perfumery

this blog has moved

2006-07-13T06:32:00.000-07:00

Thank you for your visit. This blog has moved to:
www.tauerperfumes.com/blog

Please update your links and readers

1 year blogging

2006-07-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

heieiei... I am so nervous. It is my first birthday.

It is more or less a year now since I started blogging. Time to celebrate and share this somewhat special moment. This blog has seen some funny posts, strange posts, lots of typo’s and even more comments (Thank you all!) about life, perfumes and perfumery. I look forward to continuing tomorrow… but not here anymore. Starting tomorrow, I will post here:

www.tauerperfumes.com/blog

What you should do now.... there is (22.30 local Swiss time) still something there, waiting for you.....: Follow this link http://www.tauerperfumes.com/blog

Pictograms

2006-07-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

So, this blog saw an interesting comment yesterday and I wanted to take the time to address the one point that I thought most interesting and challenging in Anya's comment.
What do I want the rose, or linalool or whatever to do? I changed the question to include synthetics.

The starting point: When I create a fragrance I basically make a very complex chemical recipe. Add 1 gr of linalool into flask, add 2 gr of limonen.... , allow to react for 30 days at room temperature, ....add ethanol, mix, allow to ....When working with naturals, this recipe becomes very, very complicated, but at the end it still is a recipe containing a set of chemicals that are mixed in a certain order, allowed to react and find an equilibrium, diluted in ethanol, filtered, bottled, sold. A comment on the side: Our scent of smell is capable of quite some abstraction. Take phenylethylalcohol, add some citronellol, citral, damascenon eventually and people will recognize the rose. It is a similiar phenomenon like our visial sense: Draw a few lines and people will recognize the tree, the house, the dog... that's the trick with pictograms. In this sense: Phenylethylalcohol is the pictogramm for the rose scent.

Now, what do I want? It depends... for a certain scent I want some molecules in this mix to be identifiable, to stand out and form a sensorial impression that is recognized by its closeness to something we know. Like the rose. Do I care to be as close as possible to the roses natural scent. Nope! I care for the concept of rose, eventually I want the rose to become symbolic, to be lifted into an idea.

Some of the molecules are intended to be there to form a new sensorial impression that is also recognized but as something new. This new impression is sort of a holy grail... lucky us: There are lots of these grails around and just have to find them.

And then there is also a supportive class of molecules in a sense. These molecules are there to bring others up but never bring themselves into the game. Helpful servers, modest but indispensable.

Linden blossom and petunia

2006-07-10T09:36:00.000-07:00

Driving with my bike trough town this morning, the fragrance of fresh linden blossom woke my nose up. It is a true delight, precious and so far, I have not smelled anything synthetic that could replace it. There are some molecules that come close, some eventually might be combined to give this impression, but replace it? No. The natural linden blossom absolute that you can get does not have this wonderful elegance and freshness, sweetness, the airy neroli, the sexyness of jasmine and the lightness of lily-of-the-valley. It is a greenish scent with rather "wet-wood" undertones... thus: We have to enjoy the season and sniff as much as we can of this natural delight.

The same is true for my petunia, flowering in little pots, on the veranda. Deep, rich, vanilla, oakmoss and a sensual powder fills the surrounding in later afternoon. A true delight and the only reason why I have planted them anyway.

Besides sniffing these naturals... I look forward to sniff and learn some synthetics, like decahydro beta naphtylacetate (I hope I got it right), I love it but haven't mastered it, yet... this week will see me continuing the work started on the lavender, complementing what has been done over the weekend (more about it tomorrow), sending out some parcels, tell you more about a most astonishing meeting last Friday and talk about some business ideas....

old fashioned

2006-07-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

After an epic fooling around with Excel, trying to get an overview about postage paid, cash in and cash out, I treated myself for 2 hours with working right away on the skeleton of yesterday. Lines of actions: Add some flesh to the base with tonka beans (replacing coumarin), vetiverol, a hint patchouli and vanillin, some ambrein to the cistus and oakmoss, up to the IFRA allowed limit. Adding hair and skin by addition of ionone, beta, phenylethylalcohol and iso-amylsalicylate to the orris line, and blood and nervous tissue by the addition of some methyl-pamplemouse (guessed right: brings in a citrus, green, vetiver line), linalool, linalylpropionate.

Humbly begging for attention, the preliminary result landed under W.'s nose, while Germany-Italy was still playing at 0:0. The comment was something like:" Hmmm ..that's new and interesting....move it and play that ball!.....it smells like.....ohhhh, again they can't keep the ball.....something....ahhh, what a chance..... something familiar, like a classic....go,go,go.... a little bit old fashioned".

Humbly returning to my computer, the formula changes were entered in excel and the perfumer entered in a thinking loop: Are my compositions old fashioned? Grummel-grübel-studier (no translation...). Well, looking back at last Saturday's sniffing meeting with Vero, old fashioned might turn out to be a compliment. We sniffed Que sais je?, by Caron. This, after scents that seem to have been created by Mr. 666, the bad beast, you name it, with the purpose to send our noses to a frozen universe, expanded endlessly, with not much more left than 0.1 degree Kelvin background noise. And then there came Que sais je. Tuberose, vanilla, civet, oakmoss, so fine, so rich, so yummy, with this wonderful orris story, powdery and lasting. A dream!

Now, coming back today to yesterday's trial: Somewhat too hairy: I have to shave this barbarian thing. It could need a little bit more vibrance energy at the beginning, it does not seem to know how to use its muscles yet, and I have give it a little bit more of a green powdery make-up.

a lovely day

2006-07-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th of July to all my readers in the US, enjoy and celebrate!
In todays post we will visit together the skeleton of a scent. I worked for quite a while on the scent with Lavender. hmmm...I need a project/category name for it, because my new blog that will soon go live and replace my blogspot.com blog, allows me to easily create categories....hmmm... how about ....hmmm...can't think of anything clever as working title for this project of mine... I will have to ask Barry ;-)
Well, I worked on it, with the goal to come up with a sketch that is good enough to be followed further, approaching at least schematically the picture I have in mind. Looking back at it, I can clearly see how this draft might work; it will need much more to become wearable, but the basic lines might fit. The next step: Do it again and move on by decorating things out. I will leave the skeleton mix for maturation just to see how it develops over time.
Starting with what I had already (Okoumal, with a hint coumarin, kephalis, cistus, and castoreum, decatone) I moved on, carefully not to mess things up again. I added a fir line with bergamot to the top, an orris line (which will need careful fine tuning later, right now it is just a line) and sandalwood to the base.
And finally: The lavender...I have a large selection of various qualities at hand, not to miss the synthetic lavender boosters; I decided for a mix of my French lavender with the Bulgarian quality.
The synthetic boosters will come later, when I work on the flesh for this skeleton. Like testosterone doses added to your daily vitamine intake brings about muscles, reduces fat and makes you look like a handsome guy, boosters like linalool add volume to a lavender, bring down the sweetness and excessive flowery aspects. As with all things in live, it is just a matter of dose, too much and your lavender looses its natural appearance and looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his days as actor, before his botox time as governor....

Still life

2006-07-03T09:48:00.000-07:00

When looking at my basil babies in front of the house yesterday evening, with the sun approaching the horizon and pouring an orange light over Zurich, I couldn't help realizing the allegory of things in front of me.I met with Vero on Saturday and we had an excellent exchange, and as always I came home loaded with ideas and impressions. I will talk a little bit about it tomorrow.
Thus, back to the still life in front of my house: A nice allegory for my approach of the lavender scent somehow, the only thing missing is the fir. You see the lavender on the right, visited by bees and butterflies in the evening, in full bloom right now. To the left are the petunia which smell awesome, vanilla-musk-powdery-animalic, and then there are the basil seedlings, not smelling much yet, but they will, green, green, green and somewhat camphorwood spicy, yummy! In front, there is the thyme. I have a lemon thyme essential oil from France and this is what I want to try this week with my lavender, complementing the touch vanilla that I try to bring in the back. In the back to the left you see a piece of wood that is rotting there (I leave it because it makes a nice border line and it is home to many little insects, playing their games there. )Bring your nose there and you are transported into a world of wet forest soil, remembering of agarwood, ambergris, with a touch of mushroom.
With this picture I engage into another week that will see me thinking hard about September until December 06, stocking things, streamlining things and consolidating things. Issues that I will cover later this week, once the still life has found its way into a little glass bottle on my desk…..

green greetings

2006-07-01T02:04:00.000-07:00

Greetings to you all. I am fighting with my jungle in front of the house, with litte success. Well, I guess that is a good news for our green visitors there.
Enjoy your weekend and see you soon here again.

for the beauty of it

2006-06-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

And because it is so beautiful...

full bloom

2006-06-30T10:43:00.000-07:00

My lavender is in full bloom right now and I started my day by cutting a few flowers and holding them under my smelling knop. It is a wonderful scent, with a but..... The "but" is referring to the man-made lavender oil. Water distilled, cooked, transported by water vapors and collected after a rather harsh process, this extract misses a lot of the real thing. It's deprived of most of the spicy character, the rosmarin notes and also part of the woody character (ah...the coumarin! with its softness, sweet, almond nutty fat and creamy) The essential oil is much more flowery and not surprisingly , somehow tamed.

I have a lavender concrete which is like a mixture of the essential oil abstraction and the wild thing. Green in colour it is very tempting to work with: Coumarin notes, green woodyness with etherical spices. Talking about Coumarin: The next step for my lavender will be a Coumarin (tonka beans?)/vanilla chord that is intended to add some wilderness to my nicely dressed essential oil. I am also considering too add some vetiver that would nicely branch out for the okoumal/cistus/castoreum accord. This will be one line of action today. The other will be more factory oriented again.

Not that the copy of the flower's true scent is the goal, but it guides the way what to do with the essential oil. Bring back part of the wild, untamed character, add some of the fierceness of lavender fighting for the bees on dry Mediteranean ground, in full sunlight....

factory

2006-06-29T11:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, suddenly, I got my mail system working for the blog on wordpress (using a plugin) and I am really looking forward to bringing this blog to the tauerperfumes domain. Thus, if it was already there I would put this post under category "Factory", where I am talking about production. Or I could bring it under "marketing buzz", or.....hmmm I haven't really figured out what categories I want to use. I am not focused enough in my blogging and do not intend to change.....
In light of yesterday's activities, pouring yet another batch of Lonestar Memories to be boxed today, with the L'air du désert marocain waiting to be poured and boxed, too: I see it coming....sooner or later I will make it true and change the packaging for the L'air du désert marocain. The goal: Efficiency in keeping stocks and packaging. The solution: Using one format, one bottle, one concept.

The consequences would be: Reduce the l'air to 50 ml, adjust the labels and flyer. Dear Prince Barry made, a long time ago, a query among perfume lovers at PerfumeofLife and the bottom line was that 1.7 FL OZ is not critical.

Now, please, do not get me wrong here....there is still some time to enjoy 100 ml bottles and a strange white box slightly too large for the perfume. But a simple linear extrapolation of my current sales volume tells me to start thinking about these issues....and now back to the rythm of perfume bottles popping out and the heat and sweat of the perfume factory. :-)

Photo:

Workers in the Lock & Drill Department, National Cash Register, Dayton, Ohio
Photograph
Detroit Photographic Company
William H. Jackson, Photographer
About 1902
www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/dpc/everyday/dayton.asp

Scent of summer

2006-06-28T08:38:00.000-07:00

When driving home in the evening after a short visit of mom, I cruised through waves of what is ...the scent of summer. After the orgie of spring scents so rich in salicylates, white flower's indoles and fragrances desperately calling the bees, it is now the time of lavender flowering in the garden, cool mossy scents from the dark woods and dry hay and wheat ripening. With the windows open, hair in the wind, the villages passed by at this peaceful evening, and with lots of dogs together with their masters, doing the last round around the block, I headed home. There, I witnessed the partial devastation of a kitchen within 2.5 minutes, resulting in an abrubt shift of activities, like the thunderstorm later tonight that washed away the fragrances of a summer night.

Here is how: (for further details: please consult W.....) Take 1 ounce of milk, add it to the leftover of honey in the honey pot, put it into the microwave for 2 minutes, setting high (high like "get that nuclear power plant running,.... W. is making his milk"), take it out (not boiling), shake it (spontaneous boiling) and watch your kitchen getting covered with a milky honey soup, sticky juice all over, smelling wonderful....It was time for a short lesson in physics of the boiling process, exemplified in our kitchen and some cleaning activities.

The bed saw me -after many mails that needed to be finished- covered in a scent chord, simple but highly interesting: Okoumal, Cistus, and my Mr. beaver imitate. I test this chord for my lavender thing, as one of the base accords and was amazed how well the beaver, this thick wet fir, dirty animal scent works with the cistus. Here, I have a special quality, the steam distilled essential oil combined with extract. I do not know exactly how it is done, but it lasts longer, is darker, more intense and has this rich woody and furry quality that I love. Bottomline: I slept wonderful and can see how these three compounds might work together. The Okoumal brings in a woody ambergris effect and vibrant lightheartedness that will fit very well with a lavender accord. This is excellent. It would be the first time that I finally might engage my little beaver who swims around in his pool since years, waiting for its call to serve mankind.

Mr. Beaver was carrying me then over the water to the other side, called dreamland. On my way there I looked back at today's short telephone conversation with the German Vogue that will feature a little news about the L'air du desert marocain, somewhen in August.

basenotes

2006-06-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

Ah... I forgot. (you see...yesterday's night still drains....)

Here is link to a basenote discussion on the Lonestar Memories. I am somewhat proud and love the title of the post
http://community.basenotes.net/showthread.php?t=183647

And not to miss: Victoria on her blog about the Lonestar Memories:
http://victoriasown.blogspot.com/2006/06/lonestar-memories-tauer-perfumes.html

Enjoy... and: I promise that I will not make any promotion tomorrow!

ohhhhh

2006-06-27T07:55:00.000-07:00

In Swiss German, this post would start with something like," ohhhh, niä meh......" which easily translates into "ohh, never again". I am talking about yesterday's evening that I can still feel in my bones and ...... well, it was spontaneous. Riding home on my bike I passed by the Alte Trotte, the restaurant, where Alice, a dear friend of mine invited me to join her for a glass of wine before the big game, the football game between Switzerland and our Eastern friends from the Ukrania. Thus, I said yes, but just for a little glass and only 15 minuts because I had so much to get done....
At midnight I finally came home, had done nothing of what should have been done and felt wonderful, because I spent time with a friend and I watched the game (Switzerland lost, but it was a nice match, fair, with cool scenes) and drunk more than one glass.

Now, it is some 7 hours later, and I do not feel that well anymore. The pile of mails did not disappear yesterday night and I have to see that I will get things done today! In that sense.... fragrant wishes my dear perfume lovers. I look back at yesterday evening as a study for a future football perfume: Get to know your clients first!

maculata

2006-06-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

Nature is far from perfect. (see the rose of yesterday morning on the left; beautiful, smelling like an angel, but not perfect... this is maybe what makes it so beautiful?) Thus...I had to buy a pair of new glasses on Saturday. One reason was the old glasses falling apart, the other reason has to do with my arms that slowly but surely do not allow me anymore to compensate the inadequate focusing of my ocular system. My optician told me that there is no reason to worry. I am beyond 40 and around this age the signs become immanent of what happens since birth: A continuous decline, due to protein degradation in my lens. No way to stop it. It starts when you are born and it ends when … well, when things come to an end.
Thus, my Saturday shopping turned into a memento mori trip (latin for remember death). And it boosted my plans for the weekend. Who knows how much time is left, thus I figured out to better move on with a few things; such as preparing my blog on wordpress and bringing it on the tauerperfumes.com domain, getting the stuff ready for “Aus Liebe zum Duft”…

…commercial break on the side: Yeha…the cowboy made it successfully to Germany, too!, where he will be enjoying football and German hospitality….

and some more stuff, like fooling around will little beaver and cistus. More about this animal story in the coming days.

Thus, I went for a nice pair of new glasses. Positive side aspect: I get a new look! Soon, I gonna look like a real intellectual. Ha! Change is great, as you may observe on Marina’s blog that has a great, cool look, too. I liked it, check it out!

training

2006-06-23T10:58:00.000-07:00

It is going to be a full day today, for various reasons, which is good. In light of all the excitements going on , like the stories developing in the the blogosphere (see made by blog) , or in my shop , I post today something less exciting.... to calm down things.

