Some time ago, I interviewed Louce and Ronin, who can usually be found at the Parfumo site, writing about perfume news and interviewing famous perfumers. Because there’s nothing about perfume those two don’t know, there was a lot of stuff that I couldn’t include in the original interview. Nevertheless, there was some interesting info left out, which is the reason I now present the outtakes from the original interview!

To recap:

Louce and Ronin know nearly everything about perfume and both were kind enough to answer my questions. You can find the Perfume 101 here, and in it we cover how to find your perfect perfume, longevity, skin chemistry, natural and synthetic fragrances and mainstream versus niche perfumes. The following outtakes dive much deeper into the matter of fragrances.

(Hier gibt’s eine deutsche Fassung dieses Blogposts.)

 

Louce: Perfumery can be art

“For thousands of years, perfumery was handicraft. Craftsmen took what they needed from nature to extract fragrances from and mixed those substances. With the beginning of the 20th century there were ground-breaking innovations in chemistry – synthetic fragrances were developed. It became possible to create different fragrances. Before that, a perfumer had to ask: What can I do? After that, he asked: What do I want to do?

Let’s compare it to winery. Winery is handicraft. Winemakers work with substances that nature provides. They can reach a very high level of sophistication, but they’ll always come up against the wall that the material they’re working with creates for them. Perfumery managed to overcome that barrier at the beginning of the 20th century. Today you can assume rightly that perfumery can be art. It doesn’t have to be, though. “

So viele Parfums
Louce and Ronin’s perfume stash. Well, parts of it anyway.

 

Louce explaining fragrance genres

“There’re different olfactive families. You can also call them olfactive genres, similar to movies: Instead of science fiction, action movies or chick flicks, fragrance genres are, for example, chypres, floral, oriental, or fougère. Within those genres there’re sub-genres. There’re notes that notoriously pop up in olfactive families, like vanilla in orientals, but they are not exclusive to them – they can pop up in other families as well! Notes and accords (a blend of different notes) are what makes an olfactive family. An interdisciplinary approach, really: There’s a lot of lee-way perfumers have when playing with genres, sub-genres, notorious and extraordinary notes.”

 

Ronin: Why it’s awesome that synthetic musk exists

“Musk is one of the most classical base notes and has been used for centuries in perfumery. If asked to describe its scent, I’d say that comparing it to the scent of warm skin comes possibly closest. Natural musk was derived from the glands of musk deer. The deer had to be killed for that, which led to their near extinction. Thankfully, at the end of the 19th century research started to find synthetic alternatives. Nowadays there’re hundreds of synthetic musk scents and the natural one isn’t used in perfumery any longer. In classical perfumery musk is a base note that you’re able to smell quite late in a fragrances’ development. But now, with all the synthetic musk, it’s also possible to use it as top or heart note. That’s a fascinating development you can recognise more than once in the history of perfumery – 100 years ago the demand of musk was so high that the search for alternatives began. Today availability and variety are much higher than before because of that.”

 

Different perceptions and “why does this perfume smell differently on me and you?”

Louce: “My sense of a fragrance I smell on myself and one I smell on somebody else can be different. That’s both the result of evolution and common psychology. My self-perception and my outsider’s perception is different – that’s not a thing that happens on the skin, but in my brain. Generally, your perception of a scent is determined by a lot of psychological factors – the sense of smell is the only one that passes through the limbic system and some other parts of the brain until it reaches the cognitive parts. That means that a scent takes quite a long way until I become consciously aware of it. It travels from the neuron in the nasal mucous membrane through a lot of brain areas. What happens on its way before I consciously smell something is called ‘higher olfactory functions’. And that’s happening in your unconscious and also changes the conscious sense of smelling something. Fragrances smell differently to me when I smell them on my skin or on others’, on men or on women, or on strangers and people I know well and so forth.”

Ronin: “Let’s use ‘Charmes et Feuilles’ by The Different Company as an example. It’s a very ‘green’ scent, with lots of herbs and jasmine. Usually herbs are said to be a classic choice for male fragrances, while jasmine has a feminine connotation. On me I smell herbs, but if I smell the same fragrance on Louce, it seems much more floral to me. If we both spray our wrists and hold them next to each other, I can’t smell any difference.”

 

Outtake mit Pinot, Louces und Ronins Hund.
Outtake with Pinot, Louce’s and Ronin’s dog.

 

Louce: You can learn to smell!

“Some people don’t notice specific scents, or notice some scents somehow, but they don’t leave a lasting impression – because they lack practice. Our sensory perceptions are linked with our memories and established memory patterns can be triggered much quicker and more succinct. Perception and a conscious recognition of a scent are different things. When I’ve established some memory patterns, I’m able to recognise scents much quicker. You can train a low sensitivity or even anosmia. If you’ve lost your sense of scent after an illness or an accident, or if you’ve ever been unable to smell some scents, you can try to regain it with regular training. The number of neurons in the nasal mucous membrane isn’t stable – it can go up with training. Sensitivity for scents isn’t hewn in stone, and anosmia isn’t, either.”

 

Background of the EU regulation on fragrance allergens

Louce: “The question is why we all should forgo fragrance ingredients that are somehow harmful but could be regulated in a different manner than by radical banning them. About one to three per cent of the population suffers from contact allergies triggered by fragrances. Nobody in this group is in immediate, life threatening danger. Of course this group has to be informed and warned that a fragrance contains a specific allergen.

Have a look at what happened with cheese made from unpasteurized milk. There was an attempt to regulate making and selling raw milk cheeses in the European Union. Those kind of cheeses could absolutely be life-threatening, but nevertheless, they found a good solution with declaring something like ‘cheese made from unpasteurized milk harms unborn babies’ on the cheese’s packaging. Pregnant women are now warned. But the cheese can be sold regardless. There was a lot of uproar accompanying the regulation. A lot of European regions depend heavily of their artisanal traditions surrounding cheese-making – what’s Normandy, Provence and the Swiss Alps without their cheese? But with perfumery, there’s also the aspect of dealing with art, and I really think that there should be some care when navigating the line between health protection and the protection of a form of art.”

Duty of declaration and the question of Vaseline

Ronin: “The duty of declaration for perfumes was extended in the end. That means that labels will be much biggerr. The selection of ingredients that has to be declared wasn’t really that successful, though. Ingredients have to be declared that 0,05% of test persons reacted against. Of course, 0,05% is more than none, but 0,03% of the population are allergic to Vaseline, which is used as a medium for allergy tests, just because its allergic potential is nearly non-existent…”

 

A big thank you goes to Louce and Ronin for their patience and time. Thank you guys!