“Behind the Scenes at Firmenich For the Creation of AXE Excite”video fits right into my How Many Hands Touch Your Bottle of Perfume series. Harry Fremont, Frank Voelkl, and Pierre Negrin, perfumers who work for a fragrance supplier Firmenich, explain how they created Axe and lead you into the lab. You can see the way the labs are organized and observe the lab technicians at work mixing the perfume oils. In the final scene, you will see that perfumes are tested on skin–the only way to properly understand how a blend develops.

It often comes as a surprise to many people that mass market products like Axe are created by the top perfumers in the field. As does the fact that the development of these scents is a careful, detail oriented process. While Axe body sprays may be cheap and ubiquitous, the process behind creating them is anything but. The Axe projects are among the most coveted for the perfumers, and when Negrin grins proudly mentioning the win, his emotion is genuine.  The big scope and diversity of Axe also mean that a perfumer can experiment with some unexpected accords like Voelkl does with his masculine coconut-caramel twist to make Excite. Not all mass market lines are willing to take risks, but Axe is big enough to push the boundary on occasion.

Thank you, Robin, for a link!

Scarves are my favorite accessories. I love the way the sheer organza feels on my shoulders in the summer. The warm heft of a thick, cable-knit wool feels comforting on blistering cold days in the winter. My work uniform of jeans and black sweater can be easily spiced up with a piece of silk in cobalt blue or the Russian style tasseled square in red.  In an overlap with my sartorial wardrobe, I have a whole category of fragrances I categorize as my “scarf” perfumes. They usually stay close to the skin and have a warm, smoky drydown. To smell them on me, you would have to lean in close, and I love the intimate aura they create.

One such warm and smoky contender has been Diptyque Volutes, which I’ve been testing over the past couple of weeks. Volutes in French means swirls, as in swirls of smoke, and as Volutes unfolds gently on skin and wraps me in its warm embrace, it indeed makes me think of sweet cherry scented tobacco. The story behind Volutes is of the transatlantic journeys one of Diptyque’s original founders, Yves Coueslant, used to make as a child, crossing from Marseille to Saigon and back. The vision of the “elegant ladies leaning on the ship’s rail smoking their Khedive cigarettes” inspired this languid perfume. These ladies must also have worn Shalimar, because this Guerlain classic was my immediate association with Volutes.

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You walk into Sephora, pass the shelves piled with makeup and find yourself in front of a wall covered with perfume bottles. You pick up the one that catches your eye, spray a blotter, put the tester back on the shelf and continue moving past the display of shiny glass vials. Perhaps you fall in love with the perfume and buy it. You bring it home, put it on your dresser and if the choice was right, the scent will now accompany you everywhere, serving as a fragrant soundtrack for your day. Perfume is such an intimate thing and its effects on us are complex, but equally fascinating is the process by which the aroma ends up in the bottle.

The overwhelming increase of new fragrance launches has robbed perfume both of its luxury status and of its mystery. The story of creators spending years crafting their masterpieces is difficult to believe when most big brands come out with a new fragrance every couple of months. The perfume houses have always been reluctant to disclose the process by which they create fragrances. In some cases, it is because the process contains some precious know-how, in others because it is simply too corporate and not mysterious enough to capture the consumer’s imagination. So how many hands touch your bottle of perfume after all?

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Donna Karan has released a new variation on its 1994 fragrance Cashmere Mist, Cashmere Mist Pearl Essence. It’s a white floral twist on the powdery-woody original. The press release says that it was inspired by Tahitian pearls. Cashmere Mist Pearl Essence includes notes of neroli, ginger, jasmine sambac, lily of the valley, tiare, patchouli, sandalwood, and musk.

Cashmere Mist Pearl Essence includes a full line of body products, including bath pearls. 1.7oz  Eau de Parfum retails for $78.00. Available at Macy’s, Lord & Taylor and other major department stores. Via press release and Macy’s.

What is your most versatile perfume that suits most of your moods and occasions? 

Many of us have experienced moments when we stand in front of a closet full clothes and decide that we have nothing to wear. Well, unless you have a well-edited perfume wardrobe, you can suffer the same indecision. For work, I have to keep a big library of fragrances on hand, but for pleasure, I’ve narrowed down my choices to a more manageable level. Deciding among dozens of perfumes is even more difficult than deciding among several outfits. You can’t easily try all of them on!

Once I’ve streamlined, I realized that a few fragrances please me nomatter what: iris, orange blossom, soft musk or dry wood, such as Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist, Annick Goutal Néroli, Estée Lauder White Linen and 10 Corso Como. The dry woods like Olfactive Studio Autoportrait, Serge Lutens Santal Majuscule, Van Cleef et Arpels Cologne Noire and Chanel Coromandel, depending on what I’ve set out on my dresser on any given week, hit the spot anytime. It doesn’t mean that I wear these more than some of my other favorites, but if I ever have a moment of indecision, they are my favorite “fall back” choices.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin, Chanel display at Place Vendôme Haute Parfumerie.