Perfume Geekery
[What I Feel| 
accomplished ]
[What I Hear| Coldplay "Talk" ]
[What I Smell| Blackberry perfume oil. Just...blackberry... ]
What most of you prolly do not know about me is, in school I got straight A grades in things like Chemistry, Algebra...Maths and Sciences in general. They 'made sense' to me much more than things like English or History (at the time--but then, schools make a practice of boring-down history until it's nearly impossible for ANYone to like it!) and I often 'relaxed' by working out algebraeic equations.
Seriously. At one point I was going to go to Medical School and I had the scholarships lined up--but then I realised that Art was forever more important to me and was likely the one thing keeping me sane. Plus, the idea of spending half my life in school was pretty daunting.
So, when I sat down to read The Emperor of Scent, a story about Luca Turin and his adventures in perfume and the olfactory sense, I was delighted to see it was all about Chemistry! And the more I read, the more I realised that I think I got into perfumery BECAUSE it reminded me of both Chemistry and Alchemy (both things I've spent a lot of my life thinking about/playing with). I fully understood it all, which reminded me that one of my favourite subjects in professional publishing involve molecular string theory and the whole function of entropy in the universe. I do not seem to read as many scientific treatises as I used to do, but it creeps in here and there.
For example, I decided my fictional Flame Elf from The Siege Perilous [and, by the way, I recently discovered a new group took that name for their band! Crap!] does what he does because he can manipulate electromagnetic bonds in atoms--which means he can start fires, affect electricity, and can even force himself to 'hover' from the ground by means of EMF. (Remember, I write fiction about Elves because it started out as a joke since I literally HATE and DETEST the whole Tolkien/Airy-Fairy thing that seems to obsess about 75% of grown adults, so I have to have LOGICAL REASONS for the magic to actually WORK within the universe. Science and magic are not mutually-exclusive, despite what you might hear to the contrary.)
So, I celebrated by finishing making the black felt 'cover' that falls over the Perfumer's Kazoo TM I have built, and I've been searching out old, vintage French perfumes to compare what I know with what I'm doing. Old vintages when made well DO hold up for the most part; perhaps the top notes grow faint, but the essence remains. I've found a lot of fun stuff on Ebay and I'm busy searching out everything I can find on Aldehydes, since those have comprised the basic 'umph' of those old perfumes I used to wear, like Lanvin's "Mon Peche/My Sin" or "Arpege" (or Chanel's "No. 5"--which was the first 'OMG!Aldehydic!' perfume ever created).
I think we tend to forget how amazing the 'old stuff' really was--or about their incredible silage, which I never considered but found a perfume blog that points out those scents were created at those strengths to hold up under the smoke-filled nightclubs that women would have been in back then. Well, of course! It makes perfect sense, now! Sadly, those that still exist into current day are mostly all 'reformulised' (including No. 5), so they no longer smell as they did...and hence, my searches into the 'vintage' bottles.
The more I learn, the more informed my perfumery.
Nechtan ;)
[crossposted to Flameelf]
accomplished ]
[What I Hear| Coldplay "Talk" ]
[What I Smell| Blackberry perfume oil. Just...blackberry... ]
What most of you prolly do not know about me is, in school I got straight A grades in things like Chemistry, Algebra...Maths and Sciences in general. They 'made sense' to me much more than things like English or History (at the time--but then, schools make a practice of boring-down history until it's nearly impossible for ANYone to like it!) and I often 'relaxed' by working out algebraeic equations.
Seriously. At one point I was going to go to Medical School and I had the scholarships lined up--but then I realised that Art was forever more important to me and was likely the one thing keeping me sane. Plus, the idea of spending half my life in school was pretty daunting.
So, when I sat down to read The Emperor of Scent, a story about Luca Turin and his adventures in perfume and the olfactory sense, I was delighted to see it was all about Chemistry! And the more I read, the more I realised that I think I got into perfumery BECAUSE it reminded me of both Chemistry and Alchemy (both things I've spent a lot of my life thinking about/playing with). I fully understood it all, which reminded me that one of my favourite subjects in professional publishing involve molecular string theory and the whole function of entropy in the universe. I do not seem to read as many scientific treatises as I used to do, but it creeps in here and there.
For example, I decided my fictional Flame Elf from The Siege Perilous [and, by the way, I recently discovered a new group took that name for their band! Crap!] does what he does because he can manipulate electromagnetic bonds in atoms--which means he can start fires, affect electricity, and can even force himself to 'hover' from the ground by means of EMF. (Remember, I write fiction about Elves because it started out as a joke since I literally HATE and DETEST the whole Tolkien/Airy-Fairy thing that seems to obsess about 75% of grown adults, so I have to have LOGICAL REASONS for the magic to actually WORK within the universe. Science and magic are not mutually-exclusive, despite what you might hear to the contrary.)
So, I celebrated by finishing making the black felt 'cover' that falls over the Perfumer's Kazoo TM I have built, and I've been searching out old, vintage French perfumes to compare what I know with what I'm doing. Old vintages when made well DO hold up for the most part; perhaps the top notes grow faint, but the essence remains. I've found a lot of fun stuff on Ebay and I'm busy searching out everything I can find on Aldehydes, since those have comprised the basic 'umph' of those old perfumes I used to wear, like Lanvin's "Mon Peche/My Sin" or "Arpege" (or Chanel's "No. 5"--which was the first 'OMG!Aldehydic!' perfume ever created).
I think we tend to forget how amazing the 'old stuff' really was--or about their incredible silage, which I never considered but found a perfume blog that points out those scents were created at those strengths to hold up under the smoke-filled nightclubs that women would have been in back then. Well, of course! It makes perfect sense, now! Sadly, those that still exist into current day are mostly all 'reformulised' (including No. 5), so they no longer smell as they did...and hence, my searches into the 'vintage' bottles.
The more I learn, the more informed my perfumery.
Nechtan ;)
[crossposted to Flameelf]