Maybe some readers imagine the live of a perfumer like he's constantly creating new perfumes in a little lab, just sitting on his table and one wonderful formula after the other pours out of the lab. Well, life is -as usual- much more dull than that. Most of the time, when I work with scents, I do not really compose, but rather sit there and train myself. Sniffing one compound after the other, on paper strips, sometimes comparing how to different scents on two strips combine, and how they develop. For every new compound arriving at my place which starts to look really messy these days, I have to do that. Again and again.
There are difficult scents and easy scents. The easy ones: Once sniffed, I feel like I understand them, and feel acquainted immediately. They are like people in a sense. Sometimes it happens that you meet a stranger, but you feel so comfortable, immediately there is a relation and the whole person is like an open book, that you have already read. (well, sometimes you later have to realize that you missed some pages in this book...and you do your reading again)
Thus, I sat on my desk yesterday, once all mails were answered, windows open, paper strips in front and sniffed Okoumal again, a book with many pages, most of them unread and many with strange letters that I yet have to decipher. Another aspect of perfumery: Detective work.

riding on

2006-06-23T07:24:00.000-07:00

there's a guy riding on...let's hope he arrives in due time and safely.
more here on Heather's blog

rain

2006-06-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

On my way home, yesterday evening, by bike, I remembered again a few reasons why bike holidays can be a pain. I was on my way for about two minutes, some more ten minutes to go, when the clouds above me did what clouds are supposed to do. Within a minute I was beamed from mid Europe to Delhi, on a hot July day at noon, monsoon rain pouring down merciless, transforming streets into little rivers and ponds. Within a minute I got soaking wet, looking miserable like mom's poodle if wet, smelling probaly similar.
But then, to compensate for this middle European white man's misery, there it was: The smell of rain on asphalt, that is so unique and so good! Earthy, yummie, edible, depending on where and how smelling thick and brownish, and I found out today, using google that this is called PETRICHOR

A perfume that just smells like that for hours....no, I don't think so. I do not think that people would like me smelling like fresh rain on asphalt, thus making them grab for their umbrellas as soon as they smell me...on the other hand: still better than wet dog, I guess.

Smells like one you can buy.

2006-06-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

Finally, I was brave enough to touch my lavender again, trying to come up with something useful. And while doing so, I felt so much appreciation for the two perfumers working on Marina’s and Katie’s scents, to be followed on made by blog. Brave men, and I am glad that I do not have to produce new perfumes on a daily basis. IFF would fire me within a week, after my boss realized that the newly created fragrances in bottles next to my desk are moving somewhere between pile of rotten lavender flowers and lily, cooked for two hours with a pile of fir needles ;-)

Thus, the only thing I got is: Doubts and a bottle with something that is like wire model of a scent, containing the resin-fir head of terpinylacetat and nopylacetat with some linalool, two different lavenders (mailette and a classical French one), some green lily-of-the-valley mix, Kephalis and Sandalore…ah forgot bergamot. Well, this is about the best wire model I could think of yesterday evening. Somehow…. I am a little bit blocked, considering seriously whether the lily of the valley is what I want to have in there…. Thus, the wire model draft of a fragrance landed on a paper strip and then under W.’s nose without additional comments from my side.

What I got back was “hmmm, good, that smells like a perfume you can buy”.

Wrong answer! First one can buy my perfumes, too. Secondly, I worry…. am I getting main stream here? Thirdly, he should have said “ that’s not finished yet” or something like that. Hmm… we will have to be tougher with him the coming days. Educate a spoiled nose!

Old English clubs

2006-06-20T09:07:00.000-07:00

For an interview I am doing (or getting done ….depending the way you look at it) I checked how a perfumer is defined on wikipedia; this in order to figure out what others think. Not that I would care too much about how my fellow human beings define the term perfumer, more out of curiosity. To make things short: A nose must know a lot of smelling compounds, distinguish them alone or in mixtures and know how they develop over time in presence of other compounds.

Ok, so far so good. Sometimes I wonder how others and also I do this. How do you come up with a memory concept to capture how a sent (let’s take lavender) develops over time in presence of a multitude of other compounds (like rose, tobacco, benzylsalicylate,…)? To me this looks pretty much like an N-dimensional problem with lots of non-linear factors. Thus, a pretty tough task.

Could I pack what I think I know into an excel file, a matrix of lavender on one side, rose, tobacco, benzylsalicylate on the other side? No. I couldn’t. Maybe others can. I can’t, because I think this knowledge (if existent) is present in a sublime way. It is about a feeling that lavender with tobacco will cut the tips out of lavender, make it dull on one hand, but keeps it down on planet earth, takes out the airiness,… hard to describe. Describing it in a picture, lavender in this tobacco company is like on old English club, where well-nourished old men would smoke their cigars, and ask the youngster new member with his lavender eau de toilette to please sit down and wait until his time has come to talk.

More on English gentlemen clubs on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentlemen's_club_(traditional)

Scent bar

2006-06-19T23:00:00.000-07:00

Looking for a scent bar, where you might meet a cowboy? And nice people? Scent loving fellows?

Here's the place to go...next week...
Don't miss the cowboys arrival in Luckyscent's scent bar and have a smoke with him! (or a coke...)

Yeha!

Pix: Luckyscents from pretty far away, on google maps.

Pineta

2006-06-19T07:45:00.000-07:00

This post is about sources of inspiration. I figured it out while jogging yesterday in the woods, doing my usual Sunday jogging thing, with an unusual transpiration, though. It was quite hot and humid leading to a somewhat tough ride. On my jogging round there is one spot in the wood, exposed towards south with some pine trees, fully exposed to the sun, quite tricky to pass by because there are lots of pine roots making a decent jogging somewhat difficult. When I am there, about 50% of the jogging distance lays behind me, thus I am already quite pumped up with soothing body hormones, allowing to forget misery. What is special about this few meters square spot: It smells like the pineta. The pine wood line between the sea coast and the land, as you find it in Italy or in southern France.

My associations with pineta are: Vacation, Mediterranean Sea, dry sand enriched with the warm scent of fir, or pine resin. And, as a quick check on Google tells me: I am not the only one. Google.ch delivers a camping place add if I enter pineta. Hence, google’s advertisement might also be an association check… let’s do a test and see what ads we get when we enter “mountain” on google.com: Nothing. But a hyperlink to brokeback mountain comes up. Therefore, let’s try brokeback mountain…. And again: No ad. Hmmmm…. And this is exactly how I work: Starting with something serious, ending on google, and thinking about placing an ad, that pops up when people enter “brokeback mountain”….for Lonestar Memories, of course.

Back to the pineta. Thus, while stumbling in a mini-version of this wonderful scent scenery, I figured out there is something in it that I could use with my lavender idea, this fresh resin, which is partly woody, partly spicy, dry, not green but complementing green lines. Chance wants it that I just got my hand on a molecule that will help me to bring this out: Nopylacetate. Fresh, spruce-pine-fir like but not fully bringing up the associations that fir brings around: Car fragrance, cheap Christmas scents and the freshness of forests in a bathroom spray.

(pix: http://www.racine.ra.it/provincia/prociv/pineta.jpg)

Confessions

2006-06-17T22:44:00.000-07:00

Saturday evening, looking at a pile of boxed perfumes once again. It is time for a little confession before wishing you a nice Sunday.
First I have to admit that once again I was not able to turn on the stereo radio thing that is coupled with the video and the hard disc recorder and the dvd player and ... well, I guess that's it. It wouldn't produce any sound and I felt a little bit ashamed. Thus, I watched CNN while packing L'air du dÃ©sert marocain which sells really good these days.
Second confession: Pascal sold aLonestarr Memories on the14thh of June, one day before my launch. I forgive him. He is a happy sinner, who couldn't resist selling it to a lovely man, entering his shop, buying Le Maroc pour elle and the L'air for perfume lovers in Russia. He happens to be Swiss and travels forth and back and I know that a lot is going on in Russia on some perfume forums,... I assume most of them talk nice about my perfumes.
Third confession: I will be lazy tomorrow, very much indeed. Not doing anything except for jogging, getting the barbeque ready for the evening with mom and... that's about it. Maybe a few mails, but not more!
I send you all fragrant wishes, be lazy...
Enjoy

The picture

2006-06-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

Well, I must tell you... I got a few questions already about the cowboy picture of Lonestar Memories and what I can tell you so far: Folks love the cowboy. Thus, I decided yesterday evening to place the picture on the web for download, in the format small, large and very large for those who want to hand the picture up over their bed (http://www.tauerperfumes.com/Lonestar_Memories.html).

And while sizing the pictures and getting the pages ready (I just made a simple webpage each, featuring just the picture) I had a closer look again at him. Thus, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. unknown cowboy doesn’t wear a ring…..keep on dreaming. I also wondered what he has in his left shirt pocket. To me, this looks like a little pack of snuff. Eaks…… must be something else, I don’t like him snuffing stuff. Let’s assume it is a pack of matches, in a strange round box, … must be… he will soon pick out one of them, and light a Marlboro ;-)

Next: Get the samples out!

tant de bruit

2006-06-14T22:01:00.000-07:00

You know the feeling? Working for a long time on something and then, suddenly, it is finished. And you start wondering " What have I done all the time? For this little omelet? ". I am referring to the French saying "tant de bruit pour une omelet" which means something like..."what's all the fuss about this little flat thing that you have produced", or so.
Thus, I sit in front of my computer screen, and wonder what took me so long. Looking back now, things seem to have taken endlessly. Reading my posts about it I feel like waking up after much too much hemp smoking and looking back, in real time again, and not understanding ...Or looking back down the trail once arrived on the mountain, sweaty maybe, but still wondering what took me so long for these few meters....
Thus, I look back. Somehow melancholic. I have to let my baby go.

Somewhere on this globe it is June 15 by now. Therefore: We launch Lonestar Memories.

wow!

2006-06-14T18:06:00.000-07:00

Wow.
I am listening to radio, my favourite lounge radio, http://www.lounge-radio.com/menu.html,
over the internet
in the train.
Wow, this is really cool.
And while passing nicely cooled down to ambient temperature in my train coach, driving through a little, rather flat part of Switzerland, under a lovely summer sun, I imagine how this will add up to my creative blogging.
On waves of lounge sound, soothed and excited at the same time, I think I found my broadband card today!
Greetings

MySQL

2006-06-14T11:17:00.000-07:00

After yesterdays wonderful evening with white wine, excellent company and as little football as was possible (Switzerland versus France, 0:0, hard to find a place without a screen) I face a day that will be rather busy.

Hence I have to limit myself to a little post today. Maybe an online issue on the side. I light of my vacation coming end of July, I figured out that I need to pump up my mobile computing. Meaning I want to be able to able to download my mails wherever I am, write posts wherever I stand and do business whenever I feel like it. Hmmm … a first trial yesterday and this very morning with the fancy Swisscom (local telcom provider) Liberty card is not entirely as expected. Sure, from time to time you find a super-trooper UMTS cell. But most of the time, liberty means the liberty to think about life, mankind and other stuff while waiting for internet pages to load.

So far not convincing. I will try the competitor and see what their coverage is. By the way: This post was posted from the train... at 160 km per hour. cool, ain't it?

Then: I have changed the hosting for the tauerperfumes domain, from a Windows host to a Linux host in order to get a MySQL database. That was easy. Next will be to move the website there and then bring everything under one domain: Blog and website. Not, that I have any clue what MySQL really means in technical terms and how things work in the backend. But I guess it is like driving a car. You can drive perfectly without having a clue what’s going on beneath you.

Later today I will see that I can bring things up to Pascal’s online shop and put my stuff life for the Lonestar Memories and then…. Then it is about time to work seriously on perfumes again.

Blue sky over Lenin's house

2006-06-13T09:29:00.000-07:00

The sky is still blue and will probably remain like that for the rest of the week. Great. The perfect weather for Pascal, my dear friend from Medieval art&vie and favourite perfume seller in Zurich. “What has weather to do with perfume selling?”, you might ask. “A lot”, he would probably tell you. First, there is a simple mood effect. The sun is shining and you are in a good mood and hence people seem to buy easier and are less worried about their credit card statement at the end of the month.

Second, nice weather = more people walking around in Zurich downtown = more people passing by Pascal’s shop. A shop, which happens to be close to the house where Lenin once lived (hence a lot of tourists passing by) and where Lenin thought about some things and came up with ideas that ultimately changed the world. How dangerous his ideas were, you may judge from the fact that the train coach that brought Lenin from Switzerland back through parts of the German Kaiserreich, was hermetically closed. They knew what Lenin was about to do and hence the Germans (in war with Russia and the rest of the world back then) let him pass, but made sure he could not infect Germany…

Thus, not really addressing the same questions that Lenin was dealing with, I had a little idea a couple of weeks ago. I proposed Pascal to place a bottle of the L’air du désert marocain outside, allowing people to spray (as much as they like) and test the perfume without the hassle of entering the shop.

Although this is not really what you aim at being a shop owner (shy clients not entering your shop), this is exactly what he did and since then...the weather became somewhat of an important sales factor and you see the perfumer praying for sun. Obviously, people like things being offered to them, and I think they like to test for themselves, without someone standing behind them, I think clients are shy, most of us probably are (well, I am).

Now, of course, the next question you might ask is: “How do you intend to bring this to the internet?”. “Well”, I would say, “I think I have to ask Lenin, maybe he had a few more ideas beyond revolution”.

Summer ante portas

2006-06-12T09:27:00.000-07:00

Summer is knocking at the door. The sky is a crisp blue fabric without any clouds covering a sea of houses, streets and green patches. And amidst this green: A Clementine tree that suddenly realized what its destination is. I have posted about this little tree of mine before, but this time… flowers all over. When I checked it yesterday afternoon the bush was visited by all sorts of insects, bees, flies, bugs, you name it…. And it smelled like a Sicilian orange orchid, right here in Zurich. A very clean scent, well…neroli, with a creamy undertone, typical white flower but with less sex appeal than jasmine, for instance, and much lighter than gardenia. I am baffled and think about starting a Clementine business on the side ;-)
Thus, summer is here and with it comes the smell of dried hay. On my way up the hill to start jogging there it was: The scent of “foin coupé” (sounds great, doesn’t it? The French really have a way of making things sound greater then they are…on the side: this year’s summer vacation will bring us to France, biking from the Atlantic somewhere around Bordeaux to the Mediterranean Sea, 12 days, 800 km, that’s going to be muscle building and mind easing.). Back to the hay. A brownish, aromatic, rich scent, which is much much better than the foin coupe concentrate that I got once; marzipan, coumarin-like, definitely edible, and a scent that you will never forget once smelled. With this hay in my nose, I jogged and wondered what to do next.
Here are some answers:
I want to understand why the dollar US is loosing value. So far I did not really care about rate exchange issues, but in light of my perfumes flying over the Atlantic I am faced with a dollar that has lost 10% of its value compared to a year ago. Of course, issues like dept, growth of the economy, the oil price are to be considered, but still… please explain. Anyway, although the dollar lost 10% of its value I have decided to keep prices as they are, hoping that the exchange rate stabilizes.
I need to consolidate things a little bit. I want the samples for the Le Maroc pour elle and the L’air du désert marocain to come under the same design style (talking Corporate Design here….). I need to integrate my blog into my www.tauerperfumes.com website and I want to move away from blogger.
I will have to prepare a September event, taking place together with a little fashion boutique here in Zurich, then there’s the idea of making a flyer together with Pascal from Medieval and a lady who’s doing desert trips in Morocco. A couple of interviews will also keep me busy and …. Well, after 2 hours jogging, I got home, drank 1 litre of water and fell asleep immediately, under a blue sky promising a warm evening.
(pix: Clementine flowers again)

Greetings

2006-06-10T18:56:00.000-07:00

I got a lot of questions these days...thus: 5 more days.... until June 15 (Lonestar leather).

From a sunny, summer-like Zurich: My best wishes for your Sunday.
(pix: Salvia flowers detail in the garden)

Papaver

2006-06-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

All those of you who expect a review of Opium now.... I am sorry, I have to disappoint you. The papaver flower (poppy flower) to the left is here because it is beautiful and because it happens to flower in my little green place in front of the house.
If you look at it closely, you will see a symetry built into it that is underlying its beauty. On the same time it is not symetrical, with the red petals each being unique. This is one aspect that makes natural things so unique, the simple, logical plan and underlying principle, paired with highest complexity and disorder.
These few words as food for thought today. I send you all my best wishes and hurry through a sun bathed Zurich, enjoying finally the pre-summer sun of June on the go.

