Archive for the ‘Perfume & Cosmetic Arts’ Category
Perfumes fakes and reproductions March 9, 2010 | 12:00 pm

fake perfume

I am asked almost weekly to create a reproduction of a fragrance. I hate this – hate hate hate it – with a burning passion. Asking me to do imitations denies me of a creative outlet, and frustrates me because it tells me that some perfume fans aren’t willing to adapt and change as perfumes change. This is why 90% of department store perfumes smell almost exactly the same.  People get stuck on one perfume, get trapped in one aesthetic, and suddenly perfectly lovely notes like violet, rose and musk become the grandma du jour. Chanel No. 5 is awful just due to overuse.1  There are even sellers on Etsy and Ebay who make their living off the imitations market, buying fragrance oil pre-mixes and just dumping them in a base. You can only do it by hand, so technically, it’s handmade, and while I’m loathe to point people to those sellers I’ve been sorely tempted to do so more than once.

So while I’m gratified by Harper’s “fakes stink” ad as perhaps it’s persuaded a few people not to contact me with custom requests I’ll do everything I can to get out of, I feel obligated in the name of integrity to point out that imitating perfumes is not actually illegal. The reason perfumers aren’t required by the FDA to disclose their ingredients2 is because no recipe may be copyrighted. You can trademark names – up to a point – but the actual fragrance? Nope. Can’t do it.

As to the claims in the ad about ingredients… I’d like to know how they got their information. Chemical companies that make fragrance oils aren’t required to disclose how they make them. It’s possible urine or other stuff is in them. It’s possible, and more likely, that’s just good old petroleum. Although aldehydes were originally distilled from urine. The fact is, we don’t know what’s in them. Despite an incident where I was accused of claiming that synthetic materials were composed of urine, I don’t know this and I never said I did know this for a fact – but research into the history of aldehydes raises its presence as a real possibility.  Harper’s doesn’t know this for a fact either. Only the European, Chinese and US plants that make these fragrance oils know what’s in them. Whether or not it’s an imitation or the Real Perfume, chances are they’re using the same or similar chemicals – so if there’s urine or other grossness in the fake, there’s the same grossness in the real thing, too.

Knock-offs are part and parcel of the fashion industry, and expecting everyone to buy couture is just ridiculous. Especially since couture is ridiculous.

And I will say that I don’t ever like being asked to do a reproduction – but I will do them if and only if the perfume can no longer be found anywhere on the market, and I can be provided a sample. But I’ll still grumble about it. I’ll keep an eye out for perfumers that do imitations; having a quality referral list would probably do us all a favor.

References
  1. I appreciate synthetics, but I won’t use them unless I got them by accident. And I label those with “I dunno what’s really in it either.” Besides, I have an alarming tendency to break out in hives when I use anything with synthetics in it too often, or even am forced to smell too many of such things. []
  2. I have chosen to act counter to the industry and practice full ingredient disclosure as at my business’s size and tendency to gross $400 a year if I’m lucky, there’s no real incentive to imitate me []

And now I’m back March 6, 2010 | 08:29 pm

Tuning back in to this blog as I gear up for another round of picture posts and related content for your general entertainment. I’m still running stuff at the perfumery on Etsy, and while my feelings regarding Etsy are complicated, I’ve decided to try to simplify everything by just playing in my own sandbox. Once I get my toys straightened, maybe I’ll play again, but I’ve noticed that the most successful sellers all have their own sandbox-universes and carefully invite people in to play. I’m going that route.

So welcome to my sandbox. Be excellent to each other. Let’s play.

More to it than S-E-X January 10, 2010 | 08:30 am


Perfume in the west is conceived of mainly as sex juice. Spritz a perfume. Attract a man. Spritz a perfume. Be what every woman desires. There’s a new twist on this the past decade or so, too: spritz a perfume. Be a celebrity. A fascinating twist, since in this day and age there is nothing that so quite so simultaneously attracting and repellent as fame, with a whole lot of sexual fantasy tied up in that complicated bundle.

I suspect that a good chunk of perfume collectors are chasing a fantasy as much as they are a smell, and yes, a good chunk of that fantasy falls in the sex category.

And a lot of scents I just don’t use or don’t care to use fall under that sexual-association header: musk, which in natural form is illegal and nasty; florals which are in my opinion used to great effect and sometimes overused in many perfume houses both mainstream and niche; berry based fruits, which while not impossible to get naturally are also starting to verge on the trendy and overused.

