alouette’s frequent guests are either. These are girls who like to play dress up but also like to use their bicycles rather than get driven by a cab so they can show off their stilettos… The shop is like a little hidden closet you find all of a sudden, full of fashion finds of all sorts: vintage jewels and beaded clutches, hand-crafted gowns and accessories, recycled and reclaimed one-off pieces, and wardrobe staples from small brands that keep rotating – you’ll find something new to discover at the shop every week and unless we meet at my studio, I always end up playing dress-up by the end of every meeting with Eliza. The women who shop there are individualistic, kind spirited and seem to care about the environment as much as they care about their appearance.

But I digress… This post was not going to be about marketing schemes and dissecting the target market of my client and her future perfume. It’s going to be about the creative process that leads to a perfume. Perfume walks the tightrope between art, luxury, fashion and a commodity, so all those factor re just as valid: price range, target market and profitability (or at least breaking even…) are just as important factors as is the originality of the scent, the mood it will evoke once worn, the story behind each raw material, and the artistry that goes into blending all these elements together: perfume, personality, wearability.

I left Eliza’s shop some 2 weeks ago with no less than 20 essences that she loved, and that seem to work together beautifully. Nearly all of them are utterly precious: violet leaf, orange blossom, rose, boronia, tuberose… Each can be the centerpiece of a perfume and take the show. Yet I had to make them all shine together, rather than individually. Which was not easy. To top it off, Eliza also wanted fir absolute AND hinoki in this perfume. I decided to leave the hinoki to later, if necessary, and for now work with the fir only and create two version – one with, and one without.

Perfumer's Notebook, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

To help me not loose focus, I drew a little diagram that shows the dynamics between the different notes: how they relate to one another and how they play different roles in different accords. Eliza loves tea, and she picked some tea like notes: bergamot, which reminds her of Earl Gray tea. Lavender, which is calming and relaxing (she also saws those little tiny lavender cat brooches with buttoned eyes – they’re adorable and give whiffs of lavender whenever you squish them a bit, to give you a fix of relaxation when you’re out and about…).

Citrus notes blood orange and grapefruit will perform the role of bursting open the experience alluring you in from the get go.
And the flowers, of course, are the starts of the show, but they divide into two – the orange blossom accord and the violet accord (so you see, the rose is here only in a supporting role to the timid violet).
Surprising gourmand notes are what will give the perfume a quirky touch, a surprise: star anise and tarragon absolute, along with fresh ginger.
And than there is fir absolute – which is also a woodsy note, but very, very sweet and almost like a jam made of the entire forest and delivered to your door on Christmas Day… So it joins together the gourmand and the woods – the more meditative notes of sandalwood, frankincense and maybe, but only maybe, hinoki…

I spent 2 main sessions with Gentille Alouette in the lab. My first try (August 20th) was based strictly and almost analytically on the sessions we had with Eliza. I thought it to be a little timid, and I was very careful with the concentration – making it rather light. I used only very light hand with the boronia (pre-diluted at 30%) and violet (pre-diluted at 10%). And I made two versions that day: one with a tiny bit of fir, and one without.

I let it sit for a while, and than I thought – why not just get my imagination go wild a bit and compose Gentille Alouette perfume as I envisioned it when I first met Eliza at the studio, and she told me that her favourite scents are violet and orange blossom… She liked White Potion, Zohar and Violat and my little olfactory bulb was sending me signals of what these three, plus a hint of boronia, will smell like… I set off again, 5 days later, (August 24th) and blended that: a rich, dense version with higher concentrations of boronia absolute and violet leaf absolute, both at full strength. I added no fir whatsoever and stayed true to my vision.

I tweaked it just a bit this morning, before I met Eliza: I added another drop of Boronia absolute. I divided the batch into two, and added one drop of fir absolute to one bottle, which would make it the 4th mod of the Gentille Alouette scent. I think the fir was the element that was missing from giving it just that little extra smooth roundedness yet without using vanilla (Eliza clearly does not like this note an I was not going to convince her otherwise! There are enough vanilla-laden florals out there, and her perfume does not need it). I’m loving this perfume and I think I’ve nailed it on the head, but it’s going to be up to Eliza to decide what’s best for her. And also if we’re going to do a parfum extrait or an Eau de Parfum…

Stay tuned to hear about the following: what mod Eliza picked, and how we are going to tackle the next biggest problem: packaging.

Today I brought in the essences we hand-picked last time to re-sniff, review, sift through and select the ones that will actually be used to formulate the Gentille Alouette perfume.
Part of the process is selecting which essences to use is also to imagine how they will smell together. Another part is prioritizing – because if you got too many essences the perfume will easily loose character and become just a cacophony of pleasant odours that don’t have anything special to say to one another and just scream “me, me, me!” in an attempt to get attention.

And me being the perfumer and facilitator of such a process is like walking a tightrope: on one hand, I want to listen to the client’s innermost fragrant desires; on the other hand I must guide them so that it won’t be a waste of time, not to mentio precious material. The process must be meaningful and enjoyable, allowing the client to have a say in the decision making throughout the various stages of development. As to not interfere too much with the process, I begin without negating options just because I think that they “won’t work” or because it’s “straying from the original concept”. I will get there at some point, and offer my expertise in what would work and what wouldn’t, give suggestions, alternatives and invent narratives that will make every compromise (if such a thing is really necessary) feel like a choice and not like lessening of the dream.