Football

2006-06-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I could not resist. After a bombardment with football related news and pictures and sounds I found myself in a position that I MUST talk about it, too. Football seems to be everywhere, and I had a hard time finding a channel on TV not discussing a football related topic yesterday evening when I tried to ease an overheated brain. I ended up shortly on the Shopping Channel, featuring women’s jewelleries and on CNN, featuring Iraq. Both channels are rather monothematic these days.

Thus, I sat for a few minutes outside, watching the moon that will soon shine over Germany’ games and the Swiss and other football teams who earn so much for doing so little. And I wondered how little these games are used to promote perfumes. It doesn’t seem to be the right surrounding for selling fragrances, which is strange. All these sweaty men on the green and the crowds in football fever: The perfect environment for a green sporty, circular perfume. Ah well, so I sat below the moon and figured out that again an idea came too late: I should have come up with a nice green lavender note with lots of Ambergris and fresh, citrus-vetiver notes…for the Swiss Football Team! Hmmm, and then have the Swiss football team wear it! That would be cool. Of course, they would wear it and promote it just because they like it so much, without me paying for their exposed bodies. I would come on TV, as the guy creating the Swiss Football Team Scent, which helped them survive the first round! I could, as souvenir for the Swiss football tourists travelling to Germany and soon travelling back, make a scented football: Imagine a football that emits wonderful fragrances once kicked, a flying ambra ball!

Mr. Blatter, the FIFA boss, would wear it too. He is a Swiss guy himself and very, very clever in promoting himself and the FIFA, thus making the FIFA the wealthiest foundation on planet earth (which is cool, they do not have to pay taxes in Zurich, where their head office is….). His girlfriend who is amazingly blond and very beautiful and young, would love it, too. And thus, he would besides building his network of give-and-take (I give you a million to build up football in your poor country, and you give me whatever you want, like your vote), he would promote my perfume, wearing it in Germany, when he meets the boss of Bavaria (Mr. Blatter got a reception yesterday like a king or a states man)…

Well, I have to correct myself. I just remembered the latest Rexona (deodorant) commercial which is very football related. But to my knowledge, neither Blatter nor the Swiss football team wear it….

Well, in four years time, there will be another opportunity, I guess. Until then I will have finished my lavender note and stopped watching the moon, begging it to explain me the last mystery on this world: Why do people watch football?

Dissection

2006-06-07T00:17:00.000-07:00

Dissection
As mentioned yesterday on this blog: The lavender is hiding in the woods.
Which is no good. But I think I know now what to do next….I will have to recklessly reduce the woods to a thin line.
Maybe a few words on how I work generally. I have this idea in my head: Lavender. 4 axes (flowery, spicy, woody, green). Approaching these axes I start with the backbone, like painting with a thick brush I make a large streak of Okoumal (woody), add another one with Cistus (spicy, woody), add lavender essential oil and then add the green line (Muguet, Lilly of the valley). (A short note here: This Lilly of the valley line, I composed myself, trying to abstract the scent to its greenness. You may ask:”why do it yourself if there are ample lily of the valley reconstructions out there already?”- Well, first it is a good exercise and I wanted this abstraction, the green soul of Lily of the valley to be used together with my lavender). These lines are the main axes. Now follows the next layer: Another wood, clove (spicy), menthylacetat and peppermint (Yakima) adding a green, flowery twist, and so on, going from the rough lines to the finer tones.
Yesterday, I realized again how thin the line is between a lovely spicy touch and an annoying medicinal pungent disaster. So, back to field one again, keeping the axes (less wood), and the first few lines, but changing proportions.
Finally, Okoumal is a wonderful component, very woody, ambergris with tobacco notes, but… I haven’t learnt enough how to use it. It becomes very easily dominant and hides all flowers and spices and green leaves behind a wall of woody ambergris with a slightly metallic shine.
Don’t get me wrong, please: I do not know whether I will ever sell a Lavender note. But I just love to learn how to bring out the beauty of this wonderful scent with all its facets. (See also Katie's comments in the last past....a poetic description of Oregon's lavender scents in Summer

hunting and fishing excercises

2006-06-06T08:56:00.000-07:00

Being hunters and gatherers we human beings are driven most of our time by the urge to … well: Hunt down and gather things. Sometimes we fish, too; compliments for instance. When reading Luca Turin’s newest column this morning in the NZZ, the very first thing I did, even before my obligatory coffee, this was my first thought. As I have said: I had no coffee, yet….. His column is great, this one rocks. I love it. Thus, caffeine deprived I sat there and thought about the motivation of perfume lovers who buy these summer editions of scents that Luca talks about. And the only thing I could come up with was: Hunt, with an aspect of fear not to miss anything – on the consumer side- and hunt with a greedy aspect –on the scent provider side-. I am relieved somehow now that I had my first cup of coffee that I am not the only one, looking at a seemingly endless stream of “version d’été, version light, version citrus with a touch of peach or whatever” in bafflement; who is going to buy this? Why do they even talk about it? Did I miss something?

But here’s another thought that is somewhat disturbing (I had my second cup now): I am kind of part of the game, too. Adding yet another fragrance to this inundation of civilized world with scents.

(An here is a short commercial break by Tauer Perfumes: Tatatataaaa!…In 9 (nine) days, i.e. June 15, 00.00, the world will see the Lonestar Memories eau de toilette.)

My excuse: I cannot but …. in a sense I am a hunter, too. (With limited success as far as the lavender is concerned. This beast is hiding in the woods. More about my lavender hunting tomorrow)

Where's the bug?

2006-06-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

What you see to the left is yesterday's visitor of one of my roses, a cute bug, with lovely colours, and a green that brillantly reflects its surrounding.

When I promised you a post for this weekend I did not think in the fact that not for everybody this Monday is part of the weekend... well, for me it is.

This is optimal in the sense that I may do what I wanted to do since a long time: Playing with some lines for my lavender note, and get some sleep. And eventually, combine the two things. Morning in the bed is still one of the best places to come up with the most gorgeous ideas!

Greetings from a bed in Zurich!

no post today

2006-06-02T16:44:00.000-07:00

No post today, but I promise will post once over the looooong weekend.
To compensate: here's a little poem for you

The world’s like a flower
Either fallen or grown
The leaves cover secrets
And the pedals are shown
We're like a flower

The world's like a rose
Every rose has its thorns
If we make a mistake
The skin gets torn
We're like a flower

The world's like a daisy
Pretty and bright
We all have our colors
But in a way we're just right
We're like a flower

The world's like a flower
All the thorns will pass through
The world's like a flower
Just waiting to bloom

Free Faller, from poemhunter.com

made by

2006-05-31T23:51:00.000-07:00

I am very excited and honoured to send you a link today that you mustn’t miss: Go and visit Made by Blog (http://whatwedoissecret.org) and discover the start of an experiment that will unfold in the coming weeks and months. We are given the chance to witness the creation of two perfumes, custom made, and get the chance to sniff experimental versions, trials of Katie’s and Marina’s dream perfume, created by Clement Gavarry and Laurent le Guernec, both from IFF. Both perfume wishes are demanding, challenging a perfumer’s creativity, and it will be exciting to see how their perfume wish materializes in a bottle. Both perfumers get the chance to create a fragrance without restrictions in terms of price or marketing deadlines. Thus, I guess we will witness a dream come true for the perfumers, too.

I am excited and thank Kathie and Marina again for inviting me on this venture. This experiment will be interesting for many aspects; like learning, discovering, educating, wondering, witnessing, being part of it, sharing, ….

Just like Luca Turin described in his new book “secret of scent” that I still have not finished yet, but already like a lot and find very interesting, there is a high risk of entering the domain of sex and physical attraction once you start talking about perfumes with people, even if you do not really know them. You end up (like yesterday evening) with more or less strangers telling you about ex-lovers who had this horrifying perfume that was covering all body scent of the gone lover, which was a pity because he smelled beautiful all by himself. Talking about perfumes and the sense of smell kind of brings you right at the bodily heart of things, opens up a route to topics you wouldn’t dear touching otherwise. Funny, isn’t? Or would you ask between main course and dessert the girlfriend of your husband’s buddy what her ex-lover smelled like?

examination actions

2006-05-31T08:49:00.000-07:00

Lately, when being exhausted but not ready for bed yet, I watched a TV discussion on human evolution and what sets us apart and there the sentence was dropped “Thinking is examination of actions in your mind” which probably is true. Thus, while engaging on the endeavour of Lonestar Memories packaging, I had time to do these examinations of actions in my mind. Initially, my brain was functioning according to this idea (and I examined various actions in my head) and I had an idea: Putting my posts and some comments on this blog, that deal one way or the other with the Lonestar Memories scent, in a condensed form on the business website (or here). Thus, allowing all interested perfume lovers to witness again the unfolding of a story.

Thus, I started packaging and soon, my thinking was not examining a lot anymore. The routine of putting the cardboard boxes together infected the upper brain circuits and the mind wandered around. I took a piece of paper and wrote down from time to time what happens up there. Here follows an excerpt of some synaptic responses….

- The hemp rope smells wonderful, funny though; I never thought about it, this hemp rope smell fits nicely with the Lonestar fragrance.

- The whole package with the cowboy and the white cardboard box looks cool

- I love that cowboy picture, such a cutie, still convinced: a perfect match.

- That fragrance really is the real stuff, a scent which is very true, hmmmm I like it.

- Once it is out, it is out. What will they say?

- Limited progress, I have to get faster.

- I should order more white paper

- I want to work on my lavender note

- These sample labels drive me crazy

- I hate cardboard boxes and hemp ropes

- Ahh… a hundred samples more to go.

- Oups I torn the sticker apart

- Oh my… I just put on the same sticker twice, can’t even handle that. I have to concentrate.

- At least my samples look more expensive than the ones for Dior’s eau sauvage, I prefer glass to plastic. I wonder what Roudnitska would say about the modern Eau sauvage sample vial. He’d probably cry.

- I am there where I was 25 years ago, working for Migros during the summer break (Migros = small walmart). But instead of typing in numbers and fooling around with canned food, I fool around with scents and their packaging. That’s evolution

- I need a beer

- Do people realize it is all hand packed? Why should they care? They do not care, but they will realize that this packaging cannot be assembled by machine. Thus….that’s a Unique Selling Proposition. All hand packed in Zurich. Cool. I have to tell this.

- I wish it wasn’t my hands doing the packaging

- I need another beer

- I’ll continue over the weekend

Artificial Intelligence

2006-05-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

LONESTAR MEMORIES... THE COUNTDOWN IS RUNNING: 16 MORE DAYS.
Therefore...patience and little perfumery posts about perfume creation but more about packaging in the coming days

And here's today's post....

I love AI, the movie, even if some of the science towards the end is wrong. And I found out lately -when watching it again for the x-th times- that even in a quite far away future Chanel will still be there. (this becomes obvious in the scene where the AI boy perfumes himself with mommy’s treasure, I think it is Chanel 5, but I am not sure). So far so good. Thus, the ice caps may melt but we still can get our perfume classics. I just wonder what it is going to smell like, then in something like 75 years from now when most of our pole’s ice has poured into the seas and turned Venice into water world Atlantis. Looking at this week’s weather I can not fight the impression that this melting has started a while ago and most of the melt water comes down on Switzerland right now.
Well, there is not much we can do(about the rain, not the ice caps. The later issue must be addressed now) but perfumery wise, we could extrapolate Chanel 5 towards 2073, in a similar way we do extrapolate the fate of the ice layer on our poles, and might still come up with a decent scent, fitting entirely with IFRA’s newest recommendations for 2073, featuring upper limits for linalool of 0.0001 percent and eugenol at 1ppb. In Europe, the perfume wrapping features a holographic chip, in line with the newest Communication 1195843A201 from the Commission, based on the latest results of a cell line test that proofed again the toxicity of alcohol at levels of 50%. Therefore, pointing out to all potential buyers, the chip displays the warning message in all 48 European languages that this particular product contains 524 compounds being considered potentially dangerous to consumers as follows: Water, alcohol, eugenol, linalool, limonene,…
While thinking about this dark world of future perfume regulations, I cannot but realize that most of my favourite films do not feature perfumes. Neither the Alien monster nor Ashley, the highly sophisticated robot, use perfumes. I do not remember any of the Carbon Units using perfumes, although everything would be in place to nicely reproduce any perfume, using the clever machine that produces Captain Picard’s tea. And in Space Odyssey 2001 there is no room for smelling strips either.
Well, maybe this is due to the fact that this future is too far away and Chanel has gone out of business? Or is due to the fact that in a space ship there is simply no room for perfumes? Or are these Sci-Fi heroes just too damn tough to wear perfumes? I do not know, but I am sure, Ashley would love a nice decent lavender note.
(pix from http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Main_Page)

Interview questions

2006-05-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

Looking back to an interesting weekend with attractive interview questions to a perfumer, one being the question for one’s motivation to do what one does, in a world with launches and re-launches of scents on a daily basis. An answer: To create a fragrance that did not exist before, and share it. Thus, creation and sharing as driving force?
Looking back some 15 years, creating things was one aspect that I also enjoyed when working in the lab, trying to get my PhD done in chemistry, working with bacteria. At some time I was genetically modifying my little Escherichia coli with junks of archaebacterial DNA, thus have them make a particular protein. In a sense I created my own private E. coli, never seen on this world. It feels good to build something new, especially if this something is a living cell. Sharing in this context meant publishing results in a scientific journal. Publishing is like having the flash light turned on, pointing to your results, leading the scientific world to what you have done and reached.
Back then, in the laboratory, the goal was to proof an idea. In that particular case the idea was related to the evolution of all species, via a common ancestor which used RNA instead of DNA to store information on how to build its proteins.

Coming back to the interview… maybe this is another motivation. To simply proof oneself that a vision can become reality, that one can do it?
Well yesterday, while thinking about these and other questions, I proofed to myself that I can do 200 samples between jogging and cooking dinner, that’s already something, isn’t it?

chemistry and mysteries solved

2006-05-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

Whenever in the past I sniffed Comme des garcons' Red palisander (whichI like very much), there were a few lines in there that I did not understand and now how it might have been done. It became clear that it can't be a complex essential oil isolated from nature's treasure box, but I guessed it is a few single compounds from the chemists treasure box. Now, with my samples from Essencia featuring a few Givaudan samples, I at least have a good guess for one line in Red Palisander what it is and I still like it a lot. Even more than before.
As a matter of fact, there are chemicals that are -although being no complex mixture- very complex per se. I guess 4-(1-Ethoxyvinyl)-3,3,5,5-tetramethylcyclohexanone is one. It is wood, amber, tobacco, red, warm, with something vibrantly cedarwood like, but different. hmmm....yummie stuff. And I saw immediately how to combine this one with lavender. I just can't wait to test this idea.
Two things are interesting here: How complex the impression by one type of molecule might be and how the brain immediately comes up with combinations and axes where this scent impression might fit.
Imagine: If one molecule brings about already dozens of scent impressions, how much more is then in natural extracts with their vastitude of chemical compounds combined.....
For all those of you interested in learning what are main chemical ingredients in natural scents:
Visit Bo Jensen's website here. It is still growing and quite educative.
http://www.bojensen.net/EssentialOilsEng/EssentialOils.htm

And with these words I send you my best wishes for the weekend. I hide in my perfumery kitchen, admire the Lonestar Memories flyers that arrived yesterday and dream of 4-(1-Ethoxyvinyl)-3,3,5,5-tetramethylcyclohexanone

Trains

2006-05-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

Sitting in the train again to Berne, the last time for the rest of this week. In my backpack sits again the mixed l’art pour l’art scent, but again slightly modified, diluted prematurely just to see (you remember?- the thing with the orris line). Although I felt beautiful with the scent on, there was one issue troubling me: The very start, the initial development of it. In the first impression on skin (not on paper) there was an edge coming probably from the black pepper I am using and eventually also a brownish-hard tip coming from the agarwood/vetiver in the back. Thus, I figured out it might be worth accentuating the citrus line in the top note, softening it a little bit more with bergamot (and Bergamot is quite helpful doing so: Softening and smoothening, a helpful quality similar to Jasmine, allowing to cheat just a little bit). I also added a touch more of the grapefruit, without it letting stand out, a bit more Hexylsalicylate, thus rounding the top up without interfering in the back and now I just hope.

While writing these lines I listen to Steve Reich’s Trains. Minimalistic, chords of violins, playing with recorded words from people, talking about trains, their memories, travelling from New York to Chicago, people riding in comfortable trains while Europe and the rest of the world was disappearing behind smoke and fire, in a storm that extinguished everyone being in its way. Jews, Sintis, homosexuals, men, women, children. The most touching scene in this play is “ the war is over” followed by “is it true”. This moment is heart breaking every time.

