Natural Botanical Perfume
For some, Natural Botanical Perfumes are an acquired taste. Like raw oysters or caviar or boiled beets. And some give it little credence at all -- there are still those out there belittling the art form and the artists who create Natural Botanical Perfume, calling them hacks and frauds and dreaded members of the growing tribe, The Wannabes. A lot of this belittling goes on within the community itself with industry leaders shamelessly disgracing peers. No wonder we're not being taken seriously.There is a perception that a lack of experience runs rampant within the community. To some degree this is true. However, there are a few spectacular "new" NBP'ers, and more than a smattering of well-seasoned NBP'ers, creating some of the most daring and avant garde perfumes ever seen in the genre. Yet we still get no respect.
Are Natural Botanical Perfumes supposed to behave like a synthetic concoction? Are we supposed to create something with 48-hour endurance and sillage you can see with the naked eye? Do we need to create some natural concatenate of essences that mimic the scent of candy floss and ocean breezes and air and diamonds lying in ice? What do you think?
In the meantime, I have a fresh batch of desert air eau de parfum bottled up and ready to go in my newly invented non-alcoholic, non-oil-based medium -- more air. Hot off the desert. The bottles come with little silk balloons.
This is the question of the century. Are our perfumes *supposed* to have the longevity and tenacity and olfactory obnoxiousness of a synthetic concoction?
ReplyDeleteNo effing way.
It kind of makes me glad I am on hiatus. I used to get irritated with some of the horse puckey I'd read about my compositions on the various livejournals and makeupalley boards and the like. "It smelled great but did not last very long." "I wish it smelled the way it smells in the beginning, all the way to the 'dryout', whatever the hell that is..." At a certain point I just want to be a perfumer. Not an educator. Or re-educator. Or quasi-chemistry teacher.
Is it really so difficult to just be a perfumer and be done with it? I refuse to live up to someone else's standards of quality and beauty and what constitutes 'perfume'. If someone likes what I do, and gets it, that totally makes my day/week/month/year. If they don't, that's fine, too. That means more perfume for the people who grok what I am doing.
Something else which was a bit of an ego-blow in the beginning is that there is utterly no product or brand loyalty in aromatics. It brings new meaning to promiscuity, actually. And I got the distinct impression there was a great deal of, "I need to collect the whole set, and then I'll move on to my next conquest-, er, company to collect from..." going on, which really made me wonder why I even had delusions of being a standout in a peer group which was not really peopled with peers so much as competitors simply because of how the dynamic between customers and businesses is constructed. Anyway, just blathering aloud. I just watered my tomatoes and stink of tomato foliage, and it always makes my mind wander when I stink of tomato foliage.
Natural botanical perfume is the only way I have worn perfume for the past 3 years and by far the best perfume ever. Anyone would be crazy to think that synthetics are true perfumes. Perfumes is centuries old art form that has come from blending natural essences from plants, minerals and sometimes animal. I found the most complex perfumes I have ever smelled or worn are from natural perfumers. All synthics do is make a cheap buck for some celebrity who knows nothing about perfumery while giving me a headache.
ReplyDelete"a fresh batch of desert air eau de parfum ... with little silk balloons" - made me chuckle.
ReplyDeletecheerio, Anna in Edinburgh
Sara, it took me a while to stop apologizing for my perfume's inability to knock people over olfactorily. Anymore I just say it's a different animal altogether -- like the difference between a soft, buttery suede (the natural) and naugahyde (the synth), though I am being a bit harsh on the synthetics here.
ReplyDelete*Old joke in the house when we owned a lovely pukey yellow/gold 9 foot long naugahyde monstrosity we called "the couch" was how many nauga's had to die to cover those cushions?
Princess Ellie, I agree with you. I was very happy to see that the most mainstream and well-read of all media, the NYTimes, chose to feature Natural Botanical Perfumes in one of their articles. Just one more move in the right direction. Now if we could just rope in the critics . . .
ReplyDeleteAnna, I was wondering if anyone was going to catch that :) Thanks for the comment.
ReplyDeleteI love perfume and it can also affect you and your life positively so its better to find the best perfume that will fit on your personality and I think natural botanical perfume is a nice catch.
ReplyDeleteisey