Perfumer Brief's

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Perfume Mist - Picture Courtesy of Times on Line

What exactly is a perfumer brief in the fragrance world you ask.  In a nutshell it is a creative interpretation of what a new fragrance is supposed to be.  The fine art of fragrance was hijacked by outside groups several decades ago.  Each house is filed with individuals who have been trained at smelling a finished fragrance, but are kept ignorant in terms of the components used to create it.  The only ones who are well versed at what constitutes a scent are the artist themselves.  At one time over 40,000 people worked in the fragrance industry. World wide there are less then 1,000 perfumer's, or noses as they are known today.

The title Perfumer is the most respected and highly sought after profession in the world.  Anyone else who works in the periphery of the business is jealous of their abilities to create a fragrance including their income.  In order to know something about this fine but poorly understood art one must spend years learning it, and work as an apprentice while doing it.  There are a few schools open to the trade, but again several hundred well qualified graduates each year compete for several job openings. The days when High School Graduates from the compounding department make it into this coveted profession are long gone. 

Large fragrance houses today spend millions in developing new fragrances.  Samples are sent to outside independent marketing company's where the fragrance is run through a gantlet of test panels.  The average person chosen for this task are hired off the street paid well for their opinion, but are totally ignorant.  Most try to help by just plain guessing.  It's the old saying the Pollsters found out in New Hampshire when Hillary Clinton lost the primary.  Ask someone a question.  More then not they will give you what they think you want to hear, but not necessarily what you want to know.  Sometimes figuring out the truth is impossible to do even with statistics.

One major player in the industry even runs its aroma ingredients through test panels.  Imagine having to assemble a fragrance based on how someone else feels today after eating a McDonald's Mc Muffin last week.  They spend huge sums of money even creating a software program encompassing this gibberish just to satisfy ignorant folks who work at the edge of the art. 

I realized very quick that there are too many launches to incorporate the data into a single web pate.  A new book tentatively titled Perfume & Their Stories including miss aroma information will arrive late fall of 2009.  Until then be patient.