Melt my heart0:50
Melt my heart0:50
We witness a magical moment.
Christophe is putting his left hand on his chest. His eyes express true joy. The perfumer is almost bursting with pleasure while declaring his love for camomille. Christophe recalls the name Elizabeth Ganes, the founder of the high-quality brand StrangeLove NYC mentioned in her briefing: Melt my heart. At the same time the scent affects Christophe emotionally. He cannot control his feelings: Christophe literally embodies the claim: Melt my heart. In many cases a perfumer does not even know the name of the scent when creating. Does this little thing make a difference to the quality of the final composition? Based on this scene one might think so.
A naïve child3:37
A naïve child3:37
How does Christophe approach even well known raw materials?
Students often think of learning as an unidirectional accumulation of knowledge. Critical scrutiny, however, reveals that prior knowledge might even hinder efforts to learn or acquire new knowledge: As the British social scientist Gregory Bateson once said: «You can't live without an eraser». Hence, practices of unlearning are essential for all types of knowledge work. In the case of Christophe we often saw him approaching even well known raw materials as if he had never smelled them before. This made us wonder and we asked him about this practice. In fact, there is reason to believe that creative practices hinge upon this kind of open approach.
The beauty contest1:50
The beauty contest1:50
Longevity, projection and sillage is not the full story...
Following an experimental approach, the perfumer repeatedly needs to evaluate the results of his formula revisions. This clip zooms in on this specific situation. «This is gorgeous!». Christophe seems to be happy. We witness a deep satisfaction. The evaluation goes beyond longevity, projection and sillage – criteria that are often used to measure the technical performance of a perfume. All this might happen silently under the surface. However, what we see is the creator’s deep affection for his creation, as if he were treating it as an attractive person.
Taking perfumes to nightlife0:57
Taking perfumes to nightlife0:57
The ephemeral materiality of scent deeply impacts on how a perfumer can balance life and work. The perfumer’s body is a resource as well as a constraint.
Moving from paper testing strips to the skin can drastically change the overall experience of a perfume. What might be banal everyday knowledge has far reaching consequences for a professional perfumer. The skin of a perfumer is a constraint in the process because there are hardly more than three spots on each arm to spray. Once sprayed on the arm the scent will stay until it has completely evaporated. How long this takes is a matter of the scent’s molecular structure. Hence, a scent does not comply with an organization’s time regime. Instead, the involvement of the perfumer’s body makes the perfumer take his work home, or in this case, to the bar. In this clip, set in a bar late at night, Christophe notices a few molecules on his arm, and casually evaluates the set of recent creations. The undisciplined nature of scent blurs the boundaries of work and non-work.
