Making our own fragrance

Last week we were lucky enough to have a guest lecturer - Karen Gilbert, a perfumer. She took our 9am lecture, which was rather technical, learning about how fragrances were created with different types of top, middle and base notes. Interestingly we were told that there is a lot of creative license when marketing a fragrance. Usually males fragrances are fresh, spicy, herbal or woody and female fragrances are mainly sweet, floral, powdery and fruity. 

Later that day, we had a fragrance workshop with Karen. I wasn't quite sure what to expect; but I certainly didn't expect to create our own!

The process of our fragrance making was to come up with a story within our groups. My group decided to create a wardrobe fragrance. The woman that would use the fragrance would be an ordered woman who treasures and takes pride in her wardrobe. Possibly someone who orders her clothes in colours. It would be her social area when her friends come over. A Carrie Bradshaw/ Serena Van Der Woodsen/ Blair Waldorf kind of woman. This girl loves luxurious and exclusive products. Competitors to this fragrance would be Jo Malone and The White Company. Both of these brands have simple and clean looking packaging. 

After creating our fragrance story we started using our noses!

Step 1 was to choose the heart notes, the character of the fragrance.

e.g. iris, rose, jasmine, orchid, spicy, narcotic, muguet, citrus and herbal

These were our base notes. We chose , which were orchid, muguet and jasmine. 

Step 2 was dressing the heart notes up with the accessory notes. These were to enhance your fragrance. We chose Vanilla as it was lovely and sweet. 

Step 3 was making the fragrance last with fixatives. The fixatives shouldn't overpower the character. We could choose 1 to 2 fixatives. We had musk and mossy as our options . We decided to go for mossy as it was fresh. 

Step 4 was blending the rough edges together. These were the harmonisers. These add the magic sparkles and smoothness. These were 1 to 2 materials. My group decided to go to Iso E Super. It was quite strong but it was also fresh. 

This was such an amazing experience and a great insight into the perfume industry. 

Soraya x