I listen while watching patches of green passing by. Cows, women with dogs, elegant highways with shiny cars in the morning sun. Steve Reich’s motivation, if I understand properly, was also to work on his feelings of guilt, as he was travelling innocently in these trains, being a Jewish boy in the US, while in Europe we lost the last bit of our innocence and the Jewish world ceased to exist.

Today, we still travel in comfortable trains, while part of this world is burning, far away, yet ….you may smell the smoke if you care. I send you peaceful wishes for tomorrow.

I feel happy

2006-05-23T07:17:00.000-07:00

From time to time my statcounter account behaves like a wheel of fortune. Besides the referring websites from my fellow perfume lovers and bloggers around the world, a few interesting referring pages show up that I like to check out. Being a curious person, I wonder how people find things on the web (well, to be specific… my things) and then there is this fun factor of discovering sites you wouldn’t dream that they exist. Here is one of these sites: A universe of feelings across the blogosphere, with the aesthetic of bubbling space. (http://www.wefeelfine.org) Thus, I feel happy and hope to find me there, in this emotions universe, by tomorrow.
One reason for my “I feel content”: Early July we were given the chance to have our perfumes present at a sensual, oriental, women-only celebration and I prepared yesterday a slightly modified overview leaflet about my two perfumes for this event, allowing to glue the samples directly onto this leaflet. I feel pleased because it is such a nice fit, my perfumes with this event, and I feel proud to be given this opportunity, allowing me to widen the circle of people getting to know the scents.
I also feel amused because I read yesterday a funny post on Scentzilla.com featuring among other things some ponies, and an interesting and also quite funny post on Legerdenez about the never ending stream of modifications of perfumes, from the wonderful original to the spring version, the sport version, the male edition, the baby powder, a teenager version, …. When leaving the computer yesterday evening, I had visions of huge lemons, squeezed to oblivion.
Finally, I feel thrilled because I will very, very soon get my parcel from Essencia with lots of goodies that feed my curiosity. And I feel excited because another parcel, containing lots of flyers with cowboys is also on its way.
Well, I feel that my “I feel” statements should do it by now. Enjoy your day and tell us how you feel.
Ah.. here’s another one: I feel beautiful, I carry my experimental l’art pour l’art orris note.

Leitmotiv

2006-05-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

First a quick glimpse back to last Friday: It was a superb evening, with lots of laughs and funny stories and some discussions on perfumery, of course. (And yes, Ylva, I recovered from the different drinks…the problem is usually not the mixing of different vines, it is just the last glass that’s too much)

And while cleaning up the table and fighting in the kitchen against physics and the law of ever increasing entropy, I was thinking about Vero’s flowers. She brought (thank you again!) with her the most amazing roses I have ever smelled. Well, first they look beautiful, thick heads, pinkish with increasing red at the ends of wild petals looking like wings of an exotic butterfly. And then they smelled, like pure phenyl ethyl alcohol. Well, every rose kind of smells a little bit like it, and the absolute of roses, the thick orange syrup of solvent concentrated, man made rose essence absoluet, contains on average about 50% of it. But still, this rose’s scent was special. A clean phenyl ethyl alcohol layer surrounding their half open buds, eventually with a touch of something peppery, but just a touch, not much more than a reference to other roses that work so hard to smell complex and intriguing. Not this one.

This is the natural pendant to a single molecule scents. Well, almost. Contrary to single molecule perfumes, there is still a hidden layer of complexity within this rose scent. I love this rose, but I do not like the idea of single molecule perfumes. Looking at my bottle of Ambroxide diluted for use in ethanol, I can imagine how well this would be appreciated as single molecule fragrance, for sure, as Ambroxide is a molecule with many scent facets, but my daily, personal look into the mirror of truth would tell me that I tricked my customers with something that is not original except for the initial idea of bottling one single compound.

Thus, my weekend was phenyl ethyl alcohol dominated, following me up the imaginary woods where my private synthetic lily of the valley blooms, and down the plains of my garden place where my Clementine tree heard the message and started blooming again, and suddenly I wonder where this molecule is not to be found.

After 9 hours

2006-05-19T15:49:00.000-07:00

Well, after 9 hours in front of my computer screen, the time has come to say byebye to this technical masterpiece in front of me and move on to more agreable tasks.
The kitchen is calling because Pascal, his friend, W. and Vero and myself will ....celebrate!
The reason: Luca Turin's article.
The place: My place.
How: Apero with Champagne, Salad with white wine, green asparagus risotto with meat and a delicious red wine, strawberries with vanilla-cream and a schnapps to survive the night.

The scented background: Lilac flowers spread on the table, rosmarine on the meat and Lonestar Memories waves emanating from W. (that 's his priviledge and burden... W. is the one and only beta-tester).

Finally. When visiting his father yesterday in the nursing home, an old lady approached W., asking him what fragrance he wears, because he smelled extraordinary wonderful...That's what she said and then she told him that she possesses some 400 hundred perfumes....the collection of a long life.

What a nice compliment. The next time, he brings a sample with him to the nursing home....makes 401 perfumes!

I send you all fragrant wishes for the weekend.

Mr. C

2006-05-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite perfume blogs features again Mister Colombina reviewing a scent: Today on http://www.perfumesmellinthings.blogspot.com/. Not to miss and as refreshing as a May rain after a humid pre-summer day, washing off yellow layers of pollen and cleaning a lilac saturated air. I love Mr.’s post for his naturalness and the questions that he raises. Reading his comments and following a little debate on basenotes about the influence of forums like basenote on the industry yesterday… here a few thoughts:

- Some perfumers give strange (French) names to perfumes that people do not understand. Like L’air du désert marocain. Now, the sun king Louis XIV left this planet long ago. You remember him from school? This was stinky Louis, who never washed, because it was considered unhealthy back then, but he perfumed himself and his surroundings to compensate, a king who said that the sun would never go down in his empire, the king with the many mistresses and his lengthy toilette routine. Hence, French isn’t understood anymore all around the world. I got this comment a few times, like “ how to pronounce this name air du…”. I promise to do better the next time. Lonestar memories will be shorter and very english. But still, who knows what “Lonestar” really means?

- An untrained nose brings things to the point. Like “Where’s the beef?” Or.. “where’s the hemp?”… (No offence, Mr. Colombina…) I appreciate a certain naivety very much (my dictionary tells me that I could also call it simplicity… back to Luca Turin’s line of thinking….). Why? Approaching a piece of art or craftsmanship without much knowledge about how and why it was produced, you will approach it without searching for a hidden message, without your x-ray glasses on in search for a sublime line of associations, a formula that secretly introduces a twist and you will not wonder what the artist’s message and inner motivation was. You rather look at it and you like it or you don’t. The question that comes up is of course: Why do people like certain fragrances more (AND LONGER!) , like for instance Eau sauvage, than other scents? Because Eau sauvage is truly beautiful, beauty being harmony and asymmetry at once, being elegance and simplicity joined, and composition with love and care, and an untrained nose will see this inner beauty, too.

- Finally. Some perfumes carry names that evoke scent expectations that are not fulfilled. This is, of course, a very personal matter, depending on the background and experience of an individual. On the other hand… do you really expect Angels to smell like Angel?

Green things

2006-05-17T07:45:00.000-07:00

First an urgent call to Greeneyes… contact me please because you are the lucky winner of last weekend’s benevolent blogging.
Talking about green things…. I am faced with an out of control vegetation in my little garden. A private jungle with some coloured, nicely smelling spots interspersed, a constant memento of things that should be done and aren’t done. (see pix)
Talking about another green thing: Lavender, being the object of a hate-love relationship in my personal perfumery work. Looking at it from an analytical, but personal point of view, I see 4 important axes to consider when working with Lavender:
Sweet flowery
Airy woody
Spicy
Green
Overlaying these axes: The fact that Lavender may be used as top note, middle note with some troubles, and is hard to be extended.
From time to time I am brave enough to look at it again, face my misery of not having one nice formula constructed for a Fougère that would go beyond really simple sketches. Yesterday’s experiment: Lilley of the valley notes entering the floor after a vibrant Lavender start. I love Lilley of the valley, smelled them yesterday afternoon again and thought that this green flower scent, with limited sweetness, might work nicely. Considering the whole session as a learning experimental thing, without any ambition to get somewhere specific (l’art pour l’art kind of thing), I was producing a nice washing powder scent initially, which by more additions turned into something less agreeable. Thus, you want to perfume your washing powders? Linalool, lavender, lilial, methyl-cyclomyrrhketon will do the job…..

Next: The initial idea is not bad, maybe I should first get the Lilley of the valley blend and then build things around it? We will see.

We have a winner and the official photo right at the moment

2006-05-16T07:57:00.000-07:00

And we have a winner, congratulation

greeneyes!

Yes, you have won one of my perfumes, your choice, please mail me on perfumer(at)tauerperfumes.com and tell me which you would like and where I can send your price.
(The pix shows the actual drawing, W.'s magic fairy moment)

And for the rest of the day, here is a thought for you...

"The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw."
Havelock Ellis

2006-05-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

Visit this blog tomorrow morning for the official announcement of the winner of one Tauer Perfume, following the benevolent blogging! Maybe it is you…?

A warm thank you to all who participated and made this a big success. I think I will round the number of comments up to come out with a round sum for FINCA. It feels good to look back at yesterday’s comments flood and I am glad I participated.

And now: Back to perfumery. I got an interesting book on Saturday, Moschus im Tintenfass (“ Musk in the ink well”) by Kai Borrmann, about scents in the islamic literature; that is going to be some interesting reading for sure and I will probable post about some things later. I got a pdf copy of a rather scientific condensation about rose oil distillation in Islamic Andalusia, that was quite interesting, too (thanks to Mr. Borrmann). But, I have to admit it, bringing me at the limit of what my nervous tissue can handle in French. Most interesting: The direct distillation of rose oil, without water involved (contrary to the water steam distillation process). It looks to me like a rather harsh process, delicate to master and urging for a tight temperature control regime. I wonder what this oil might have smelled liked, for sure different to the modern absolutes or essential oils that are produced by steam distillation. I haven’t seen something comparable offered nowadays.

Then, there is the Bois farine by artisan parfumeur. Leopoldo….I perfectly understand your description of this scent. A gigantic cumulus of well-being, tender loving care and comfort comes with this crystal clear perfume. I tested it right away on my skin, without checking any references beforehand. I got a first sniff of powder with a touch citrus, but just a touch and it was gone immediately. Then I got the most powdery woods you can imagine, together with the yellow sweetness of saffron. Not that saffron would be in there, but there is one aspect of saffron, that I recognized. It reminded me of the powdery, saffron like line within myrrh oil, that I like so much. Thus, I’d swear there is myrrh in it (or a substitute). Then I got the most powdery cedar wood you can imagine combined with a caramel sweetness of baked bread or cookies. But, contrary to the Cuir de Beluge which I still consider to be Cuir de Cookie, the sweetness of bois farine fits much better.
Well, ok, I have to be honest with you. For me, this is much too sweet, but I can see how it fits together with the wood and the composition is well done (I’d guess it’s Maltol or derivatives that introduce this bread, cookie comfort line. A compound that I so far never dared using). Bois farine has also an excellent recognition factor. You smell it once and you will remember it. What I really liked about it was …. It is a new idea, something I haven’t seen before. And it lasts, hours and hours and hours of comfort blanket, but…… it does not develop much, it is just there.
Do I like Bois farine? Yes, indeed, I like it. Do I love it? Hmmm…not really. I want my blankets coloured in all colours of the rainbow, I want a vivid surrounding for an exciting night. Bois farine won’t give you that. It is a beige fabric, carrying you through a dreamless and peaceful night.

Thank you for your comments

2006-05-14T01:00:00.000-07:00

Thank you for visiting and thank you for posting a comment!
What you have to do: Place one comment on this blog now.
--> Today is the day where your comment really matters. For every visitor posting one or several comments I will donate 1$ US to FINCA.
What else do you have to consider? Label your comment with a unique identifier (like a number, your name or the name of your pet). Why? Because there is a chance to win something here and now!
--> You have the chance to win a perfume of your choice, either le Maroc pour elle or L'air du désert marocain. After Mother's day, W. (a famous actor on this blog) will draw one out of all comments and I will announce the winner, asking to send me an e-mail with the address to send the price!
What else? Enjoy!
Thank you again

Andy

and do not forget to visit the following blogs, participating too....and if you are not tired yet....read the below, personal Mother's day thoughts

Beauty Addict for Orphan
Foundation of America

Blogdorf Goodman for
FINCA International

Brain Trapped in
Girl's Body for FINCA International

A Girl's Gotta Spa for Orphan
Foundation of America

MonkeyPosh for Humane Society
of the United States and Muscular Dystrophy Association

Mother Hen’s Place for Aga Khan
Foundation Canada

Legerdenez for Orphan
Foundation of America

Perfume Posse for Orphan
Foundation of America

Perfumery for FINCA
International

Perfume-Smellin'
Things for Orphan Foundation of America

The Scented
Salamander for Orphan Foundation of America

Scenteur 7 for Orphan
Foundation of America *Participating May 10th through the 15th!*

Scentzilla! for FINCA
International

SmellyBlog for FINCA
International

The Soap Blog for UNIQUE

That Obscure Object of Desire
for FINCA International

Urban Chick for Womankind
Worldwide *Participating May 12th 'til she returns from holiday in a few
weeks*

Victoria's Own for FINCA
International

Yankee Family goes South
for Orphan Foundation of America

Well, so it is Mother's day and I will soon take the desert out of the fridge and visit mom, together with W. and I will cook lunch for us in her flat. We will eat, sit together and talk. In itself this is not that exciting. I visit mom quite often, once every week or so. But it is Mother's day and so there will be a hint of something special.
We will probably look back in time, as mom likes to do thinking of days past long ago. Like when we were a familiy with father, two sons and a mom. Living a simple, yet decent live. She will tell us how my father used to put the cigarettes money into a box, once one pack was smoked. Thus, once the ten packs were smoked the money was there to buy another ten packs. I will sit there and listen and think my own things.
Like what it was like when I was a little boy. I do not remember much, but some things will stay for ever. Like peeling apples for the apple cake and eating some of the dough, or like building stuff with her that I found exciting. I now realise how boring this must have been for her.... or like sitting in the living room at my beloved ant Rosa, who owned a TV (we didn't because my father did not wanted us to watch TV. He was a wise man... ). Rosa, who wasn't really an ant, but a good friend of my father, 20 years older then him and even wiser; she was my mom's angel. Our family and my mom owns her a lot. When my mom was pregnant, from a married man (my father), she lived at Rosa's and Rosa took care of her. Like she did for the rest of her live for our little family. She was educated, had a good job and had an even higher educated heart. Rosa was never married. She had a lover whom she left in 33 when she left Germany for the rest of her life, I think her beloved man died in the big war, as did my mom's father.
Thus, my mom was at Rosa's and looked for a flat to raise her family, together with a man she hardly knew back then, who was my father and who loved her very much. He was 20 years older then she was, but I guess that didn't really matter for the two.

Thus, I will soon sit in the living room of my mother and think back to the time we have spend. A relationship that I have never chosen but that turned out wonderful, I hope for the two of us. That's (I guess) the trouble being a mother... you don't really have the choice. You are mother, once and for all. A gift and sometimes a burden.

When we spend time together, I feel the band, the band that holds us together. This band brought me far and her even farther. I remember her visiting me when I was living for a year in Texas. She didn't speak one word of English except for hello and byebye . But she wanted to be droped at the local mall and spend her day there, shopping. And in the evening I picked her up again, with bags filled up with clothes and stuff. I do not know how she mangaged, but she did.

I remember her in Spain, where she was travelling with my brother and me and our dog (a spaniel, he loved the sea and the Spanish loved the dog, because it really was the only Spaniel around) the first summer after my dad died. She wanted us to have a real holiday, so we went to Spain and for a day, I was for the first time in Morocco. A place where, some 20 years later, we were again, mom and me, and W. This time on my expenses and visiting Morocco from north to south.
And I remember travelling with her in Kenya, a voyage that I gave as a gift, because I like to spend time with the people I love, how she was shaken by the poverty. She had a hard time to see us living in luxury resorts, taking showers and drinking wine while outside the African women were carrying their water home, miles and miles, dirty water, for a thirsty family.
Thus, if mom had a computer, she would comment on my blog, too.

