the art of perfume class: 5 posts

If you’ve donated and didn’t receive your Zoom invitation, please contact me and I will resend your invite.

Join Luca Turin and me for a live online seminar on new perfume launches, industry trends, and insider observations from the fragrance world. Luca will be joining us from Milan during Esxence, the world’s largest niche perfumery exhibition. I will be speaking from Ukraine.

Scientist, critic, polymath, and co-author of Perfumes: The A–Z Guide, Luca needs little introduction. Expect lively discussion, strong opinions, and plenty of opportunities for questions.

This event supports a cause close to my heart.

Since this spring, I have been working with the Kramatorsk Volunteer Organization in eastern Ukraine, helping evacuate civilians from frontline communities. The team is made up entirely of local volunteers. They receive no salary. Their leader, Bogdan Zuyakov, works at a local music school and spends his free time organizing evacuations, transporting hospital patients, and helping people escape the war zone.

I join the team’s missions whenever I am in Kramatorsk, and I have seen firsthand how vital this work is. As the front advances and drone warfare expands the danger zone, the window for evacuation is shrinking.

Unfortunately, one of the team’s vehicles recently broke down. Without vehicles, evacuations stop.

Together with my fellow volunteer Ben Kochenburger, we have already raised more than $10,300. We are now just $4,700 away from our goal of $15,000, which will allow us to purchase a replacement vehicle and keep these missions running.

Spend an hour talking perfume with Luca Turin—and help keep a lifesaving evacuation vehicle on the road.

Event Details

Friday, June 5
17:00–18:00 CET
11:00–12:00 EST
Zoom

How to Participate

Donate $50 or more to the fundraiser: https://gogetfunding.com/humanitarian-support-for-relocating-civilians-in-ukraine/

Everyone who has already donated $50 or more is automatically eligible and will receive a Zoom invitation before the event. Be sure that you enter your email address, so that we can contact you.

A recording will be made available to the registered participants.

If you are unable to contribute, sharing this post would be a tremendous help.

It’s not every day that a conversation about perfume helps to save lives.

Luca’s Substack: https://lucaturin.substack.com/

You can follow the reports of my work with the Kramatorks Volunteer Organization via my Substack or Instagram.

The overview of our 2018 class and the description of our activities can be found here, Scents of the Burgundian Spring.

I have some news for you. I’m going to teach a new perfumery course in France next spring (April 18-21, 2018). Since it will take place in Burgundy, a region renowned for its wine, the three day course will reflect that. We will learn together about the aromatics used in perfumery and found in wine, practice sharpening our sense of smell and learn to take apart accords and recognize notes. We will also have an overview of perfume history in the form of some of the most iconic fragrances. At the same time, I will show you lost masterpieces, less well-known but equally fascinating blends and teach you a number of professional techniques for smelling, remembering scents and describing them. And we will certainly be enjoying plenty of good wine.

The course will be held in Château Le Sallay in Magny-Cours. It’s a Renaissance-era building, once the residence of the Counts of Nevers, that’s been restored as a 4 star hotel surrounded by a large park. It’s easily reached from Paris, and if you wanted to combine the course with a visit to the Loire Valley, it’s possible. 

Just like my previous two courses, this one is organized by Senses & Vacation. All of the details can be found via their website, The Art of Perfume. It also lists the program, accommodation details and much more.

The course program will be slightly different, but you can read about the course I taught in spring of 2017 here.

How to Book The Course: please go to The Art of Perfume website.

1st image by Anna Kozlova via Senses & Vacation, 2nd via Wiki-images, some rights reserved.

Here is a recap of the three days of our Art of Perfume course: on Day 1 we visited the Edmond Roudnitska garden and explored the International Perfume Museum in Grasse, on Day 2 we learned about perfumes that influenced fragrance history and more, and on Day 3 we applied our newly learned skills to practical exercises.

As I mentioned before, my course was designed with all of the rigor of a professional training program, keeping in mind our time limitations. It takes years to learn how to make a perfume, but one can acquire basic knowledge of raw materials and try simple exercises to see how they interact together. All of this not only helps deepen one’s knowledge of perfumery, but also makes one’s perceptions sharper.

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I already wrote about my most recent perfumery course, covering the first day of our activities, visiting the Edmond Roudnitska garden and exploring the International Perfume Museum in Grasse. Today I’m continuing with our second day, which covered perfume history and professional smelling techniques.

Whenever I hear the phrase “perfume history,” I think of the typical introductory chapter in books on fragrance that start with the Egyptians and the stuff researchers still find in the pyramids. Then a writer might continue with a short homage to the Romans, include a remark on the use of perfume by the bath fearing Europeans in the Middle Ages and with a clear conscience they skip to the brave new world of the 20th century and its Chanels and Guerlains. Perfume history is fascinating stuff, but why is it presented in such a dull manner? I want to do something different.

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The aim of my Provence class this spring is threefold: to explain how to smell like perfumers, to introduce the landmarks that changed perfume history and to offer a basic technical understanding of perfume composition. With this knowledge you can appreciate fragrances on a deeper level as well as fine-tune your senses in general. The class will take place on April 5-9th in Provence, France. Below is the course program.

WEDNESDAY, April 5
A welcome meeting.

THURSDAY, April 6
Day 1: Inside A Perfumer’s Garden and A Visit to the Perfume Lab

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