I get frequent requests for sexy, sexy, sexy and while I understand the popularity, it’s not really what I do. Perhaps it’s due to a quirk of my personality: I actually can not be physically attracted to a person until I find him/her intellectually attractive. You can put a shirtless bohunk in front of me and I’ll be dead from the waist down until he starts talking to me about practical jokes he’s played using principles learned while getting his masters in physics.1 So, as a perfume artist, only a few of my fragrances explore the pure physical sexuality that mainstream houses constantly pursue.

What I do is more of an intellectual exercise, or maybe an emotional exercise. However you cut it, on some level it’s basically play of an almost childlike variety. This is in part because I started out not as a “magical perfumer” but as a “ritual oil” creator. My quick grasp of occult correspondences helped me product oils with specific purposes that were easily lined up and charged up. The advantage of ritual oil design is that you are under no obligation to make them smell good. I did find, however, things did tend to sell better if I at least tried to make the fragrance attractive, and pretty soon my clients from Medea’s Chariot were admitting to me that they were buying my purpose oils just to use as recreational perfume. Given that I sold to the goth and magical market, I was kind of floored. However, when I shut down for awhile I began to mix perfumes privately with aesthetics and intention in mind.

Sex and Politics is interesting in this discussion, because it is possibly the only perfume I currently sell created with mainstream perfume conventions in mind, and it was actually created as a bridge of aesthetics and magical purpose. I made it initially because of some very silly college-kid drama going on in a group I had been involved with; even though it captures the very essence of spice and intrigue, it’s actually about taking that crap and getting people to calm down. As the scent evaporates, so does the crazy (at least that’s what I intended.)  I figured it would work best if the evaporation of the scent also happened to be a very pleasant experience. While I can’t say I cured the crazy – magic can never go against someone’s nature, just be incorporated into it – it did seem for a little while that the crazy relocated.

I bring this up because I feel like there’s so much more in the olfactory and aesthetic world than sex, and while sex does need more and different discussion from what is typical,2 in perfumeland it seems like it’s the only discussion. It’s not even really subtext, it’s just text, and any other aesthetic possibility gets almost unfairly consigned to aromatherapy. I’ve started a discussion on my Facebook fan page to encourage further discussion of this, and comments here are always also welcome.

References
  1. I did ultimately marry a roboticist. []
  2. I am actually writing my own manual to 21st century sex, hopefully along with a good friend []

Flickr Find: mendhi hand and perfume December 30, 2009 | 07:30 am

image by wendymehndi on flickr

That’s very…oud December 22, 2009 | 07:00 am

image by Glamour Schatz on flickr

The Financial Times dug up some mold on oud, and while they’re talking about agarwood like it’s news, the stuff was sniffed out by perfumers centuries ago. Believe it or not, that modly old wood is one component of the genius behind natural ambers and many a wood-scent cologne.

It’s also insanely expensive, and there’s not really a great way to harvest it sustainably – you pretty much have to break the tree to bits to get at the good stuff. Arguably, if you keep prices high and break very few trees to bits each year, demand for the scent can be managed. But that does run contrary to capitalism at least as I know it thus far.

Here’s hoping there’s a manageable way I just don’t know about yet.

Flickr find: Safrol December 16, 2009 | 07:30 am

image by robot makes music on flickr

Flickr find: pink mosaic December 9, 2009 | 07:30 am

images/tiles by katiescrapbooklady on flickr

Flickr Find: Sweet Perfume December 1, 2009 | 07:30 am

image from wackystuff on flickr

Flickr find: perfume vials November 25, 2009 | 07:00 am

photo by Sasha W. on flickr

Oh So Very – Spray Fragrance November 23, 2009 | 09:00 am

ohsovery3My friend Joel and a group of his friends love the movie Heathers. For some reason this translates into all of them calling each other Beck (why not Heather, I dunno.) So one night before a hectic club gathering, I whipped up this scent for them to wear – a happy spritz of raspberry, chocolate and a bare hint of coconut. It’s smell is like licking a fruit-scented icing, and something in it just screams Lip Smacker(TM).

These spray pumps hold 1.5 ml fragrance – a nice, pocket size way to spritz!


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