24 hours

2006-05-13T07:07:00.000-07:00

Some hours more to wait before you may post your benevolent comments...
Here is the updated list of all blogs participating. It looks impressive. I will for sure be an exciting blogging day, too. (by the way.... I will visit my mother with W., we will cook for/with her and enjoy the afternoon.... But I hope to come up with a nice post before leaving home in the morning).
See you soon on this blog again!

Beauty Addict for Orphan
Foundation of America

Blogdorf Goodman for
FINCA International

Brain Trapped in
Girl's Body for FINCA International

A Girl's Gotta Spa for Orphan
Foundation of America

MonkeyPosh for Humane Society
of the United States and Muscular Dystrophy Association

Mother Hen’s Place for Aga Khan
Foundation Canada

Legerdenez for Orphan
Foundation of America

One Child Left
Behind for Heifer International

Perfume Posse for Orphan
Foundation of America

Perfumery for FINCA
International

Perfume-Smellin'
Things for Orphan Foundation of America

The Scented
Salamander for Orphan Foundation of America

Scenteur 7 for Orphan
Foundation of America *Participating May 10th through the 15th!*

Scentzilla! for FINCA
International

SmellyBlog for FINCA
International

The Soap Blog for UNIQUE

That Obscure Object of Desire
for FINCA International

Urban Chick for Womankind
Worldwide *Participating May 12th 'til she returns from holiday in a few
weeks*

Victoria's Own for FINCA
International

Yankee Family goes South
for Orphan Foundation of America

test

2006-05-11T11:52:00.000-07:00

Dear all
I am just testing my feed...no reason to worry.
Greetings

Feed

2006-05-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

My blog’s feed does not seem to work. Hmmm…. thinking about bits and bites and code snips again instead of perfumes. I discovered this annoying fact this morning and tried to find out why. Well, blogger seems to provide limited functional options there (an outdated atom version? Can’t be…right?) and copy/paste posts from outlook mails seems to create problems, too (leading to <:0 p> kind of tag things). The help pages on blogger are as usual completely useless and I realized again that I wanted to get my blog on another platform since a while. Needless to say that this feed would have been important just right now. Well, be it. More discoveries this morning: I woke up with a soar throat, I have to fly to Brussels today, and forgot to book the hotel (done by now), and I discovered that my nice trousers, being part of my uniform for the Brussels EU jungle, needed manual fixing (done by now) and the orris’ fragrance latest version that I wanted to test in premature dilution in Europe’s capital isn’t diluted yet (not done, will follow on Saturday). Yesterday, I had a deep sniff of the undiluted magic mix and I am optimistic to soon close this chapter. Talking about dilution: Next Saturday will be an exciting day: The Lonestar memories concentrate will turn into eau de toilette. Countdown running, a couple more weeks to go. Exciting.

But at least I have the Bois farine by L’artisan parfumeur with me. Let’s see how it will do, somewhere between here and there.

And here’s the last reminder: Visit this blog on Mother’s day and comment! For every visitor (with comments) I will donate to charity. And make sure you don’t miss your chance to win a Tauer perfume of your choice: Le Maroc pour elle or L’air du désert marocain!

Ténacité des parfums et pseudo-fixation

2006-05-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

Roudnitska in his Le parfum (talking about fixation)

Les produits lourds, en freinant exagérément l’évaporation de la composition, nuisent à sa vigueur et l ’ »étouffent ». De sorte que le parfum paraîtra « plat » le premier jour, un peu moins le second et le troisième jour, c’est-à-dire trop tard, et il sera de toute façon trop « sourd », sans nervosité.

Literally translated : The heavy products, by slowing and breaking the evaporation of a composition too strong, damage its power (Andy Tauer: Probably he meant diffusive power) and take away its breath. In a way that the perfumer looks flat at the first day, a little bit less flat the second day and again less flat the third day, which means: Too late, and it will by all means just be silent, without nervousness .

Well, my translation isn’t that good, but I think the message comes over. What Roudnitska talks about here is the thin line that you must walk when using fixing base notes, heavy notes. Fixing and making a fragrance last, is simple per se as long as you do not care about its diffusive power and its character and aesthetic quality. Take a bottle of Ambroxan and dilute white magic powder with ethanol and the mix will last for ever on your skin. But, except you are a hard core Ambergris addict, that isn’t exactly what you –perfume lover or perfumer alike- aim at. Thus, adding depth to a composition of delicate lines and colours without changing the entire composition is a tough one. Roudnitska did not mention it, but the base notes are also the notes that interact most with our skin, thus complicating the game.

What’s the bottom line? Maybe it is: When dreaming a new perfume, do not just dream roses or Lillac, dream the base, too.

Or: Less is more.

Trial insights

2006-05-09T08:43:00.000-07:00

We tend to cover our naked bodies. Some of us do it with good reason, in the case of other individuals it is a pity. For the later, the hidden skin increases the interest, setting a series of imaginative visualizations in move, which do not fit with reality and quite often lead to thorough disappointment once visualization meets reality. In my perfumery work, visualization plays a role, too, not a key role, but still. Usually, at the end of a series of many, many trials ultimately finding their way to the local waste disposal where they are burnt and thoroughly oxidized, I think about how to visualize a particular scent. Not that I have done this many times, yet! My creative process is somewhat slow and I do not expect to create hundreds of perfumes in my life that need pictures.
Thus, I thought I share a visualization trial for the L’air du désert marocain that I developed and then threw away again. Back then, a while ago, I thought a nice picture might be the sunset in the evening, over semi-desert, the time when the earth is still gleaming but the air has already cooled down. Fragrance of spices and earthy sand fills the air. (I posted about it before… the picture guiding me in the development of this scent was slightly different: A bed in Marrakech, window open, moon raising, scents from the nearby desert and the spices from the streets below….)

Thus, I took a sunset over a rather flat savannah, fooled around with the colours (2 hours), choose the appropriate chest (2 hours), brought the upper body to perfection with photoshop (5 hours) and tried various modifications (5 hours). And deleted my idea from my brain (5 sec). It did not fit somehow. Too…naked? Leaving too little room for imagination? Next was the moon raising picture that you all know, kind of 70-ies minimalism, red and blue tones, no skin, no nothing, but leaving an entire Saharan desert for imagination

Steaming Lilac

2006-05-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

When I read the interview with Rene Laruelle on basenotes I couldn’t help but immediately found myself transformed back to our kitchen, some 35 years ago, peeling apples and baking apple pie with mom. Rene Laurelle mentiones cooking as one starting point for perfumery, a source of stimulation, the scent of spices being true inspiration, an interesting thought, indeed.

Well, I guess he did not think in making chicken nuggets and fries in the oven. The inspiration you can hope for from these fat soaked delights is rather minimal. Yesterday’s menu was nevertheless a full success. My little godfather girl loves me. Her love wasn’t diminished by my proposal that we should all go for a walk, down on the banks of the Limmat. Which we did, slowly moving from one flower to the other, sniffing and laughing about noses turning yellow, watching dogs jumping into cold water and three boys doing the same. They had our unconditional admiration; true heroes.
Thus, a lovely afternoon and a break from the perfumery routine, consisting of boxing perfume bottles. The evening ended with a glass of vine together with W. at Pascal’s who was very pleased to be stocked up again, after an exciting week with lots of customers visiting his shop and discovering my Moroccan fragrance babies. On our way home we passed by a steaming fragrant ocean, almost solidified waves of Lilac breaking over us, an orgiastic storm nourished ultimately by the need to reproduce, fragrant waves touching a yellow moon. The same moon saw me watching a black sky before going to bed. I saw star dust entering our atmosphere, vanishing in a line of light, and had a wish free.

Reminder...

2006-05-08T09:01:00.000-07:00

And here is a reminder on next weekend's benevolent blogging! Please visit this blog and my fellow perfume lover's blogs and post your comments. Next Sunday, your comments matter....and do not miss the opportunity to win a perfume from Tauer perfumes!

Here is the list of today of benevolent bloggers:

Beauty Addict for Orphan Foundation of America
Brain Trapped in Girl's Body
Legerdenez for Orphan Foundation of America
Perfume Posse for Orphan Foundation of America
Perfumery for FINCA International
Perfume-Smellin'
Things for Orphan Foundation of America
The Scented Salamander for Orphan Foundation of America
Scenteur 7 for Orphan Foundation of America *Participating May 10th through the 15th!*
Scentzilla! for FINCA International
SmellyBlog for FINCA International
The Soap Blog for UNIQUE
Urban Chick for Womankind Worldwide *Participating May 12th ONLY*
Victoria's Own for FINCA International

riding downtown

2006-05-06T09:20:00.000-07:00

Busy, busy, busy weekend:
Trying to get my intestines ready for my little goodfathers child birthday feast tomorrow (chicken nuggets and fries, tons of it, she loves it, I eat it.)

Samples are requested urgently downtown by Pascal from Medieval art&vie, as well as broschures and the real thing (perfume bottles). Guess why?

The French translation of the few text lines are finally integrated in the flyer and the little broschure of my Lonestar Memories eau de toilette. The print material has received W. 's blessings and awaits a final GO! by Pascal and then the files will fly to Germany for print. Pascal is really good in finding mistakes & typos... although the last typo I found went undiscovered for about half a year. Embarassing...

So, my dear perfume lovers. An exciting week comes to an end. Fragrant wishes.

deformation professionelle

2006-05-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

Back from a 3-day meeting at a magic place, on the banks of Lake Geneva, in a former monastery, with wonderful huge trees, producing pollen like crazy and leading to quite a few hatschi's.
The wall of the entire building were covered with blue flowers hanging down like a gigantic flowery water fall producing a cascade of an airy, musky, sweet scent.
It was growing in intensity at dusk and was ...well, kind of a natural flower bomb.

The scent was somewhat light, airy and reminding of Hexylsalicylate and other salicylates. I found it wonderful, but would have wished it a little bit darker, woodier. Et voila, this is what I call deformation professionelle. A place to observe this effect in pure form: Hospitals. Enter a hospital as a patient and you will realize that somehow you have transformed into a huge baby, being the focal point of empatic activities. The nurse will sing gentle words, ask you how you are doing, a melody of tender empatic lovely care which is the result of 1000 times the same question.
The same is true here, a sniff which sets in motion a brain that tries to figure out how the scent message is composed, and how nature could be improved. Or modified, or brought to perfection or abstracted, to make if fit better with one's expectation. Thus, my dear Wisteria, I would like to have you a little bit less present, I would like to crown your sweetness with a brown line of Ambrein and add a touch crispiness to it, just to make you ... perfect? Well, I guess you are perfect in a sense. So, I would like to make you different!

(Pix: Chinese Wisteria, Copyright Floridata.com, Jack Scheper, see also floridata.com )

travelling to Geneva..

2006-05-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

I am in a hurry, getting stuff packed and transporting myself to Geneva.
As announced I will not be able to post or comment much (few exceptions).
Well, I guess when I am back here on Friday, there will be a post coming then, at least one before the weekend.

Thus, in the mean time, I send you my best wishes and please....drop by at the newest NZZ Folio with Luca Turin's column, I liked it a lot

You will find it soon here (I hope this link will work, as it is not online yet, I just guessed) http://www-x.nzz.ch/folio/curr/articles/parfum_engl.html

shocking details

2006-05-01T20:54:00.000-07:00

Dear fellow perfume lovers
Here comes, as promised to dear Prince Barry, some private details, pictures of last Saturday's party. I have just collected a few, hoping you will like them. We were 36 + guests and we all had a good time.

Not related to perfumery, except maybe for the fact that a few of the people on the pictures wear my scents from time to time....
so from top to down...
so, that's how it looked beforehand. On the wall, pictures of Werner when ...well some years ago.
Guido and his friend. He cooks and she serves.

Two dear friends, Alice and Pascal, both wearing from time to time my perfume L'air, both loved very much

Again, two dear friends, Markus (front) and Ruedi, his friend

And then we see a happy family drinking, Werner the teacher doing the test with Susi (we made a competition, a test. Who gave the best answers could win a own home made glass of marmelade: first price 3 glasses, second 2 glasses, third 1 glass.
And finally, Werner's speech, talking about life and death and stuff like that. Wine helped to make us laugh and not fall asleep :-)

to wear it or not

2006-05-01T09:02:00.000-07:00

After a lot of festivities and W.-related comments on this blog: Back to perfumery!

Hurray, there was time and money left this week end to visit my favourite perfumery in Zurich again, Oswald, where I was –as always- treated like everybody else, which translates into …being treated like a king. I really love this perfumery! So, I was presented a few scents and had a chat with a charming lady. We discovered a few scents that she considers wonderful fragrances…. But ….not to wear. So, I asked her, what is the use of a perfume if you do not wear it? And she said, Oh…there are perfumes that I really like on a Kleenex, or I spray them in a room to make me feel comfortable and enjoy the scent. But I do not want to carry it with me on my body. So, I said, OK but the perfume needs the body to develop and bloom and she says Nope! Some perfumes might even be spoiled on skin. The composition shows best when just sprayed in a room and it is only there that you’ll get all the notes at once. “Hmmmm”, I go and am still not convinced. Ambergris needs a body. It needs the warmth of skin, blood heated layer protecting us and barrier, multilayered interface with the world. One of my favourites is: “Watch out for interfaces, it is there where things happen”. This is true for science, or for society. Look at the interface between east and west, north and south. Watch out and see things happening!

Tomorrow: A short post in the morning only, because I have to rush out for a 3 day meeting in Geneva. Depending on my WLAN access there will be posts or not.

Tonight: some pixs of a party, eventually.

Party

2006-04-29T00:15:00.000-07:00

A private post.... W. turns 50. A little party brings together circles of friends..... in a restaurant right opposite the street. Here's the restaurant link.
More perfumery related issues: Next week. Enjoy your weekend and caress your noses with beautiful scents!

Music for 18 musicians, and pirouettes with orris

2006-04-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

- - Do not forget to post on May 14th, Mother's day: Your comment counts! (see benevolent blogging)--

Right now I am listening to Steve Reich’s music for 18 musicians. It is soothing, soft, somewhat minimalist and repetitive, distinctively Steve Reich, a genre that W. calls aquarium music. Amalgamating with the chords, showers of muscle tension running down my back, beauty flowing in and out, xylophones dancing with violins. On the table in front is the l’art-pour-art orris trial, sprayed on paper strip, last version, citrus chords filling the empty space left by the xylophones, dancing grapefruit with bergamot, a rose hardly detectable, spicy freshness, clean and bright yellow mixes with the brown, beige melody of Reich’s masterpiece, which becomes more dramatic: What were soft circles turns more edgy, lines of red showing up, voluminous, powerful and tearing on the heart, beauty can hurt. Beauty must hurt. When I heard this music the first time, I had tears in my eyes, I found myself placed in the theatre of life, standing in a stream of people, rushing through their days, I was lifted up, opened up my arms and found myself dancing in pirouettes above caravans of cars on their way downtown, men running through cities, going through their day as if they had discovered eternity, I saw planet earth filled with life, and joyfully I left for an other galaxy, leaving a tail of light behind me, little stars that would fall down on earth again and bring comfort to all that I left behind.

The scent emanations from the strip continue to circle around a soft, vibrant core with a polished iris. With all its light, it still allows the woody chords to appear that are precious: agarwood, sandalwood and frankincense. And finally Ambergris is showing itself and now that it is here it will never leave again. The scent play never becomes dramatic, it circles forth and back, modestly, yet I feel a brilliance and clarity that I wished. Steve Reich on the other hand has crossed the central, dramatic highlight and lets us return from the galaxies, he leads us to a wide open horizon with the sun leaving in a sea of red, promising tomorrow, just like a mother sitting on your bed, after your exciting day full of adventure, placing her soft hand on your head, blessing you, sending you to dream land, with the promise that there is eternity.

Benevolent blogging

2006-04-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

Here’s an interruption to this blog’s perfumery, sometimes self-centred routine.

Thanks to Katie we are given the opportunity to use our blogs once for good. It is simple to participate; don’t run away now, you can do something good without being mother Theresa ;-)

The idea is simple, yet effective. Bloggers will give to charity a set amount for each comment post they get on Mother's day on their blogs. Simple enough, isn’t it? You post, I pay, to a charity: FINCA International Thus, I am proud to announce that on May 14, Mothers day, this blog will do exactly that (as tauer perfumes has neither a charity budget, nor an advertising budget, the contribution will be by Andy personally)

!!!!What you can do!!!!!

Now, read carefully:

You have a blog of your own? -> visit benevolent blogging and join!

