Stargazer

Carla says:

I love Francis Kurkdjian! I think he is the perfumer I would be most ga-ga to meet. I feel like Lumiere Noire pour Femme was made just for me. My good friend met him when he spoke at the Lycee Francais of Chicago’s gala last year. I spoke with Linda Pilkington when I called to order at Ormonde Jayne and was so glad for the chance to tell her how beautiful Ormonde Woman is. I lived in Boston for a long time and used to wonder if one day I might meet Luca Turin or Tania Sanchez, since I spent so much time at perfume counters. I didn’t, though.

nozknoz says:

Last fall, I attended a seminar led by Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez and Patricia de Nicolai. Christophe Laudamiel was there, too, although I didn’t realize who he was until the seminar was nearly over. I totally FAILED to think of a single intelligent question either before or during! I did interact with them briefly in the book signing lines and thanked PdN for her wonderful perfumes and LT and TS for having made it possible for me to explore perfume intelligently because of their books.

I have two questions for perfumers: 1. So many perfume blog commenters note that they don’t enjoy incense perfumes because incense it reminds them of Catholic mass. I’d like to ask the noses of notable incense perfumes whether or not they have these associations and if they do, what does it mean for them to compose incense perfumes? (Since Andy Tauer has a blog, I guess I ought to try contacting him, actually!) 2. I’d like to ask Duchaufour why his perfumes are so different from classical perfumes or anyone else’s, for that matter – how/why was he able to transform perfume in this way?

Thanks for your post, Ann. On some level it can’t matter, but on another I like knowing that some of my perfume dollars are going to a perfumer who is a nice person like FK. FYI, PdN seemed very grounded and it was very heartening to hear how she persevered even though it was unthinkable when she started out for Guerlain to have a female nose, so she really had to find her own way.

tammy says:

Well, if we’re allowed to raise the dead, my choice would be Ernest Daltroff, though rather than ask him questions, I’d probably just kiss his feet. (I’d raise him completely intact, of course)

Thanks, Ann, for such a fun post!

lemonprint says:

Fortunately, I just finished the spring Sniffapalooza, where I got to talk to many perfumers, including DSH and (for the first time) Neil Morris. I am a hopeless dork, because I almost always ask the same question, “What’s in that?” and they pretty much never answer me. (At least Neil Morris was a bit coy about what is it in Izmir that gives it that amazing smell that really speaks to me of Turkey and nowhere else. Coy in the sense that he didn’t answer the question. :-))

I think I’m too much of a dissectionist and they don’t usually want to pick apart their fragrances like that. But I’m still learning to identify notes, and I really want to know what it is I’m smelling – especially when it’s a note I know I recognize but can’t yet put a word to. I just learned that a note I’ve loved for years is frankincense, and I am ridiculously excited to know that!

The new Department of Olfactory Arts at the Museum of Arts and Design is hoping to have events where the public can come and watch an actual creative meeting between noses and creative directors, complete with access to the brief and to the sketches being considered. If it comes off, that will be extraordinarily educational.

And maybe I would come up with better questions to ask. :-)

Olfacta says:

Francois Coty — I would ask him what really happened in the department store that had just turned down Le Rose Jacqueminot. Version A: He smashed the bottle on the floor and all the women who smelled it came rushing up to buy it. Version B: These same women were “shills” hired by Coty to do just that, a brilliant stunt if it really happened. My guess is Version B. He seemed to have a natural bent for marketing. But no one who knows the truth is still alive.