When I was interviewing luxury all-natural perfumer Mandy Aftel for the artisan series, one of the topics we discussed was her bespoke/custom fragrance service. She said that she prefers having her bespoke clients visit her personally at her studio in Berkeley, California, but since she realizes that this isn’t a possibility for the majority of her internet clients, she developed a long-distance custom service, as well.
“What is a long-distance custom consultation like” I asked, envisioning a three-step process of cosmic meditations, tarot cards and bleary Skype chats at 3 a.m. from customers who forget that there are such things as time zones (guilty as charged). “Why don’t we do one together,” suggested Aftel, “and you can write about the experience on your site.”
Oh, well, you know . . . that wasn’t such a bad idea.
Send in the essences!
I intimated that maybe the whole thing could begin with me sending links to photographs I liked, listing my favorite 100 pop songs in alphabetical order from the past thirty years, and snipping off a lock of my hair and mailing it to her (along with my last twelve dream journals that perhaps she’d like to browse, you know, for inspiration).
“Don’t be silly,” she said, completely bursting my bubble of crystal blue persuasions. “All I really need to know are smells from the natural world that you like — if you know the names of essences, like, say, ambergris, vetiver, rose, nutmeg, please let me know. I’ll start off by sending you some tiny vials for you to smell and rank by preference as soon as I get a better picture of the essences you think you might enjoy.”
It sounded terribly prosaic, but who am I if not a coat of many colors, so I sat down and started scribbling away: “I like rainbows, and puppies, and warm brown-sugar cinnamon toast . . . “ — needless to say, it took a while to narrow things down, but I ended up with a list that was a fairly comprehensive sprinkling of low notes. Florals? Nada. Fruits? Zip. It was all woods, resins and spices for moi. Mandy just laughed when she got my email and said that her experience with Jonathan Ive was similar when he visited her studio to begin the process for a custom fragrance — all base notes, all of the time.
“But that’s okay,” she said. “This means the end result will probably be a fragrance in an oil base rather than an alcohol based perfume, but I’m going to send you some top and middle note essences for you to explore and see if you might like anyway, despite yourself.”
And this is where it got interesting, because what arrived in the mail was a package of 48 small vials — grouped by top, middle and base notes — but numbered instead of named, which made it a kind of blindfold test. Mandy didn’t want me to know what I was smelling so that I could approach each essence without any preconceptions. I was to simply rank the essences that I enjoyed the most and let her know the result.
Separating the wheat from the chaff
I spent the next several days sniffing, smiling, sniffing again, grimacing, and writing down impressions that I would cross out and write over, then cross out and write over again. Smells I liked the first time around (“This made my toes curl with pleasure — yes!”) were abandoned on the second pass through (“I don’t know what I was thinking? Must get doctor’s referral for good neurological specialist”) with a few then brought back into the fold on the third try (“At first blush, no, but then something bittersweet, dark and cocoa-ish caught my attention, so yes”).
Once I had the essences divided, conquered and ranked, I sent off an email to Mandy and we had a telephone conversation about the materials I chose and the essences I passed over. Some of the surprises? I really liked the dry, herbal pink pepper, which I’d initially mistaken for juniper berry. And linden blossom, jasmine sambac, honeysuckle and pink lotus made it on to my “yes” list, despite my stated aversion to florals. But below is the full list of what I chose:
Saffron, Rum, Phenyl ethyl acetate, Pink Pepper, an accord of Linden blossom, Clary Sage and Lavender, Cocoa, Jasmine Sambac, Pink Lotus, Coffee, Honeysuckle, another accord of Benzoin, Antique Sandalwood and Vanilla, Black Spruce (which I initially mistook for Birch Tar and lordy it’s lovely!), Labdanum, a third accord of Oakmoss, Amber, Patchouli and Costus, Vanilla, Ambergris, Tonka and a final accord of Frankincense, Tobacco and Fir absolute.
Things I didn’t like: the Civet essence smelled like old parmesan cheese, the Juniper Berry was like a mix of dandelions and Tang, that Costus all on its own was unpleasantly musty and sour, Bergamot was too bright, sunny and in my face, Choya resembled the odor of kerosene, and while Orange flower was interesting in a salty, musky way, it just wasn’t my thing. Oh, and pure Vetiver was an absolute no-go. I actually wrote, “Not just no, but h*ll no!”
So much for thinking I knew what I liked based on a couple of years of intensive sniffing at synthetic approximations.
And now for Round Three
Based on the ranking list and our subsequent telephone conversation, Aftel got busy in her mad-scientist lab of natural essences and absolutes, and about a week later I received a small package containing four glass mini-jars of potential fragrances, each of them tweaked in somewhat different directions for unique results.
I’m sitting here typing this as version #2 rises off my skin. It’s a fascinating mix of sharp and smooth elements, sweet and salty, and like most all-natural fragrances, it hangs tight. I even experimented by slathering on a good, generous amount, but even then, I’m not overpowering the room (though I may have crowded the air a bit when I used the elevator this morning to go check the mail — sorry, neighbors!).
There’s enough juice in each of the vials to perform weeks of testing and evaluating, which is perfect for me, as I don’t like to make snap decisions, especially on a fragrance that I’ll be calling mine mine mine for the rest of my life. But this is just step three — if I like one of the versions enough, it can be the final deal and we’re done and wow that would be (too) easy, but this step can also be just another of many as I evaluate and select and narrow down while Mandy tweaks the formulations to eventually arrive at that all-natural perfume concoction that knocks my socks off.
But if version #2 is any indication, we’re already off to a good start.
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