You visit this blog of mine from time to time. And you already post comments? -> visit on May 14, post your comment as usual and I will contribute 1 $ for every visitor commenting.

You visit this blog of mine but you do not comment, yet? -> visit on May 14. And post your first comment on this blog, just say hello or byebye or I love you or anything else. I does not matter what you tell. I will contribute 1$ for every visitor commenting.

!!!!Please!!!!

Bottom line: I know you are out there, reading. On May 14 it is time to comment, once, please….

!!!!What you get!!!!

Ah… I forgot. There is something in for one of you…besides going to heaven and reaching paradise much faster:

I will (random, promise!) pick one of you who posted a comment. Therefore, leave something unique in your comment, like your name or a number or so. Happy comment poster who is picked randomly by myself or the fortune master W. will be given a perfume of mine, le Maroc pour elle, 50 ml, or the L’air du désert marocain, 100 ml, your choice which perfume you would like, sent priority to wherever you like. The happy winner will be announced and I will ask you to send me your address to forward a nicely packed perfume bottle.

Düdeldi

2006-04-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

Hurray! Spring is here, it is raining much warmer than before.

Yesterday evening I did the google thing again, sitting in front of a screen and looking at hyperlinks appearing magically after entering “tauer perfume” in a little box. Sometimes, I just need it and look for links that are new, people talking about my scents without me knowing. Please, do not consider myself an ego-manic google high ranking knight, I am rather Mr Curious, looking for what others think and what I might learn from them. Thus, I sometimes enter other words in this google box, like “search for the holy grail” or “rabbits conquering the world” or other non-sense and follow the hyper-paths to unexplored territory.

Bottom line: I ended up on Makeupalley.com and found some witty comments on the Le Maroc pour elle, some of them somewhat critical, some rather enthusiastic. To follow part of this debate: Please follow this link. But besides this ego soothing revelation that people talk about my perfumes, there is another aspect that I find worth thinking about as perfumer and as perfume lover. It is the democratization aspect of the e-media and its effects on perfumery. I am convinced that these blogging and forum discussions on perfumes will sooner or later translate into a new power in perfumery business, complementing the journals and others. To some extend it already has. And I am convinced that some of the electronic meeting places will soon find themselves in cosy embracement by the big players. Is this bad? No, not all. There is room for all of us.

Wrapping things up and a message from the surgeon

2006-04-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday saw me reading a lovely comment on my perfumes on this blog’s comments page. It was one of this weekend’s highlights helping me through painful Orris trials (more later) and…being in love with these words, I will copy them into this post. I want Google to find this precious comment. Funny enough, I never really thought about it, Google does not seem to find comments (does it?) on blogs. Which is strange. Isn’t it part of this medium’s key features having sort of moderated discussion enabled?

Another highlight was yesterday’s jogging with sore muscles and aching bones due to hard gardening and my 40 years presence on planet Earth with some impact on my body’s regeneration capabilities. I could hardly move anymore on Saturday evening…Thus, while enjoying my endorphins finally soothing my body and mind, finding a jumping rhythm through spring woods with fresh luscious green, I imagined how to write a couple of posts. Posts, describing where I am for my Orris fragrance. I dreamt of discussion more or less all individual ingredients that go in there. One after the other, starting with the base notes, moving on the middle and top notes, eventually grouping some of them. Tonight I will decide. Maybe this blog will see a few posts in a row that deal with one fragrance from a surgical point of view, dissecting things. Kind of an anatomy session for perfume lovers.

Good idea? I don’t know. The trouble with surgery: The detailed investigation of the individual parts does not tell you all about the intact patient.

So here it is my weekend’s comments highlight including hope to come closer to my Sheik (Flora, I hope this is ok…): “Hello Andy, I got my Luckyscent samples today, and I must say that I will not be ordering any more samples of Tauer perfumes - because my next purchase from them will be a FULL bottle of L'Air du desert marocain!

I love both of them - I am sitting here sniffing both arms obsessively. Le Maroc is so rich and opulent, I would use it only for evening I think, it is certainly not suitable for my office. It is hypnotic, sexy, amazing!

But L'Air - it is magnificent! I love the idea of spicy Oriental style perfumes, but so many of them are far too sweet. This has the spicy depth and richness without being overly sweet. It just gets better as it dries down, and I adore it. I can see how it would be wonderful on a man, but I want to wear it myself, they can't have all the fun. The incense, the wood, the leather, all so good yet not a cliche' "masculine" scent at all!

Sorry I don't know any rich barons or sheikhs - but I bet I could catch one if I wore your perfume....“

money issues = difficult issues

2006-04-21T16:22:00.000-07:00

The truth is: I guess I am not a good business man... at least in some fields of business I am not that good. Maybe, I do not take money serious enough.

The issue is...again.... samples. The problem is as follows:
We do not want to make lots of money with samples. But neither I, nor Medival art & vie, Pascal, can afford to pay for our sending them into the wide, wide world, as we do not have a real marketing budget yet. (I devote some private money into marketing experiments but this is another story...)

Actually, it is rather simple:
Price of a sample = 3.5 $ US (our fees for paypal not counted)

Price of 1 packaging card board thing: 0.55 $
Price of 1 sample packaging flyer estimated: 0.10$
Price of 1 sample vial: 0.4$
Price of shipment Economy: 2.8-3 $ US
Sums up to: ca. 3.9 $ US, with the wonder fragrance that goes in there not counted, putting it together not counted,...
I never did a tough calculation as such, but Pascal brought me there ...

Bottom line of this post: Such is reality.
It is time to meet this rich sheik, eventually when he visits Zurich to cash in some of his oil dollars on his secret Swiss bank account?

News from Zurich

2006-04-20T08:40:00.000-07:00

Being a niche perfumer means to constantly look for opportunities to be present and making sure that people at least know you are out there. This is difficult. And I appreciate everybody spreading the message that we exist….. We have basically zero marketing budget and I have to compensate missing resources by creativity. Thus, it really was a pleasure to prepare an interview yesterday, also because I loved the questions and issues addressed. More: Will follow once it is published ….surprise, surprise!

Then, there is a little news which dominated yesterday’s local TV station: Our Böögg is stolen, kidnapped by leftist activists, from the garage of Mr. Böögg builder. Well, what is a Böögg you might ask! a short intro you find here>> and some pix of the past you will find here >> It is kind of a white snowman, about 3 meters tall, made of paper and fabric, fully loaded with little explosives. Next week it is supposed to end up on a huge bonfire, like every spring, with half Zurich watching it on TV or live, after a parade of what used to be the guilds of Zurich and is now sort of upper-middle-lower class carnival. Bottom line: The Böögg is stolen and there is a piece of information that tells you probably more about us here in Zurich, than reading entire books about Swissness and the Zurich way of doing things. Believe it or not: We have every year a second, extra Böögg built, kind of an insurance in case it might be needed!

Finally, I have my little brochure done, except for the French translations which will be done in the coming days. The purpose of this A4 piece of paper: Being sent with every sample, telling clients in one, two sentences who we are and what’s in the perfume. It is intended to complement the flyer (seen before) holding the sample pump spray vials. It will be folded twice in a way that the front page features my little cowboy with his hat. Thus, things get into place. By the way, a similar little brochure is sent with every sample of l’air du désert marocain or the Maroc pour elle. Again…. trying to set a standard and to get noticed as independent perfumery.

Explaining things, poodles in the garden and a rose in Nirvana

2006-04-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

I often compare perfumery with painting, a perfumer being a painter working with scents, trying to find the perfect form and colour. From time to time I feel attracted to working in 2 dimensions with colours, too. I like to work with oil based paint, mixing yellow with ultramarine and producing shades of green. I love the smell of sesame oil, and the thick slurry finding its way to the canvas where it ultimately will render the image of …. a lemon! Ha…and everyone will say: “yeah, that’s a lemon”. Cool! And if they don’t recognize it… then it’s abstract. ”yeah, that’s kind of modern. Cool!”

Now, in perfumery things are not that easy in a first approximation, especially if working with naturals. Staying with the colours analogy: Although there are thousands of shades of –let’s say- green, at the end of the day you mix yellow and blue and what you get is: Green. What do you get if you mix rose absolute with pepper essential oil? A peppery rose, a rosy pepper, eventually, if you do it right, an accord which is new and more than just the individual components overlaid. This new accord, however, will be received very differently by individuals. You might describe the perfume note by stating that it is rose with pepper, but this does not explain things to perfume lovers.

What is a spicy flower for the one, will be the scent of the family poodle after a day in the summer garden for others. Now, fur as scent carrier, including human being’s hair, that’s another topic for a lengthy post; it is just amazing how long and intense some scents are conserved in fur. Try it out: Spray your eau de toilette on your hair… it will last for ever. Thus, the fur of my mom’s poodle smelled wonderfully of dog (dry variant), fresh earth and spring last Monday afternoon after a one hour walk in the nearby woods.

But back to the accord thing….I realized this point again lately, when cruising on Colombina’s wonderful perfumesmellingthings blog, where she was slightly disappointed about some (missing) notes, expecting a particular note based on the ingredients list of a fragrance. And I came across this point when doing my reading about client’s expectations of le Maroc pour elle on perfumes of life and other platforms, which I love to do… it is always enlightening. Perfume lovers discussed there on the rose of Le Maroc, their expectations and what the scent was like. Thus, with all its lovely (and lots of) rose absolute (from Morocco and from Bulgaria), Le Maroc pour elle is not a rose scent. The rose absolute with its hundreds of components is there and it is not. It is a rose which has undergone a mystical (and chemical) transformation, it is a rose in Nirvana, in the garden Eden, where it is blooming in new forms and colours.
Thus, where is the point in describing what’s in it anyway, you might ask….

White spots

2006-04-18T08:38:00.000-07:00

I am convinced white spots are mankind’s destiny. We look on our maps and search for white areas. There where no names of hills, no roads, and missing signs for villages indicate vague, unknown land we expect adventure and discovery. We dream of fortunes, of gold and wisdom, and of untold stories enlightening mankind. We visit these places wherever they are, we endure dangerous voyages to the unknown and finally paint colours and shades on our map, filling out another white spot. Usually, we spend a fortune doing so and unfortunately we do not seem to learn too much.

These and similar thoughts accompanied me while hiking on Friday in a cartographically exhaustively explored area of this world. Close to Lake Konstanz, with regular signs placed on the banks of river Rhine, warning us of touching birds (alive or dead) because of H5N1. Crossing a battlefield of 1799?, the French versus the Russians, one of many Napoleon battle fields. Not, that you would realize it. It is just a nice, somewhat swampy place, but there are books, for sure, with maps showing where the Russians stood and how the French positioned their canons.

Yet, no map indicates (up to now and to my knowledge) that you’ll find Viola odorata there….. hmmm…. What a perfume! Mix it with the fragrance of wet soil, after exhaustive rain over night at low temperatures of a delayed spring, leading ultimately to my soar throat, with the crispy freshness of grass trampled by your knees while you’re trying desperately to archive this particular flower on your camera’s 1GB micro drive and you have yet another white spot… in perfumery. To create this perfume would be a spot worth filling, I won’t do it, however, I have saved its digital image on my hard disk and the fragrance in my nervous system. Bottom line: Our frantic search for white spots is perfectly ok

difficult issue

2006-04-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

So it is Easter, soon. And actually, I wanted to write a meaningful post featuring this topic. But, as with some other religious feasts I have my troubles. I like the bunny aspects of Easter, you see bunnies everywhere and for a bunny lover like myself this is cool. Bunnies hopping over green grass in the name of big banks, bunnies on my stock trading platform, bunnies innocently spreading marketing messages all around Christian homeland.

Then there is the real story behind it that I tend not to understand; it so complicated, guilt here and there, a somewhat embarrassing story, death and misery and an up and down of bodies and spirits that is hard to get. The women in this story, as in most biblical stories, degraded to a rather passive role of innocent observers. Poor mother Maria loosing her son who came under cross fire of an empire that fought, 2000 years ago, war in places almost as far as Bagdhad is from Washington DC. And as in every war, people suffer, mothers loose their sons, children their friends and many loose their innocence and fill their hearts with darkness that will never disappear.

And then there is what happened with the story in the years that passed since then. Strange things happened indeed, with the bunnies being a charming side aspect, churches were built and burnt in the name of, bonfires were lit not to celebrate in happy circles, but to purify the world from the bad, including bad people. Of course, there were and are human beings who did good in the name of, sometimes I just wonder whether these heroes with open hearts really needed this particular story book. Maybe they would be good people with reading Mickey Mouse, too?

Thus, a difficult issue…. To sooth myself, I listen to Sufi chants, not really very Christian, but … it is in the same name of.

I hope these chants will sooth you too (MP3 File, ca. 5 MB, click here) and send you all my fragrant Easter wishes.

Peace upon you. O Messenger of God. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you. O beloved of God and His Chosen One. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you. O Seal of the prophets and messengers. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you. O Leader of those who are rightly guided and who follow your example. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you. O you whom God has guided in the Straight Path. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you. O you whom God has made compassionate and benevolent with the believers. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you, for a servant said , “ My Lord is God.” May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you, for a servant became devoted in submissiveness to his Lord. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you, for things are sustained by their Lord.

Text and music from:

(Musica Sufi Andalusi, Misticismo, Omar Metioui, “ Cantos misticos de la Cofradia al – Harraqiyya)

Message to Jane

2006-04-12T08:49:00.000-07:00

Message to Jane
Not much to tell my fellow readers today, except for a few messages: This blog’s programme for the holiday break due to Easter -> After tomorrow’s post I will make a posting break until Tuesday. In the mean time I will fool around with a little leaflet, Le Maroc pour elle bottles and will hopefully do some sniffing exercises.

Then I have a message for Jane: The samples are on their way again, priority mail. I guess there is no way preventing from time to time, and luckily rather rarely a sample vial break although packed in cardboard and bubble foil… except for sending them as a real parcels, but this would mean at least 3 times higher shipment costs. This is due to Swiss post shipment cost exploding once the thickness of anything goes beyond 2 cm….But, as I am not pleased with this situation, I will meditate on it while watching the full moon tonight.

Finally, a word on a thought that pops up every two weeks again, bothering me somewhat. Coco Channel (you remember?) supposedly said something like “apply perfume everywhere where you want to be kissed”, answering a question of where to apply fragrances. Thus…. A warning to my beloved perfume wearers: Do not spray on your lips!

do good

2006-04-11T09:13:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who is very successful in business and one of his mottos is “do good and talk about it”! Maybe that’s one reason why he is successful…..

Well, I haven’t really done anything good the last 24 hours, but some good things happened, so let’s talk about these. One good thing is a post on PerfumeOfLife.org, featuring Le Maroc pour elle, which is so lovely; I can not resist copying part of it….” Not one note stands out to me… such a smooth blend of notes, so harmonious that I can’t tell where one leaves off and another begins. ……” The complete thread you find here...>>
Then, finally, my rose samples from Essencia arrived. Moroccan damask rose and Bulgarian rose, damask, too. I haven’t smelled the absolutes, yet, but I am optimistic to find a second supplier for these two critical components in Le Maroc pour elle. As there are a few crucial components in rose absolues from a safety and labelling point of view, (methyleugenol!), I appreciate the idea of having a supplier with a reliable analytical department! Another aspect of perfumery… the constant hunt and search for ingredients and reliable suppliers.

open discussion and shocks

2006-04-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

Edmond Roudnitska, le ParfumLe beau parfum est celui qui nous procure un « choc ». Un choc sensoriel qui ébranle nos humeurs en première approche, mais suivi d’un choc psychologique d’autant plus durable que le parfum développe alors sa forme posément au fil d’une évaporation ralentie, de telle sorte que si cette forme est originale elle s’inscrira dans notre esprit qui ne l’oubliera pas et la reconnaîtra à la première nouvelle rencontre. Pour être belle cette forme devra répondre à notre attente de nouveauté et posséder les qualités fondamentales du grand parfum : caractère, vigueur, pouvoir, diffusant, délicatesse, clarté, volume, persistance.
(literally and with some mistakes translated into english) A beautiful perfume is the one which brings about a shock. A sensual shock that irritates our senses at first, but followed by a psychological shock which lasts the longer with the perfume developing its form, following a slowed evaporation scheme; this in a way that with the form being original it will inscribe itself in our mind which will not forget it and recognize it at the first following encounter. In order to be beautiful, this form must answer our expectation of novelty and harbour the fundamental qualities of a grand perfume: Character, force, power, diffusion, clarity, volume and lasting power.

