When perfumers reveal their work habits.
As original as they are, behind some great perfumes, there are rituals and habits, sometimes obsessive, that have transformed technical formulas into magical formulas. By listening again to the Heritage(s) testimonies, you will discover in some of them, the reflexive postures of some who preceded great perfumes.
Jean Kerléo, to quote him, tells us about his daily habits that have left their mark on his perfumes to this day. His ritual of smelling the raw materials every morning to check their quality, has made his olfactory sense, an overtrained sense of smell. During the day, to make it easier for him to go back and forth between the office and the lab, he wore a lab coat that he adopted as his perfumer’s uniform.
Akiko Kamei, as well as Noël Guihot, noted everything in their notebooks. A rigorous keeping of notes that soon composed the formulas of sublime perfumes or detergents with a famous smell. But to smell always and often several times a day, while noting the associated emotional perceptions, it was for Akiko, a reflex of which she could not get rid.
As for Noël Guihot, he doesn’t hide from us that behind each of his formulas, there is a lot of work, time and meticulousness (up to sixty tries sometimes) to arrive at the expected result. A ritual of reweighing and a chemist’s posture, for this expert in application, from which he never left until his retirement.
Perfumery often encroaches on the private sphere during lunch breaks, at night or on weekends, not to mention the omnipresence of scents in everyone’s life. And everyone, in their own way, shares this ritual.
You can find excerpts from these exclusive testimonials on our Instagram @fondsperfumum. Also, don’t miss the opportunity to support the constitution of this important intangible heritage for Perfumery by making a donation to the Per Fumum Endowment Fund. Find all the answers to your questions on the website www.fondsperfumum.org or contact us on jesuisdonateur@fondsperfumum.org.
