Perfumery Course First day
10 students from 6 different countries came to Italy to follow my course on how to compose perfumes with be best materials of perfumery, the natural ingredients. Several of them have attempted to make perfumes with these ingredients in the past but without satisfactory result. They will understand here what went wrong with their endeavour.
Learning archery to learn perfumery. Parables are the most potent explanations. Making perfumes needs a new mental attitude.
Making perfumes is easy, but you need a method otherwise you will end up with a mish-mash, an incoherent mix of smells unappealing and without character.
Inasmuch as you can learn love only by loving, you will learn to throw arrows only by throwing them and to make perfumes by making them. This is why such an important part of the seminar is dedicated to workshop sessions. Â
We shall make perfumes everyday, starting from the first day.
Learning how to smell. The beginning for making perfumes.
Everybody smells, but the lack of olfactory education does not allow us to understand what our nose says to us.
Starting to use our nose in the right way is the first step of perfumery. It means in great part establishing connections between our nose and our brain, so that our intellect will be able to understand what the nose says.
Making your first perfume. Finding a clear idea and executing it. “Urban Patchouli”, a balsamic patchouli to wear in the tram.
The idea that will guide us in the composing the fragrance was chosen from a series of proposals made by the students themselves.
It was a beautiful day, we were all drunk of felicity, swimming in a sea of aromas.
The course lasted 7 hours and I had to send the students away for lunch and also for dinner, they would not stand up from their place, wanting to work more and more, to hear more and more.
Hunger for knowledge, overwhelming enthusiasm, tirelessness, what more could a teacher desire from his students?
The transmission of knowledge has 2 essentials: a person with the ability to teach and a person with the ability to learn. For both of them humility is the key.
From humility comes respect and only from respect can come love. You can know only whom you love. Love is a bridge between you and everything.
Mind-opening ideas discussed. Today, for example, discussion included ideas of ethics in perfumery or why use of artificial compounds being used in modern perfumery is leading to so much duplicity and fakery in the profession.
An interesting part of yesterday’s lesson was how to understand perfumery as archery… specifically, archery in three dimension — the perfume as being composed of the ingredients, but there is also movement and synthesis of the perfume, which is different than the two dimensional bottled liquid. Very powerful idea!
Lastly, the art of fragrancing is important concept too… A perfume should follow the wearer rather than lead the wearer!