Scheherazade Daneshkhu wrote in a June, 2010 Financial Times article that, due to the present recession and its effects on the consumer psyche, global luxury brands were rethinking their previous embrace of ostentatious bling — scrambling to reposition their image by hanging contemporary art in their boutiques and running advertisements that called attention to a heritage of careful, handcrafting production methods (a heritage that, for many of them, holds little connection to their 21st century factories and global distribution networks).
Yet when you’re an indie like Mandy Aftel, still employing the small batch, slow production, handcrafting methods she’s used from day one, there’s no need for rebranding, repositioning or even clever art installations in order to keep the customer intrigued.
“I’ve had opportunities myself to be bought by larger brands, but I value my independence too much and couldn’t lose it,” she responded, when asked if she’d ever been approached by investment groups or corporations. “I love what I do, working with other artists, making a quality, handmade product that takes time. No amount of money would change things – if I won the lottery today, I’d be doing the same thing tomorrow.”
Which sounds like it could be a couple of sentences of total PR-speak, yet after meeting Mandy in person, emailing back and forth, and talking on the telephone a few times, I’ve come to understand that the kinds of catch phrases that Madison Avenue marketing gurus spin out by the dollar (“Okay, here’s the thing — tell ‘em that your people love what they do, they have a passion for their work, and that their dedication to painstaking craftsmanship is a lifestyle, not a job, got it?”) are actually true in her case.
A page from the “Aroma” cookbook by Mandy Aftel and Daniel Patterson
And this kind of bright, burning enthusiasm to work with the best materials in order to create the best products tends to draw attention; in Aftel’s case, this attention has come from such unlikely corners as Egyptology and Molecular Gastronomy.
In 2005, Aftel was invited to participate in a collaborative project between the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose and the Stanford University School of Medicine, as researchers and doctors worked together to analyze, identify and virtually model a two thousand year old child mummy through the use of CT scans and a cutting-edge prism visualization platform. Samples of resins were also scraped from the mummy’s burial mask and chemically analyzed, and that’s where Mandy stepped into the picture.
“The whole thing was very exciting — kind of like Stanley Kubrick meets ‘Secrets of the Mummy‘,” she said of the final presentation at the SGI Reality Center Theater, where guests were treated to a gee-whiz, interactive 3-D display of the child mummy’s remains projected onto a curved, 25 foot screen.
Aftel was offered the task of recreating the burial perfume of the child mummy, dubbed Sharit, from the data the scientists collected from their samples. I asked her if she found the project challenging and she immediatly replied no, then laughed and added, “But that’s probably not what you wanted to hear, was it?” She said the materials were all familiar to her – frankincense, myrrh and moringa oil – and from her research of Egyptian burial rites she was able to construct what she considered a soft, lovely scent that she felt confident was an accurate reproduction of the original.
“My presence at the event was like the cherry on top,” she said. “The whole place was filled with scientists, researchers and computer modelers, so introducing the recreation of the burial perfume brought a piece of history to life for them – it was a reminder that, beyond the amazing technological display, the whole reason any of us were there in the first place was because an Egyptian family suffered the loss of their little girl over two thousand years ago.”
This ability to cut through the extraneous chatter and clear a space for the ultimate humanity of things is what arguably lends Mandy’s work its uncommon poignancy, and explains why she’s sought out by top chefs and mixologists from across the country when they’re looking for that extra spark that can elevate their creations from mere culinary art to a full-frontal embrace of sensuality and soul.
In 2004, Aftel released an innovative cookbook with noted San Francisco chef Daniel Patterson (whom she calls “a cerebral and artistic cook”) titled, “Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Foods and Fragrance“, but her connection to the movers and shakers of world class cuisine doesn’t stop there — the list of her associations reads, instead, like a rolodex of some of gastro-porn’s most wanted performers: Alice Waters, Audrey Saunders, Sam Mason, Johnny Iuzzini, Dan Barber, David Chang, Wylie Dufresne, Jeremy Fox, Bill Corbett.
She even counts Harold McGee, considered a ringleader in the molecular gastronomy movement, as a colleague and is presently working on a collaborative event they’ll present next year at the American Museum of Natural History.
But how did a self-taught natural perfumer manage to insinuate herself within such rarefied culinary air? “Well, my studio is located right behind Chez Panisse,” she said, and I started to laugh. “No, really,” she continued. “Alice Water’s restaurant is literally a block away, that was kind of my in. But once the introductions were made, it was the quality and integrity of my materials that attracted their attention. Daniel, Audrey, Johnny, Alice, Wylie, Sam, all of them – they’re true artists, and like all true artists, they yearn to create with the best materials possible. This is what I provide, along with the knowledge and skill to incorporate these essences into their dishes in creative and intoxicating ways.”
Aftelier Chef’s Essences
For a tasting menu at her Silk Road lecture at the American Museum of Natural History, the menu included the likes of cauliflower with white chocolate and sandalwood, cocoa noodles with peppermint broth, a cinnamon lacquered pork belly, champagne cocktails doused with jasmine-infused gin, and gimlets scented with grapefruit and Douglas Fir essences. “These chefs are knocked out by the essential oils I carry,” explained Aftel. “One time I had to overnight a package of jasmine essence to New York because one of the chefs was working on a special menu and he had to have my jasmine – they already had a jasmine essence in the kitchen, but he wanted mine because he said it was the best.”
But Aftel is curiously humble over her go-to status among some of today’s top chefs, and she moves with casual aplomb among the type of social glitterati that light up the gossip columns at her various science museum presentations and cooking demonstrations in New York (for instance, Renaud Dutreil, chairman of LVMH North America and a regular guest at her New York culinary events, has become a good friend).
“I feel very lucky, very grateful to have this opportunity to share what I make,” she said, when I mentioned that she seems to take the high-society whirligig backdrop of her life remarkably in stride. “I love working with like-minded people, and being able to satisfy those who demand the very best out of their experiences. I love every step of the creative process.” She paused for a moment and there was depth to the silence at the other end of the telephone connection, as if the universe around her was gathering breath.
I know, that sounds cheesy, but when you’re talking with Mandy, the universe really does seem to gather its breath. The magical mystery tour performance of her life and work comes alive in the stories she tells and suddenly you’re doing a 180 and anything is possible – you really can build that treehouse on the moon, bake that Alaska in the Sahara, high dive into a scented pool of jasmine infused gin (reverse one and a half somersaults with three and a half twists, please!).
“Working with these amazingly talented people, and on these amazing projects — it’s such a joy. But I’m just as happy selling one bottle of Fig EDP to you as I am selling one hundred and twenty bottles of a custom perfume to the royal family of Oman, and if I could in any way inspire others to love what they do as much as I love what I do . . . “
And you know, I have to confess to not being exactly certain how she finished that last sentence. My writing trailed off in the notes I was taking because my startled brain was screaming, “One hundred and twenty bottles of WHAT to WHO?!!”
Welcome to Mandy Aftel’s world.
***Read parts one and two of the Mandy Aftel interview at the following links: The Artisan Series: Mandy Aftel (Part 1) and The Artisan Series: Mandy Aftel (Part 2)
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