This week’s lengthy introduction with Roudnitska again is due to my reading a thread on PerfumeOfLife about my perfumes. It is an interesting debate, even if the bottom line is: There are people writing about my two perfumes that do not like them (at first sight?). Believe it: This is tough reading exercise for me, raising mixed feelings.

Somehow, it is just like sending your blond little baby to school, proud on her new pink ribbon in her beautiful angel like hair and have her come home later, crying because her school friends made fun of her, calling her pony blonde. Thus, the perfumer who spent weeks, months, trying to get the best rose absolue from Morroco and this patchouli that is so hard to get with the expensive sandalwood and trying to balance these naturals with the synthetics to create his dream scent is faced with perfume lovers associating “hemp shop”. Snieff. The perfumer is shocked, too ;-)

But then I read the other comments on this thread and couldn’t but smile because they very much condensed this dislike and unease with my perfumes to Roudnitska’s sentences on the sensorial shock. I talked about it before on this blog and the longer the more I think Roudnitska was very right (see above).

Finally, there are two, three things to add:
-> If a beautiful perfume means one that brings about a shock, the reverse is not true. Not every sensorial shock is an indication for a good perfume.
-> Although I never visited a hemp shop and therefore can not fully appreciate this association, I think I know where this association comes from: It is the smoky underline in the air du désert …..
-> The hyacinth blooms in my garden right now, fighting with rain that pours since 24 hours and it amuses my nose, guides my fingers across the synthetics shelf, trying to come up with a very synthetic, no hippie-hemp shop kind of hyacinth reflection…..
Follow the discussion on Perfume of Life here…

Gravity suspended

2006-04-08T08:50:00.000-07:00

Although scientifically not proven yet, I am convinced that gravity on earth is changing on a daily basis. There are days when even the smallest step you make brings you forward just like walking on moon, but contrary to Apollo heroes of the 60ties, we jump around on earth without the hassles of providing us with oxygen or protecting us from radiation that kills everything. Except for some microbes eventually flying accross the universe, seeding live in other galaxies. An interesting line of thought anyway, thinking that our earth might seed live on other planets...
Well, yesterday I clearly felt how gravity lost its grip for a few seconds, while buying beans in the supermarket. Lucky me, I bought a few kilogramm of various dried beans, holding me down in the groceries department, otherwise I would have ended up in the upper floor department, selling shirts for men, which is as dangerous a place for modern men as the Tyrannosaurus rex nest was for our mammal ancestors.
I talked with Juvena's Vice-president on the phone in the olive oil department and she said: "Just do it. We wish you all the luck. But please, do not register the name independently, call us first if you wish to register your lonestar memories."
- Promise: I will.
Pix: Perfumer, in zero gravity environment (trampoline)

angry

2006-04-07T09:35:00.000-07:00

Today, anger.
Not that I care too much about money. I hope it is there and tend to use it. But yesterday... I got the bill from Swiss customs. For a parcel, containing basically paper, value 55 Euro something, coming from Germany, I am expected to pay 54 Francs to customs: something like 6 Francs is taxes, 10 Francs is handling, 38 Francs seems to be special handling charges. What for? Are they nuts?
The good thing about it: I immediately had an idea for an anger perfume,....You know, materialisation of all those bad thoughts and negative energy, transformed into a scent condensing it all.
So, we are talking.. Coumarin, Castoreum, Vanillin, Patchouli for the lasting anger the next day

Cumin aldehy, Irone, decenal-4-trans (lots!), cistus, jasmine, geranylbutyrate in between
and the first rage outbreak by galbanum, linalool, clary sage, lemon grass, ylangylang, bergamot

hmmm... sniffing my wrist and forgetting about it all.
;-)

Rotten beaver, vanilla traps and some thoughts more

2006-04-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

Around a weak ago, a group of synthetic beavers walked into an orris garden, sent there by a perfumer. Stupid perfumer thought his little orris garden needed some more depth and a twist to the dirty side. Well, the perfumer still feels the same. He is not entirely pleased with his garden, yet. The entry with its spicy roses and the pepper plants look lovely, but somewhere in the middle, before you enter the little forest in the back, it misses this earthy, animal quality. Thus, he sent his beaver army off and thought that vanilla might be a good companion, too. Eventually, his judgment was right, but the army of beaver trampled down quite a bit of his nicely arranged garden, leaving his roses untouched, but entirely destroyed his incense corner, and the worst was the vanillin pond where some of the beavers got so depressed that the weakest among them gave up and went there where all beavers have to go one day. And with no one cleaning up this mess, their physical remains remind the gardener that there is be a beaver heavenly paradise where his furry friends dance and sing the songs of eternal happiness and praise true perfume artists.

Well, bottom line of all this: the pepper line and rose start = ok. Orris with incense woody lines, sparkling and radiating =ok. But I still think, there is a touch of deepness missing in the overall composition. And the agarwood is a marvellous scent, deep, intense, lasting, expensive, but to tie it in, to have it there from the very beginning, to prepare the stage with the right light on is a tricky one. Maybe the difficulty is there: You have an image of a scent in your mind, which is not the complete picture, it is a reflection, an abstraction of it. And this abstraction you want to see become reality in a composition, without bending your image. We work on it….

Finally, with the end of this week approaching I need to start some thinking about public appearance, communities and how to get known as niche perfumer. Basically it is about circles, knowing them, entering them and leaving them. Marketing again….

I can feel how they laugh about me

2006-04-05T06:58:00.000-07:00

Nice about words on paper or LCDs: They don’t cry when being bended. Silently they sit there, waiting for the omnipotent writers to put an end to their pathological desire of picturing a universe by a set of 20 words. The patchwork assemblies of letters just wait for the next genial idea of this strange god sitting thoughtful in front of his screen, facing their sudden death with the touch of a button and to resurrect within 5 minutes again. They smile and know. It is there, the perfect assembly of words, but this strange god just wouldn’t listen to them……

Thus, I bended my words to describe my leather universe using 3 lines in the flyer. The revenge of letters…I can feel how the laugh about me.

A scent created on memories of a wide land,
open pastures, earthy leather, warm smoke,
being there, I am free and true.

Ein Duft der Erinnerung an ein weites Land,
offene Weiden, rauhes Leder, warmer Rauch
Dort, wo ich wahr und frei bin.

French ....

Niche calling

2006-04-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

I called Juvena and discussed with the right person, asking questions and explaining things. Well, to make things short, a final go/no-go decision is postponed until Thursday when we will discuss again. The person in charge will consider my case which seems to be somewhat unusual. And, as I am gifted with some imagination and in light of my 40 years on planet earth enriched with quite a few surprises, I am not amazed and somehow understand their point: They have invested into a trade mark and although they do not use it anymore, the enterprise feels somewhat uncomfortable giving away what they consider their property. I guess neither she nor me is on the spot legally competent enough to know in all details what their rights really include and how far they could go in protecting them. That’s lawyer business. As W. said the other day: “You shouldn’t have asked them anyway.” Well, I guess right he was, but I prefer it the other way. I am scared of lawyers and –if feasible- try to avoid their company, at least in business matters.

And I got a number, a first approximation for how much I could buy the trade mark “Lonestar”. Oups. I guess the time has come for travelling to Dubai, meet a happy sheik, let him fall in love with my leather scent and tell him that the only way to get the perfume is by buying for the trade mark rights. Positive side effects would be: A day on the Dubai beach, shopping for Frankincense coming from nearby Oman, and eventually opening a shop in one of those huge, fancy shopping malls.

I will continue working on the flyer until I take a few days off for this Dubai venture….

Next might be a note on words that do not flow and the iris-agarwood thing

Hippie

2006-04-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

I mentioned it earlier: I found a place to shop for ropes nearby and the best thing about it: They have a factory shop, open every first Saturday in the month. The bottom line: These people still produce ropes in Switzerland, which is hard to believe and in light of the ongoing de-industrialization close to a miracle.

Thus, under a blue sky, windows down, camera ready, my old Saab brought us to a place called Ossingen, 30 miles from Zurich, where a sales lady already waited for the perfumer (I send them a mail before visiting) and showed the best smelling hemp ropes you could imagine. I haven’t found the exact time and place in my past yet where this scent of hemp fits but it clearly evokes memories. It is not smoking hemp stuff, it is more the scent of my father’s garden where he used to tie up things with hemp ropes; or the scent of our cellar, maybe, where we would store apples and some vegetables over winter.

Well, be it: Saturday afternoon I became a proud owner of 200 meters lovely smelling hemp rope, 10 cents a meter, with a similar texture like the sisal thing, but much more authentic. Thank you, Anya…..which brings me to the end of this post. A last word on the hippie thing, brought up by Anya in her comment that found hilarious. When preparing the “Our perfumes in the press” internet web site on tauerperfumes.com, I realised that Luca Turin referred to “Le Maroc pour elle” as hippie scent in his Park Avenue review. I totally forgot about it, but now…the pattern is there again. Am I a hippie producing hippie scents? And….what’s a hippie anyway?

Spring wishes for the weekend

2006-04-01T00:05:00.002-08:00

The first primula came through, the sun is shining and not even the letter from Juvena bothers me today (telling me that they invested a lot in the name, and I could buy it if I want. ....well, I would if I could....)
More about this developing story next week! (how about "campfire memories", "Prairie memories","Sommerville memories"....?)

My best wishes for the weekend and did you know there is a auricula and primula society?

pix: some kind of primula, seen this morning in my garden

Love at first sight

2006-03-31T08:51:00.000-08:00

So, I got this phone call the other evening. And being a child born and raised in the sixties I believe in vibes and drugs: Drugs as an efficient tool to harm your physical performance and to transform your psyche, usually to the worse. Vibes are more useful, they allow picking out a colourful wave in a band of grey lines; feeling these vibes, you narrow the bandwidth of your antenna and at the same time you open up, unlock the door and let your fellow mammal in.
So, I got this phone call and saw beautiful waves in all colours of the spectrum. It turned out to be the most interesting phone call since a while. Besides these colourful vibes, an epic praise of my perfumes Le Maroc pour elle and L’air du désert marocain for sure helped to feel very sympathetic…..

It was a pleasure talking with Mr. Wuchsa, charming owner of “aus Liebe zum Duft”. In a first approximation, he is THE niche perfume expert in Germany, and his shop features about everything there is worth collecting in terms of niche perfumes. His e-shop is a dangerous place to visit for perfume lovers because there are just too many goodies to go for. And he runs a blog in German with high addition factor, too. Thus, we discussed among many other things why my perfumes are different and the synopsis of this discussion: I invest in what’s going into my perfumes. It is the ingredients, including a decent amount of love. Which is ok, however: The key issue for all nice perfumers is to get known. It is not sufficient to produce a dream perfume with the most beautiful rose and jasmine scents going in there, hard to get materials, assembled with love, ….people have to know it is out there.

So, I got this phone call and Mr Wuchsa is fond of my perfumes and based on our discussion, I assume this is why “Aus Liebe zum Duft” will sell my perfumes in Germany, starting now.

Annabelle

2006-03-30T08:42:00.000-08:00

The shopping pleasure of today: Annabelle! Annabelle is THE beauty magazine in Switzerland. Thick and heavy as always, shiny and promising lots of goodies she lays in front of me, untouched, shimmering. Annabelle is a printed assembly of shopping guides, mixed with some VIP stuff, hints and tips, and lots of impeccable beauties posing for clothes and handbags.

I checked once how much an add would cost me there and forgot about it immediately. It is so expensive, I even stopped dreaming about it. Out of scope! It just tells me that the margins for certain products, like perfumes, must be enormous, fitting perfectly with their sky rocketing marketing budgets. With a 1 full page add costing something in the range of at least 20’000$US, and a perfume costing in the average 50$US it is straightforward to see that these perfume houses’ business models are totally different to mine. This edition’s beauty news features my L’air du désert marocain and I am very happy. The picture of the flacon is very well done and the text goes like: “(literally translated) voyage of the senses- with notes of coriander, cumin, bitter orange and jasmine in combination with cedar wood and vetiver in front of an ambergris background, the eau de toilette intense enchants like a voyage through the Maghreb desert. L’air du désert marocain is after le Maroc pour elle the second creation of Zurich based perfumer Andy Tauer – a charming landscape of scents for her and him”.

Thus....I have to move on with my tauerperfumes website and introduce (planned since a while) my media coverage page....

Technocrat

2006-03-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, I will be in the mountains, in the snow again (promise to myself: It will be the last time this season). Thus: No post tomorrow but a quick note tonight.
Although this is a "business blog" I have to admit that it contains also, simply by nature of blogging, some personal stuff. So... here comes a personal note entirely non perfumery related. I am a technocrat and this is why I thank technology and modern medicine that the surgery went well and that hopefully my mother will be cured from her cancer. 100 years ago things would have been quite different. Sometimes, in light of all the troubles that follow our way of handling technology we (I) tend to forget what we, as group of brain troubled mammals, have reached.
And then, there is a whisper in my head, telling me that, still, we are not controlling everything and that there might be forces beyond our imagination that should receive a humble "thank you", too.

In this sense: Thank you from a technocrat.

(pix: from adamci )

Hot gun

2006-03-28T09:54:00.000-08:00

When I was an innocent boy living my innocent life on the Swiss country side I was once approached by a girl from my class with the decent proposal to write something nice into her poem book. You know… one of those girly books with lots of pink and dancing ponies where friends and secret lovers would write down meaningful sentences for eternity. I belonged to the category friends and suffered because there was not much meaningful in my head back then. Thus I wrote (in German, literally translated here): “ There is an end (point) to everything. Only sausages have two.”

Without knowing, I was the herald of an eternal truth; men and women are different. She must have realised within a second and I fell out of the inner circle of beloved companions.

Thus, like a sausage has two ends, there are two sides to almost everything; it applies for the flyer for the Lonestar Memories, too. (I ask you to forgive my clumsy introduction….I could not think of anything better…)

Pix: What you see is a draft layout of the flyer. The color is slightly brownish-yellowish. Its functional purpose is two-fold: On one hand it provides EU conform labelling information about potential allergenic ingredients and information where the stuff is produced (somewhat faded in the background at the bottom). On the other hand, it will allow me to make one or two statements in English, French and German there where is blind text now.

When serving as sample flyer, immediately adjacent to the white field with blind text a 1.5 ml sample pump spray will be glued. A proud owner of a little hot glue pistol, I can glue sample bottles real fast….perfumer with a hot gun…..

Packaging issues

2006-03-27T08:53:00.000-08:00

One word about bananas: Their packaging is perfect. Reasonable protection, easy unpacking and a truly honest envelope: You know what you’ll get. Contrary to some citrus fruits where you peel your basket ball sized grapefruit for hours and end up with a tennis ball like dry piece of something.

With the decision on the flacon taken, the last three days saw a first round towards packaging and labelling. There is a sensual and emotional element to all of this, linking a customer’s buying process with the end product. As we sell a substantial share of our products to clients directly on the internet, the packaging might be the first physical encounter between the real thing and a patient customer. This encounter, together with the visual aesthetics and the textual messages seen before in a web store environment, will -I am convinced- influence the overall impression of a fragrance. Of course, the most important parameter for me is the scent, the composition, followed by the composition and the scent, the scent and once again the scent. No compromise there: But somewhere down the line comes the story around a scent. And this story is linked to the packaging and visual/textual messages therein.

Then there is another aspect that I need to consider: Practicability. And simplicity: We need things to remain producible and affordable. Affordable in the sense that for every Dollar/Euro/Franc we spend more on packaging, we have to ask at least a Dollar/Euro/Franc more from our customers. Basically we would have to ask for more money for a shell around the perfume that a client will through away immediately anyhow.

You remember: One of the key motivations to do what I do is to set a contrapunto, a counter point; I want to make perfumes that are guided by a love for scents. I want to make perfumes that are honest with an honest price tag to them. I want to invest into the materials that go in them rather the materials that make the packaging.

Thus, a first draft of a packaging:
Cardboard box, solid, white. A flyer, fitting the size of the cardboard box, printed two sided, standard flyer format. The top side shown on the picture goes on top of the cardboard box. A rope made of natural sisal holds things in place. In my eyes: Simple and honest.

The cool thing about this flyer: It gives product info on the other side and it might serve as sample flyer, too. Holding the glued on sample spray bottles on the other side … more shown here tomorrow….

flacon

2006-03-24T12:21:00.000-08:00

What you see to the right is a picture of the going to be flacon, 50 ml for the Lonestar Memories.
It is a simple flacon with a functional pump spray, spraying 80 micro liter.
I have thought about it a long time... I need to streamline things a little bit...therefore, I have decided for a neutral flacon which will allow me to later also use it for other creations that might follow.
I also liked its understatment appearance and they way it feels in my hand: Not too big and not too large.
The bottles are ordered and I get the longer the more nervous.

