Le Parfumeur Rebelle
Ever since I read your essay, I have been thinking long and hard
about how to respond to this without being overly offensive.
I have to admit though, that even if I find a few points to have
some standing, I felt almost mortally offended by your views.
Why? Because no matter what, I’m a firm believer in proper
education, whether it’s in any form of the arts or other subjects.
Of course I’m aware of (and have some experience with) how
much damage a bad and overly authoritative teacher can assert
(especially on the more fragile minds), but still I think the need
for education runs deeply, even (or especially) in the art of
natural perfumery.
While I was musing over how to explain my viewpoints, I got to
thinking about the world famous Swedish soprano, Birgit
Nilsson, who sadly passed away in December 2005. I willingly
confess that I’m no big fan of opera, but if there was ever one
woman who I admired to no end, it was La Nilsson. Heavens
above, that woman had such a voice that just thinking of it
sends shivers down my spine.
Ms Nilsson was born with a god given talent, but no woman or
man can ever reach these heights in the art of opera without?
Proper education! Even if Ms Nilsson said that her first voice
teacher almost killed her and number two was almost as bad,
still she went ahead and studied at the Royal Swedish Music
Academy. If she had given up and stayed away from formal voice
education and training – would she have been able to sing in
Turandot like none before or after has ever done? I hardly think
so.
I have a long and quite interesting background, with a lot of
different educations and occupations, and some of them artistic.
For instance, I went to goldsmith school for three years back in
the early 80s. Now goldsmithing is one of the very ancient forms
of art (as is perfumery), and the school was run by a rigorous,
authoritative and very strict German guy in his middle 50s. You
might be led to believe that such a man would erase any hint of
creativity any one of us might have harbored in the depths of our
souls. But quite the opposite occurred. Of course, we had to
learn how to use all the tools and machines, the techniques and
everything else that comes with the craft. There were even some
“must-do” pre-designed jewels we had to make each year (and
ugly as hell they where, left over designs from the 50s and 60s, I
guess). But apart from these, we were much encouraged (or more
likely forced) to come up with our own ideas and designs – and
make them come true. From what I remember, we were pretty
much free to create whatever we fancied, to make our own
mistakes and learn from them. If that isn’t encouraging to the
creative mind, I don’t know what is.
I can’t for the life of me figure out why natural perfumery, of all
forms of art, ought to be better off without “proper” education?
Because for me, natural botanical perfumery is an art, as well as
traditional perfumery, and not some home hobby that I can do in
whatever way I choose.


Sidenote: I’m currently reading “A Scented Palace”by Elisabeth de
Feydeau and even at page 25 she says that “no one could be
confirmed as a merchand maître gantier perfumeur without
having completed four years of apprenticeship followed by three
years as a compagnon, in training”.


To me, a true perfume is built like they always have been, with
base, middle and top notes. Of course it’s OK to create a blend
that consists of only base notes or with the addition of some
middle ones, but please – don’t call these blends perfumes,
because as per definition they are not.
On the 17th of July this year, one of my dreams came true – the
Fragrance Summer School in Grasse began with me as one of the
students. I’m one of the very few natural botanical “perfumers”
that took this course (ever since I first found it on the G.I.P
website) to my heart, even though it covers not only natural raw
materials, but chemical ones as well. I figured out that it could
not hurt to get a hunch about how “real” perfumes are made and
how the formally educated and trained perfumers work, and that
I would probably gain much insight and knowledge about the art
of perfumery, that could be well put to use in working with only
natural botanicals. And I’m more than happy to say that I was
right – so absolutely dead-on-target right! I learned more during
these two wonderful weeks than I had reading all these books,
articles and web pages written by self-proclaimed “authorities” in
the field of natural perfumery. Not only did we learn about quite
a few raw materials, how famous fragrances were built, how to
classify both raw materials and perfumes, how to re-create given
accords and formulas, but we were encouraged to use our own
creative and imaginative minds for our versions as well.         
Imagine being allowed to be free to use any of the several
hundred materials that are stocked in the schools laboratory - it
was like being a kid set loose in a candy store! We had one of the
best teachers I have met in my entire life, the very highly trained
and experienced Laurence, who has studied and worked for
Givoudan Roure for many years. Not only in the way of passing
on knowledge, but for being generous enough to listen to our
views and opinions and at times taking them to heart as well.
When it came to the creative exercises, we were pretty much set
free, but we had to stay within the guidelines of the respective
fragrance family we had re-created earlier. So when we had re-
created the chypre and were set loose, we still had to keep our
creation within the chypre family, but apart from that could take
it in any direction we fancied. Even when we made some less
than good choices of the raw materials, Laurence didn’t tell us to
use something else because our choice wouldn’t work. Instead
she just said “Hmm that is an interesting choice, and of course
you can try it. But what would you think will happen if you use
this or that instead?” Thus steering us away from the worst
disasters, but still encouraging us to think through our formulas
some more, opening our imagination to new insights and
possibilities that at least I would never have thought about.
I learned so much and gained so many insights about the art of
perfumery during these few magical days in Grasse, that my
initial hopes were surpassed a thousand times over. If my
private circumstances had been different and – if I had been at
least 10 years younger, I would never have hesitated for one
single second to go through the application process for the 9
months’ training course for professional perfumers-to-be. Even
though my heart more than ever belongs to the word of
botanicals, I would have willingly invested money, time and effort
into “learning it all” the professional way, and then would have
used these skills to advance the art of natural botanical
perfumery to new and exiting levels. As it is, I’m still convinced
that every single € I spent on the too short, two weeks’ training
in Grasse will pay off more than could ever be foreseen.
Therefore, I feel pretty confident to encourage anybody with a
deeper interest in natural perfumery to not be afraid of classical
perfumery education, but to get a head start by applying for the
Fragrance Summer School over the years to come.
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