Zurich, January 14, 2011
Dearest Mandy,
It is with greatest pleasure that I send you this first open letter in 2011 and I hope it will be one of many to follow.
In this letter I wish to write you a few lines regarding your HONEY BLOSSOM perfume, the perfume that you have crafted with the Linden blossom essential oil while exchanging our letters over the past months. It’s been years since I received your last product as a gift from friends and I almost forgot how lovely your packaging and overall presentation is.
I was seriously considering making a little “unpacking video”: Unwrapping the unknown from your printed china paper, simple and yet so elegant; then the precious tin box with your logo on paper printed and your claim that says it all: *modern natural luxury*; and then the flacon that is so neat.
Mandy’s lovely packaging — photo by Andy Tauer
I like the way you present your creations very much; it’s all made and assembled by hand and is modest in a sense, directing our attention to the really important matter, the fragrances. It is true luxury that does not need any crystals and gold, because the luxury is inside the flacon.
It is the luxury of a golden liquid that builds on “matières premières” that are precious and rare. Luxury is too often confused with price. A highly priced object is taken for a luxurious object. I feel a luxurious object is an object that breathes the air of its creator, an object that feels warm from the hands that created it, that shines because it’s part of a context that’s honest and has integrity.
I was taking pictures with my camera, trying to highlight the beauty that’s inside this flacon. I perfumed my hand before doing so with your HONEY BLOSSOM, and while looking for the right angles and light I smelled your take on the Linden blossom & honey melting into my skin.
I already knew that I could expect a different take on the linden blossom in comparison to mine, and I was looking for mimosa, yet I was so amazed how –- with the same colors — another artist paints a different picture. The mimosa and the linden blossom, as you mentioned it in a previous letter, form a new identity. Applied on skin, they conjugate and the first minutes there is an intimate dance of the Linden blossom and the Mimosa. A relationship takes place that creates a new impression.
Lovely!
And then, there is indeed a transformation into honey with hints of rose petals, in my nose almost gourmand. It might also be the Phenyl Ethyl Acetate that supports this honey rose, a molecule that I love for its velvety rose aspect but that I have not used so far in my own creations.
Your take on the linden blossom, with the softest base melting into the flower chord, a gentle, slightly oriental sweetness, is fitting so nicely with the middle rosy flower chord that you placed carefully so as not to shadow the mimosa-linden head note. Here, in the middle of your creation, by the way, I find our two fragrances touch each other, a little bit. I feel that the quality of your Mimosa is absolutely stunning; it’s amazing how its sweet green honey aroma and the gentle Linden blossom fit together.
It’s the luxury of high quality natural raw materials that shines inside your HONEY BLOSSOM and I thank you so much for this generous sample that you sent me.
Merci!
On another final note: I started working seriously with the Fire tree essential oil and have gone through many rounds and iterations there. It was very troubling as it’s so difficult a material, but I am happy to report that I think I found my way through a dark room and can now see the light. The light shines in a formula that is amazing when looking at its complexity, and I would not have thought that it might work, but I feel it does.
Allow me to leave you with this little cliffhanger. I would like to take a bit more time explaining my thoughts on the Fire tree in a dedicated letter.
I send you enclosed a picture of your HONEY BLOSSOM. I feel it captures what I found in it. I hope you like it.
Capturing the essence of Honey Blossom — photo by Andy Tauer
I send you a fragrant hug.
Yours,
Andy
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Berkeley, January 16, 2011
Dearest Andy,
Happy New Year, and thank you for your latest letter! Over the holiday I visited Basil Racuk, an amazing leather-maker who was brilliantly profiled by Nathan Branch and miraculously lives nearby. Besides the joy of picking out my Christmas present from his line, we talked about collaborating on a scented-leather project, and I feel very simpatico when he talks about luxury in general and his craft in particular. Nathan has aptly described Basil’s work thusly: “find the best materials possible and do something extraordinary with them for people to love and enjoy.”
Scented leather samples from Racuk’s workshop — photo by Aftelier
This experience fits so well with our common feelings about quality perfume: it’s about premium materials and the creator’s touch. For me, perfume is ultimate luxury because of its lack of necessity, its pureness of art, its ephemeral quality. Thank you for appreciating my packaging, with its lack of fine jewels and precious metals. I do so love collecting the special bottles for special perfumes & projects. Actually, I’ve had to wrestle with my quest for variety; I enjoy changing my mind so much that I had to force myself to settle down enough to establish a brand identity.
Thank you for your final pair of samples of your linden blossom perfume, it’s a very intimate gesture to have two versions –- to see it on its way to being complete. I like seeing inside that process sometimes when I teach, having the students remake things until they are complete. It’s like the creative process of writing, moving from notes, pages, and edited scraps — then suddenly a complete book appears.
I did find the more powdery note you mentioned in sample #1 (October), rising up from the bottom. Sample #2 (November) is much more pleasing, more intense, more citrus on top. I like having the freshness of citrus be indeterminate, not identifiable, less lemon than before. I have the sense you blended in either another citrus, or some other top that moves it away from the lemon. After the initial hit of citrus, I smell the well-supported linden –- this composition is more polished, literally less dusty. Maybe it’s from having less sandalwood, but it is much more sparkling. I really get the sense of “completeness” in this last version, the pieces fit and lock together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Andy’s two Linden perfume samples — photo by Aftelier
Our perfumes do share in the middle, especially now with your use of the deeper rose, and of the orange blossom added to support the neroli. With the similar materials, our perfumes dance together for a while, then go off separate directions in the base. One thing I also find fascinating is that even when using the same materials (which we weren’t), using different amounts and ratios can lead to vastly different results.
