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Every Friday, the perfume article packed issue of Women’s Wear Daily lands on my desk. Following my usual habit, I jot down the fragrances to be launched and place an asterisk next to those that capture my attention. Below is the list of a few such fragrances (in no particular order.) I would like to know what launch you are anticipating.

Hermès Kelly Calèche (June 2007)
Floral leather created by perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena, Kelly Calèche sounds like a fragrance made just for me. I am almost afraid to try it, for the fear of being disappointed. The best description comes from WWD: “One of the first things I wanted to do when I entered Hermès was work with leather,” said Ellena. He also kept in mind a passage from French author Jean Giono’s “Jean le Bleu,” in which the narrator speaks of his departed father, a cobbler, as “making soles in angel leather. … Jean-Claude wanted to do a floral leather,” explained Fulconis. To that end, Ellena combined notes of iris, mimosa, tuberose and climbing rose to create Kelly Calèche.”

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is having an exhibit titled “Poiret: King of Fashion.” Time has not been favorable to Paul Poiret, a truly avant-garde designer, who at the turn of the 20th century has not only liberated women from corsets, but also ushered in modernism in fashion and created the first line of fragrances associated with fashion (a decade before Coco Chanel and Chanel No 5, one might add). Parfums de Rosine fragrance line, composed by great perfumers like Henri Alméras and Maurice Schaller, was as unique as his fashion designs. Poiret, unable to adjust to the changing times due to the political and economic upheavals, died in poverty, and his achievements have never been truly recognized, neither in fashion nor in fragrance.

The exhibit give a chance to understand the complex personality of Poiret as well as the intricacies of his fashions and presentations. After visiting once, I am planning to return again, because it was simply one of the best fashion exhibits I have seen. It is time that Poiret has truly received the recognition he deserved. Please see more information on The Metropolitan Museum website. The exhibit runs till August, 2007.

Advertisement for Rosine’s Le Fruit Défendu (1914) from 1000 Fragrances blog.

“Call it the Davos of nose, the olfactory Olympics, the Sundance of Scent. On June 5, representatives of more than 50 top fragrance-and-flavor companies will converge at the World Perfumery Congress in Cannes, France, to charm potential customers and herald their latest innovations. Gilles Andrier, CEO of Givaudan, the industry leader, will speak on “The Noses of Tomorrow.” The latest robotic smell mixers will be on display. International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF), Givaudan’s closest rival, will fly in most of its 96 top scent developers separately to the June congress; their noses are so precious that IFF prohibits more than two from ever traveling on the same plane. In addition to trading tips on new smell-rendering techniques and technologies, these wizards of whiff will toss around novel scent combinations employing hydroponic vegetables, Chinese herbs, Indian spices and other recent additions to their olfactory palettes.”

Read the rest of the article in Time Magazine.

Révolte was a fragrance that Lancôme launched in 1936, a striking leather blend that did not attempt to downplay its dark animalic side. Even when relaunched as Cuir (Révolte was considered too controversial of a name,) it remained brooding and dusky. Now, it has joined Lancôme’s La Collection, a glimpse into the house’s archives, which already offered us Magie, Sagamore, Sikkim, Climat and Mille et Une Rôses. The fragrance has been launched in the Middle East already (I received a bottle from a friend who traveled through Dubai,) and I expect that it will soon end up on the counters States-side. Michael Edwards’s Fragrances of the World guide lists the notes of bergamot, mandarin, iris, jasmine, aubepine, birch, styrax and saffron. Although I am yet to give it a thorough test, but it is a very elegant leather fragrance decorated with a radiant floral accord.  A more detailed review is to follow soon.

Over the past few years, I have found myself reading more and more of Angewandte Chemie, a weekly peer-reviewed journal. Besides its interesting editorial content, covering all fields of chemistry, it tends to publish very interesting findings in the area of chemistry as it relates to the fragrance and flavor industry. The issue 18 is devoted to such a topic—the scent prediction. The cover of the magazine is scented with the lily of the valley fragrance. The choice is appropriate, since the interdisciplinary team headed by Reinhold Tacke of University of Würzburg, Philip Kraft of Givaudan Schweiz Inc., and Hanns Hatt of University of Bochum demonstrates in the article the ability to predict the odor intensties of molecules Bourgeonal and Lilial (which tend to be used for as part of the lily of the valley accords in perfumery) and their silicon analogues on the basis of their stereoelectronic properties. As the researchers note, “Our computer calculations are exclusively based on the surface shape of the scent molecules, which is defined by their electrons… These results thus unambiguously prove that it is this electronic surface structure of a molecule that determines the interaction between a scent molecule and its olfactory receptors—and thus defines its fragrance.”

Although the article requires some knowledge of chemistry in order to follow the argument, it is nevertheless a fascinating and highly recommended read. See the feature about it on Leffingwell as well as a detailed overview published in Innovations Report. The full text can be acquired from Interscience.

Citation: Leszek Doszczak, Philip Kraft, Hans-Peter Weber, Rüdiger Bertermann, Annika Triller, Hanns Hatt, Reinhold Tacke. Prediction of Perception: Probing the hOR17-4 Olfactory Receptor Model with Silicon Analogues of Bourgeonal and Lilial, Angewandte Chemie International Edition. Volume 46, Issue 18 , Pages 3367 – 3371.