NEW Hedonist & Viktoria Minya Interview

Hey there Posse! I’ve been chatting to Viktoria from the Hedonist house of fragrances. I TOTALLY knew you’d be excited to read about the new stuff going on for her. This is a short & sweet interview about her, Hedonist and what we can expect coming up.

Hedonist: Viktoria Minya Interview

Hi Viktoria, It’s been a couple of years since your last release. I hear rumblings that there is something new in the works?

I have been working on 3 new fragrances for the last 3 years, and they are finally out!!!

Hedonist was one of the biggest releases of 2013, then put forth Iris and Rose in 2014. How do the absolutes differ to the original offerings?

The Hedonist series contains hundreds of genuine crystals. I love them. Until today, if I look at any of them with the sun hitting them, I have an ‘aaawww’ moment. They are seriously pretty. But, this comes with a price, I had a lot of technical limitations I had to work with so that the juices are not dark and not changing with time. It was a very difficult challenge. I guess after that, I just wanted to “unleash” myself: work with anything and everything I felt like.

The Absolutes turned out to be quite different from the Hedonist series… Hedonist Rose and Iris are completely different scents, while Hedonist Absolute is a darker, more smokey and masculin version of the original Hedonist. Monsieur Hedonist, if you like!

Love the bottle change, what inspired the black?

Said desire for “unleashing” myself 🙂 And I loved the black/gold theme, it feels luxurious, timelessly elegant, but also mysterious!

How do you feel the niche landscape has changed in the 6 years since you first released?

Good question! I feel there is more and more niche perfumes being launched every day, I don’t think I can follow up anymore… On the other hand, this gives a lot of space for a lot of artists to express themselves and I welcome that! There are some gems among the massive offerings, but also there is less and less genuine perfume houses. I think I am one of the few of those who are really owners / creative directors AND perfumers of a brand all at once.

Not that it has to be this way, there are a lot of great houses with creative people as owners, who just happen to be not perfumers, but they work with talented noses and the result can be awesome. But there is a difference in “giving birth” to a perfume out of self expression as an artist or out of purely business purposes. We all live from money, I don’t want to pretend my decisions are completely independent from this fact, but I hear of businesses who have many different brands, and launch a thousand perfumes per year. I honestly doubt they pour all their hearts in each and every perfume they launch, if I may say. Again, that’s important for me, it might not be for everybody though and that is ok too!

What are some of the biggest challenges being a small independent perfume company?

We typically lack the funds and other resources that bigger companies have access to and this could result in facing difficulties on a daily basis. I can also tell you that I have absolutely no time or energy for marketing, for example. I got really lucky with Hedonist, which became a kind of a cult scent relatively quickly after its launch and it just sold itself, basically.

With Hedonist Iris AbsoluteI have this feeling too! I mean, I learned not to expect anything from the market, cause more often than not, it doesn’t react as “it should”, but my colleague and I had serious mental orgasms making this scent. Every time he was wearing Iris AbsoluteI literally wanted to lick his wrist . Since the perfume is out, we have had numerous raving feedback about this scent, so I am crossing my fingers I don’t HAVE to do marketing for a while still… 🙂

Viktoria Minya has amazing Sample Sets too.

 

Isn’t it interesting to get such a close up snapshot from a perfumer? Have you tried any of the Hedonist range?
Portia xx

 

 

 

Portia also writes for Australian Perfume Junkies