For my own Firetree results, in the first round I went toward leather, certainly not light. I put in castoreum, choya (or the root of the Oldenlandia umbellata) and tobacco absolute in low dosages, trying to make what was there more musky, smoky, leathery. In the middle, I tried the pink lotus concrete where I would usually use an absolute, with the idea that the waxy, flat quality would fit in well and not take over from the rose. I sense the floral in the Firetree shares a lot with the pink lotus. At the top, I tried the new yellow mandarin that I’m in love with (I’m very fickle, always in love with my latest find). It’s unusual to find a floral aspect in citrus, so I really liked the idea of that facet here, along with its juicy, sweet citrus.
In summary, I tried staying very close to the aspects already in the Firetree. It ‘s so rich and varied, I put in essences that were relative sibling/twins, hoping that the delicious facets of Firetree could be pulled out and enhanced. Alas! The whole construction is too muddy. There are some good ideas in there, but things are definitely not working. Back to the drawing board on this one!
I’m glad you had a chance to share my antique sandalwood with Vero Kern –- as you say, it and the antique neroli are “equally to die for….” It certainly answers the question about whether these essences age well. I’m not always sure what to expect in a 100-year-old bottle of oil, but now at least I know to never listen to people when they say to throw them out without trying them.
Special bottles from Mandy’s archives – photo by Aftelier
Warmly,
Mandy
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Auckland, January 21st, 2011
Dear Readers of the Mandy & Andy show,
So here I sit at my laptop, typing away with Honey Blossom rising from one wrist and Andy’s as yet unnamed version rising from the other, both similar yet just about as different from one another as they could possibly be.
Mandy’s Honey Blossom scent exhibits all the fragile beauty one would expect from an all-natural fragrance derived from the essence of the delicate Linden blossom. Right out of the bottle, it smells freshly, almost bitterly green, but with a golden halo about it, as if someone had just snapped a piece of flowering Linden branch off the tree and held it in front of my nose — it oozes a bitter sap and sweet floral ambience.
Putting my nose directly to my skin, the bitter green sap note is prevalent, but when I hold my arm about six inches from my face, the sweet honied notes come into focus, creating that “straight from the natural world” experience that Mandy’s become justly famous for.
As the fragrance develops, the graceful trilogy of mimosa, linden and orange blossom essences perform a lock at the “heart” of the composition, resulting in a floral wave so downright pretty that the day I tested Honey Blossom on an errand run outside the house, I was chagrined at the blatantly feminine vibe wafting off my skin. I walked into a local camera shop and the perfume’s innocent, shimmering veil couldn’t have been more incongruent with all the high-tech gadgets, heavy lenses and black steel tripods cluttering the shelves and aisles. I almost started to laugh.
But after an hour or so of this gauzy, floral pas de deaux (or, rather, ménage à trois), the composition shifts to the richer, toasted, golden tones of benzoin and ambergris to conclude on a warm and almost edible floral note that lovers of Aftelier’s sunny Candide fragrance might very well find just as enjoyable.
Andy’s Linden perfume heads in a completely different direction from Mandy’s Honey Blossom — taking its cues from his more recent works like Orange Star and Eau d’Épices, there’s a very distinct and experimental Tauer vibe that dominates from the start, with a much stronger bitter green note and a peculiar powdery, almost artificial sweetness playing tug-of-war throughout the introductory phase of, oh, let’s call it “Version Novembre”.
A plasticine undertow to the citrus top note recalls the 1970′s-era nostalgic playfulness at the core of Orange Star, and this vinyl-clad fructose rush remains firmly in place throughout the scent’s lifespan, cruising down a vaguely orange blossom highway to eventually make a gliding turn across the ambroxan overpass and head on down the familiar Tauerade homestretch. Delicate and feminine, this is not, but certainly another successfully unisex offering that Tauer fans of either gender could feel comfortable sporting.
While Mandy’s Honey Blossom is already up for sale on her website, the Tauer Perfumes version of the Linden essence experiment won’t be offered until April (or so), and only then in limited availability: “As my permanent fragrance line is already pretty large,” replied Andy, when I asked if his Linden fragrance was going to make it into production, “and as the Linden blossom extract shows some variation from batch to batch (plus I use some other hard to get materials in the final formula), I will launch the linden blossom fragrance as part of the Tauer Perfumes COLLECTIBLES line — a dedicated range that I’m starting in spring 2011 for high-end fragrances that utilize hard to get raw material in limited (yearly, seasonally) editions.”
So keep on the lookout for the debut of Andy’s COLLECTIBLES series. I, for one, am very interested in what kind of limited edition items he’s going to make available. And I can’t wait to see how the Firetree collaboration turns out!
Best regards,
Nathan
***This is a continuation of a series. You can find more letters between Mandy and Andy at the following links:
#1): Letters to a Fellow Perfumer (ep. 1)
#2): Letters to a Fellow Perfumer (ep. 2)
#3): Letters to a Fellow Perfumer (ep. 3)
#4): Letters to a Fellow Perfumer (ep. 4)
#5): Letters to a Fellow Perfumer (ep. 5)
#6): Letters to a Fellow Perfumer (ep. 6)
#7): Letters to a Fellow Perfumer (ep. 7)
#8): Letters to a Fellow Perfumer (ep. #8)
#10): Letters to a Fellow Perfumer (ep. 10)
#11): Letters to a Fellow Perfumer (ep. 11)
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