The elimination process with Eliza was smooth sailing. Although she loves many different types of scents (we picked 30 raw materials to start with!) she also had a very clear vision for what she wanted. And when it came to the 2nd round, she was just as harsh as I was with letting go and cutting things out, understanding that it’s not about the attachment to a particular note – but about how it will work together as a whole with the vision she had for Gentille Alouette perfume.
To assist us in the process, we used touches (scent strips) that we dipped in the various essences and clipped together. Waving them in front of the nose in a spiraling motion gets the molecules mingled together in the air and gives off a scent that alludes to what would be if… this will be mixed with that. And unlike actual blending – it’s possible to not only add things in – but also take them out if you don’t like the result. While it does not give a good grasp on the proportion, a skilled nose can know if he’s heading in the right direction. Because the scents strips are just one part – the other part is the imagination, the vision, and once in the lab – knowing how to put them all together so the essences can dance, sing and bloom on the skin.

Our process was nearing its end, when we had a surprise visitor at the shop: a long time customer of mine and a fellow Portobello West vendor: Gerry-Gail (GG) Endean of Creampuffs by GG. Her signature scent is GiGi, with which she fell in love instantly upon her first visit to the market (by the second or third visit she has already become a vendor…). GG sells her “creampuffs” or girlie boxer shorts at Gentille Alouette and dropped by to restock the shop with more creampuffs AND show off the new fabaric swatches for the upcoming collection. We let her sniff the perfume and as you can tell by the sheer bliss expression on her face – she liked it just as much as we did… And than a bunch of other customers showed up too and we had a blast just looking at their faces as they smell this very particular, freshly made-up combination of notes.

Next post: what I’ve done with all those essences (and what essences?!) when I came back to my studio…

We start from the top notes, which are easy and accessible, as they are very fleeting and familiar– citrus notes such as grapefruit and blood orange. Spices like star anise and fresh ginger root. Eliza surprises me with picking up lavender and telling me how much she loves it. Most people finds it calming and relaxing and associate it with the feeling of well-being. Here’s a twist and a turn to what I thought would be an herb-free perfume… She also likes rosewood, which shares some similarities with lavender, but is more light and floral and “perfumey”.

I was sure Eliza will love all the heart notes, but she ended up being more a base note gal. I knew she’s going to love rose and jasmine (and she did), but I was surprised she did not like tuberose and orange blossom, even though she was extremely smitten with the Neroli! Another two surprises where her immediate connection and ease with more quirky essences, namely geranium and boronia… Both essences which I would have not thought of to begin with, and haven’t put them in my initial “sketch” for the perfume.

Moving to the base notes, we complied quite an overwhelming collection of notes. All the woodsy notes drew Eliza in like magic – sandalwood, agarwood, amyris, hinoki, frankincense… Everything woody seems to invoke a dreamy expression on her face as if she just found a vintage fabric she forgot she had and now she can finally find a use for it. But locally growing trees like fir and cedarwood made her even more excited.

This is why it’s so important to do the olfactory journey session, even though it takes a long time, through this process the client unlocks memories and discovers essences that played a big part of their lives but are long forgotten, or discovers new loves. And from the perfumer’s point of view, the seemingly random array of notes that the client picks poses a challenge. How can they work together? And will they work together? Which fragrance family could they belong to, if at all? These strange combinations, the imperfections so to speak, the most challenging pairings, are what make a perfume interesting and can make the whole difference between just another pretty smelling thing to a work of art.

Tomorrow I will be bringing all the essences we hand-picked in the 1st round last week, and we will sniff through them again to pick the ones that resonate most with Eliza and the spirit of Gentille Alouette. We have no more and no less than 30 essences that were chosen in the 1st round, so there is a lot of wonderful smells to go through. And this time I’m even more curious to see what stories and expressions they will bring out this session, because it will be a lot more focused.

We start from the top notes, which are easy and accessible, as they are very fleeting and familiar– citrus notes such as grapefruit and blood orange. Spices like star anise and fresh ginger root. Eliza surprises me with picking up lavender and telling me how much she loves it. Most people finds it calming and relaxing and associate it with the feeling of well-being. Here’s a twist and a turn to what I thought would be an herb-free perfume… She also likes rosewood, which shares some similarities with lavender, but is more light and floral and “perfumey”.

I was sure Eliza will love all the heart notes, but she ended up being more a base note gal. I knew she’s going to love rose and jasmine (and she did), but I was surprised she did not like tuberose and orange blossom, even though she was extremely smitten with the Neroli! Another two surprises where her immediate connection and ease with more quirky essences, namely geranium and boronia… Both essences which I would have not thought of to begin with, and haven’t put them in my initial “sketch” for the perfume.

Moving to the base notes, we complied quite an overwhelming collection of notes. All the woodsy notes drew Eliza in like magic – sandalwood, agarwood, amyris, hinoki, frankincense… Everything woody seems to invoke a dreamy expression on her face as if she just found a vintage fabric she forgot she had and now she can finally find a use for it. But locally growing trees like fir and cedarwood made her even more excited.

This is why it’s so important to do the olfactory journey session, even though it takes a long time, through this process the client unlocks memories and discovers essences that played a big part of their lives but are long forgotten, or discovers new loves. And from the perfumer’s point of view, the seemingly random array of notes that the client picks poses a challenge. How can they work together? And will they work together? Which fragrance family could they belong to, if at all? These strange combinations, the imperfections so to speak, the most challenging pairings, are what make a perfume interesting and can make the whole difference between just another pretty smelling thing to a work of art.

Tomorrow I will be bringing all the essences we hand-picked in the 1st round last week, and we will sniff through them again to pick the ones that resonate most with Eliza and the spirit of Gentille Alouette. We have no more and no less than 30 essences that were chosen in the 1st round, so there is a lot of wonderful smells to go through. And this time I’m even more curious to see what stories and expressions they will bring out this session, because it will be a lot more focused.