A fragrance rarely begins with a formula. It begins with a sentence – “a sunny afternoon with an ice-cold glass of peach tea in hand” – and then it takes a year to get there. I work in batches of ten to twenty variations, numbered, with notes on what is wrong.
Step 1: the direction.
Five to ten rough blends, just to find which direction the scent should go. Nothing is balanced here. I am looking for a single thing that is interesting enough to build upon.
Step 2: hundreds of small adjustments.
Then I move one percent at a time. Less vanilla, more ambroxan, back again. Ninety percent of the work lies here, and none of it is visible in the finished product. Around 200 sample bottles per scent is normal.
“If I cannot tell the difference between two variations, neither of them is ready.”
Step 3: the skin, not the paper strip.
A scent strip says almost nothing. Every candidate is worn for whole days, by me and by a few who say what they think without sugarcoating it. That is when you discover that hour four is boring.
Step 4: maturation.
The finished blend is left to stand for weeks before it is bottled – the oils need time to marry. Rushing that step is the only shortcut I have tested that is immediately noticeable in the bottle.
What happens to the rest.
They end up in a box in the workshop. Some will become the next fragrance in two years, most will become nothing. Handmade in small batches also means that most things never get a name.
