Indie bands and scents with agendas

What makes a real perfumer?

There's a whole world of indie perfumers out there, all doing their own thing. They aren't all interested in recreating Mitsouko to order, or being one of the very very few accepted into perfume school.

I just read an interview in which a well known US marketing person and "trained nose", she says, gives her opinion that a real perfumer has to have been to perfume school and must have worked with a qualified practising perfumer for 10 years. A real perfumer has to be able to do all the things you learn at perfume school, like recreating other people's scents by nose, without cheating by using a gas chromatography machine. A real perfumer should be able to create exactly what the clients want, through as many moderations (AKA mods) as they need. She says that the natural versus synthetics debate is a smokescreen which enables "charlatans" - "uninformed enthusiasts and authors with personal agendas"- to flourish.

Which means that some of the finest scents ever created were made by people who aren't "real perfumers."

And by the same criteria The Beatles were not real musicians.

They could write and perform their own songs, and play other people's rock and roll; they hadn't been to music college and studied at the feet of established musicians. They couldn't write it down what they'd written, and they needed George Martin to orchestrate their more elaborate recordings for them. But they could write great songs, get half the world to fall in love with them, and they didn't do badly at stacking up the dosh either.

In fact, a chum of mine got very close to being accepted for the perfume school that most of the people that expert is talking about went to. He got as far as talking to the man who made the decision to turn him down. The problem wasn't his experience, enthusiasm or talent. it was that he's European. They need people from the far east and south America, where the big money is set to come from. 

The people who go through perfume school are going to be making some very large companies a lot of money: they'll make room fragrances, fabric conditioners, toilet blocks, washing up liquid and one day, if they are very lucky, they'll get to make 20 variations on a scent for a celebrity or a luxury brand to put out as their own. A handful of them will get to decide what to make for themselves.

Which is why there is a whole bunch of indie perfumers all with their own agendas, making their own scents because they want to do it like that. Just like there are thousands of bands practising in their parent's garages, writing their own songs. Some of them will be successful, but all of them are having a fantastic time doing what they love.

It's not always about making millions; sometimes it's about ownership of your own soul.