Then arrived the business cards today; slightly shiny surface showing my coordinates in english, only "Parfumeur" is French. I thought it sounds much better than "perfumer"... ...ouhhh, I am proud. I will now include one business card with every perfume leaving my little factory. On the back of the card it will say handwritten "Enjoy! Andy Tauer

And now, my best wishes to you all...Enjoy! Andy

Gut feeling

2006-03-23T09:48:00.000-08:00

(pix: www.sxc.hu, from the saint )

Graphics and a gut feeling

So I bought this book the other day about this century’s graphic design and designers, featuring examples of 100 or so top designers and examples of their work, or should I say art? A diagonal inspection reveals stunning ideas, simple and consequently implemented in artful design, mixed with weird creations where the form seems to dominate the function. With every designer (studio) presented goes a simple sentence, highlighting a key aspect of his/her work. Favourites of mine: Angus Hyland “Continental modernism meets British eclecticism”, Fernando Gutiérrez “ It all begins with an idea (ideas make money: money doesn’t make ideas) and you respond to that idea, using your knowledge to present it in the most seductive, engaging manner possible”, Suburbia “We are reaching for a perfect synergy of information, image, design and parties”, KM7 “ fight for optical pleasure” and some more. The last designer described his visions as such: “Moving in a world in which reality is becoming more and more a subject to the media, in which MTV-isions dominate and transform our personal way of seeing things, in a world where the media are pushing forward an obfuscation of regionality, I simply want to underline the importance of reaching back to your gut feeling. Create, don’t imitate!” This, I really liked. Reaching back to your gut feeling!

Thus, what is my gut feeling telling me right now? It tells me to keep things simple, and clear, the bottle packaging, the sample packaging, the style and shape of textual labels for my Lonestar memories perfume, and to keep the bottle simple, kind of straightforward. Thus, I have ordered the 50 ml glass bottles yesterday that my gut told me to go for. A nice aspect of obeying this inner voice: Zero cash out for marketing studies…..

Holmes’ rose

2006-03-22T08:53:00.000-08:00

One of the initial notes of the Orris2 trial is the rose accord with interplaying pepper and some more facets like a hint of cinnamon and citrus (white grapefruit….). So, I looked at the rose accord in detail and thought I want to modify it just a little bit. Sniffing it on paper, and thus diluting the series of events, brings out the scenes more prominently than spraying it on skin. The little paper strips are like the magnifying glass from Mr. Holmes who looks on the dead body in the living room and who then knows immediately who killed the house lady:

It is not the butler, but the gardener…. Proof: A tiny tip of the freshly mown grass on the tip of the house lady’s high heels and a dead ant that lives in middle Europe climate in green houses only. This little piece of evidence tells our detective about the sad marriage of pour Lady Desperate. She is married to a bored Lord with his land house where she fits the furniture with here immaculate white skin but finds no passion. The rose in full bloom finds herself lost in a grey, foggy garden. Lady Desperate whispers her sad secret to the orchids in the glass house where she waters the silent flowers with her desperate tears. Here, in this exotic garden, she finds passion; her rosy cheeks flush like tomatoes ripening under a Sicilian sun, when the gardener touches her shoulders with his strong dirty hands. Here, she spends hours of lust and desire. Chased by wild animals finding their way through the jungle of conventions, she would fall and loose herself. One evening, she had to confess. She had to promise to her husband. She had to end it all, and running out in despair before supper in her high heels, she seeks a last tender touch of these hands. And finds a gardener who can not live with the truth. He, in love himself, a man of no words, wants to hold her, and breaks his most precious treasure by holding it too strong.

Holmes is very touched, so are we … and we continue with the rose accord: The rose is somewhat too lemony sticky to me, I want it fresher, greener, without loosing the volume. So, let’s search for evidence on our paper strip and in the paper files….. The rose accord in Orris 2 was built on rose essential oil for Bulgaria, rose absolute from Turkey and rose geranium from Eden. I looked at the certificate of analysis of the Eden rose geranium again and rediscovered that citronellol is the key component there, with linalool and geraniol following, some phenylethylalcohol that you also find at ca. 50% in rose absolues and. But: What to change? I think I will reduce the rose geranium (and hence the citronellol) and introduce some phenylethylalcohol additionally, together with linalylacetate which is the green cousin of Linalool, and add a touch more of the rose essential oil. Exciting, isn’t it? And relevant: I know that when giving a powerpoint presentation to the information flooded public, you have around 45 seconds to win their attention and interest. You miss these 45 seconds: No chance to regain your public’s attention (except you are willing to table dance or make a fool of you by other humiliating means). I have no proof, but I am convinced that the interest for a perfume might be decided in the first minutes after spraying, too. Interest doesn’t mean a buying decision but at least: Looking at it again.

Packaging

2006-03-21T09:37:00.000-08:00

One aspect of perfumery the way we do it is: Packaging of perfume bottles. Hurray. The positive thing about it is the intrinsic monotony. It allows for serious meditative thinking about here and now and there and tomorrow. And with every label finding its way on a cardboard box you get the opportunity to thoroughly consider ways to improve. These improvements will have to come sooner or later if I extrapolate the last twelve months. In that sense, statistics can be dream stuff. Faced with a sales curve pointing up, I seriously and reliably predict that within 20 years every second human being on planet earth will have ordered a sample and UPS star ships cruise in the inner solar system delivering my perfumes to happy aliens seeking fancier perfumes than their alien fragrances.

In light of yesterday’s endeavour I feel an urge to pay tribute to W. (you remember: the W. factor…). One reason, why these perfumes of mine exist is: Slavery, with a master slave (me) and a happy helper slave W. doing the less critical stuff. The only compensation he gets: Free perfumes in all variations, finished or not. Thus, a warm thank you, W.!

A final note about the contrapunto of yesterday: Looking at the Orris scent (orris scent=prototype name), in its version 2, after extensive maturation for 5 weeks. Not bad, not bad at all, but as I mentioned in an interview lately (going to appear soon…): It is my privilege not be obliged to any marketing or sales department. So, free like a hippie after 2 hours of meditation and a brain flushed with LSD I can move on dreaming a new scent. Happy me.

2006-03-20T08:49:00.000-08:00

So, we had a lovely come together again, Vero and me, and I thought you might be interested to see for yourself. The ambiance was somewhat non-trendy, no lounge feeling there, being the lobby of the Storchen hotel, very downtown in Zurich. But, the Chardonnay is excellent, and they don’t mind us sniffing strange things. Like sniffing “Game for men”, the newest scent from Davidoff. I read on Marlen’s blog the other day about how to make sure never to leave a perfumery without a sample….thus, when visiting the local perfumery-soap-and-all-you-need-to-be-beautiful-shop I tried this tactic. Smiling around and breaking out in ohh’s and ahhh’s about the beautiful packaging of this new perfume, that I found so interesting and lovely arranged (they plastered half of the shop with game perfume bottles) a charming sales lady had no choice then to offer me a sample, which I gladly took. To sooth my bad conscience I bought a refill for my CO2 bomb to make my own Zurich mineral water.

You know, when you spend your Saturday evenings, filling samples of Le Maroc pour elle, you kind of feel like sitting in the glasshouse and you don’t want to through stones….. Well, be it. Vero and I sniffed a few things, for me personally the most relevant was the Sandalwood sample that Vero got from Essencia. Relevant because I use high, very high quality Sandalwood in my Le Maroc pour elle, and I mentioned it earlier: We are faced with a Sandalwood crisis. Essencia people told us that by now they even got troubles getting a good quality Sandalwood spicatum from Australia or the Vanuatu one because the big companies (IFF, ….) buy up everything. Really everything. Even the trashiest stuff. Thus, we smelled Sandalwood from Fitchi (I think it is S. alba, but am not sure: I have to check) that might be in stock at Essencia for around a year….. It is excellent, a little bit spicier than the Mysore quality, a touch more stingy, but far less than the S. spicatum. It is very warm, and has this flowery quality of the Mysore Sandalwood. It is better even when applied on skin and lasts very long. Besides the Vanuatu from Eden, this is the best replacement I have experienced so far. It is somewhat expensive, 100 gram around 200 Swiss Francs, translating into 160 $US, but this is an other issue. I will, I guess, order some. Just to be on the safe side. If I was brave enough, I could have made a fortune by buying Sandalwood two years ago and selling it today…..

I will not buy, however, the game stuff. Perfumery wise there are lessons to be learnt from Davidoff. Nice packaging, appealing bottle, good name, and they still use the term and signature of “Cool Water” on their sample packaging: Linking a new product to an existing one, trying to transfer some of the Cool Water glory to aggressive cucumber juice. Oups, I shouldn’t …. I sit in the glass house.

bugs

2006-03-18T07:41:00.000-08:00

A bug had severely affected this blog yesterday. Now we are up and running again. I was very angry with blogger, not about the technical problem but about their communication which was non existent. A word would have been a word.....
It is time to speed up my plan to bring this blog on my own server......
I send you now again my best wishes for the weekend. Enjoy and see you soon again here.

Clean lounge

2006-03-17T07:26:00.000-08:00

It is decided: I got the cowboy picture shown earlier this week. Uff. I feel much better now, now that it is on my computer's hard disk. A closer inspection at higher resolution showed me a little defect in the hat..... cool. I like it a lot.
This authentic flaw I will leave. Some stuff I have to optimize, like the background, eventually.

And in light of many hurdles take so far I decided furthermore to clean up a little bit and get rid of some pieces of the past again; and of the leather's development process. It might be interesting to keep all trials in physical form for future reference, but I stick to the excel files and consider the rest as bagage of the past: You want to get rid of it fast. Otherwise you will soon get nowhere due to its heavy weight.
The cleaning up process is heavily supported by sound bites flying around my ears, I could go on like that foreever: Tune in to lounge radio and you will see what I mean
http://www.lounge-radio.com/menu.html

2006-03-16T09:01:00.000-08:00

The good news of today is: All fragrant building blocks for the leather are stocked up to produce a first batch. Yesterday, the final missing materials arrived from Essencia, like the Tonka beans resinoid, the Bourbon Geranium essential oil, fresh rectified Birchtar, and Jasmine abs. and and and. Together with some stuff from France and from Eden we have everything ready and the count down starts running. It is getting exciting but also painful because sooner or later everything will be ready and waits for the concentrated batch. The undiluted mix of oils and resins and absolutes needs to mature before it can be diluted with alcohol.
Based on what I smelled, comparing previous dilutions of my master mix at previous time points, I realized that the leather stock needs at least 2 months maturation. 2 months to transform itself and get softer, rounder and deeper. The difference of diluted samples right after mixing the stock and after 2 months maturation is striking. Especially the smoky-woody lines need time to fully develop. Well, I guess there’s ample time to work on sample packaging material and brochures…..

(pix: business card, finally in print these days)

Dances with post officers and a space dream

2006-03-15T08:50:00.000-08:00

With the risk of sending my readers to the oblivion of boredom: Here’s an update of sample shipments. Of course, the very moment I have sent the samples and a perfume again to patient clients this weekend, this very moment the original order shipment finally made it there. I guess we all are happy! While still finding peace in imaging how happy my customers are (now that the parcels arrived), I read my mails this morning. Praised be Airbus or Boeing, kissed friendly customs employees, hugged the post officer and her co-workers! A sample shipped from Zurich made it to the US within 5 days, in non-priority mode. …..but as always in life, there is a flaw to this wonderful news: Unfortunately, my treasured Medieval team forgot to put in one of the samples ordered. Hrrrrrgggg!

I wish myself into Startreck world, where Mr. Kirk and Scotty just tell a sophisticated machine that it would be the ideal moment to produce some samples of Tauer Perfumes. And –bang!- using E=mc2 out comes a little pump spray with L’air du desert marocain. Kirk sprays it on, Miss Uhura immediately looses her temper and sits on his knees and happily they fly off to safe yet another world; the happy perfumer on the other side of the galaxy plays in the mean time with alien ingredients to create a truly alien perfume and only Mr. Spock wonders what the fuss about these perfumes is all about…..

(pix courtesy www.startreck.com)

Which brings me to the last serious point of this post: What’s an alien smelling like?

A star from the past

2006-03-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

Did you know? We live in the past. Everything we become conscious of happened already. First our nervous system needs some time to process signals coming in for instance a hand touching our skin; second there is a time gap due to the fact that light needs some time to get across space to reach our light sensitive cells, be it from the flower right in front of us, be it from a star far away. The sun could explode without us realizing it for about 10 minutes. Which is kind of cool… the crown of evolution dancing self forgotten on its planet while the star that makes all this dancing possible is extinguished since 5 minutes!

Why this strange introduction to this post? I had the chance to look at a star from the past last Saturday: Vero had acquired many, many years ago a beautiful baccarat flacon together with a small pump spray of Vega, the original. Unopened. We didn’t dare touching the baccarat, but we dared comparing the Vega in the little pump spray with mine, bought in Paris, the re-edition eau de toilette. Wow! What a difference.

Vega (the original) is much rounder, the very first impression is less spicy and more powdery, there might be more bergamot in it, and the second impression is the rose, the rose which is there, hidden but visible and present. So much nicer, so much more natural than in the re-edition. We couldn’t fight the impression that the re-edition is –as far as the rose is concerned- much more artificial. And then there is the powder again, together with strings of animalic notes, maybe oakmoss, beautiful! The whole scent picture was more complete and balanced. The re-edition was a little bit like a very well done lithographical copy, on glossy paper, brilliant and beautiful, but not the original!

What was different on paper was even more different on Vero’s skin; here Vega was a couple of layers more, soothingly playing with the skin. Thus, our conclusion this Saturday afternoon was: Guerlain should name its reedition “étoile mémoires” or “memories of Vega”. We will have to live with the fact that some stars will never twinkle again.

For a little picture of Vega on the sky.... follow this link

Asparagus

2006-03-13T08:48:00.000-08:00

This weekend’s highlights: Long delivery times to the US, changes on the website, which are intended to give our customers a better choice to have samples shipped priority, desperate trials on a business card design and my dear Vero and a Vega of the past (a topic for tomorrow).
When going for my groceries I usually try to buy stuff that is ecologically reasonable. This may implicate not to buy foodstuff arriving fresh and luscious from far away places by plane. I am not religious about it, but when there’s a choice why not by cabbage instead of exotic or off-season vegetables? Coincidently I shipped a little parcel with a Le Maroc pour elle before cruising through my local food paradise on Saturday. We were faced with a perfume lost in space somewhere between here and the US, probably customs related. Maybe customs associates with Le Maroc pour elle something like “Arab country”, with “pour elle” being a trick to fool customs; maybe they see a hidden dangerous message within this flacon, undermining home security? Who knows, we live in strange times; unfortunately, with all our virtual coming closer to the most hidden place on planet earth we still face the ugly reality of transporting goods across borders.

I wanted to bring my patient customer’s misery to an end and thought I will make her happy, sending off a priority shipped free replacement for a perfume that sits somewhere waiting to be cleared. The price tag for this idea: 19 Francs, about 15 $US for shipment of just a few hundred grams perfume in a glass flacon and cardboard, all neatly packed.
In my grocery story I came across fresh asparagus from Mexico for an astonishing 7 Francs twenty cents a kilogram. Shipped all the way by plane, fresh and yummie looking. Now, could anyone please explain to me, why my innocent parcels cost almost three times of what I pay for asparagus? I know that sometimes the working conditions for Mexicans are close to modern slavery, thus in a first assumptions we may assume that human labour does not matter much for the final price tag of these green vitamin sticks. Thus, how does this make sense?
Maybe, we should consider sending our perfumes as asparagus packages?
pix by me1234567, from www.sxc.hu

Lonestar letter

2006-03-10T16:37:00.000-08:00

Good news, Barry....
Lonestar Leather has made it to the top of the list. But some doubts remain whether I do not touch the rights of Juvena with their Lonestar perfume. Thus.... the letter is on its way, asking for permission sort off. By the way: Juvena is one of the top cosmetical companies. They are very innovative in the field of pharmacosmeticals. And their head quarter is basically just around the corner.
Funny coincidence. Eventually, two Lonestar perfumes will have been born at the same spot in Switzerland!
I wish y'all a nice, sunny weekend
Enjoy
(pix: Violet, seen and smelled last spring)