Reorganizing my perfumery room

I finally cleaned up my perfumery room and arranged all my materials again. I placed another cabinet on the wall because I didn't have enough space for all the materials anymore. I also cleaned up the closet where I keep all my materials. I made some photos of it:

Here you can see my perfume organ where I work at, I keep my diluted materials in bottles with droppers.


Below are all my materials, as you can see I use droppers for each material, sometimes I screw them on top of the bottle and when that doesn't work I keep the dropper in a plastic back around the neck of the bottle, so I can't make a mistake by using the same dropper for different materials:

Some magazines about perfumes.

My books about perfumery and essential oils.

It's nice to create perfumes in a cleaned up, and organized perfumery room. But I have to remind myself to keep it this way. When I create I can make a mess all over again. To keep things neat is the last thing that's on my mind when I create perfumes.

Easter Perfume Bottles?

It's almost Easter and this inspired me to find some beautiful perfume bottles in an egg shape. At your right you see a 'lady's companion' - a perfume-bottle holder - made by German master silversmith Henry Steiner (1835-1914), who came to Adelaide in 1858. The design is an emu egg that encloses two perfume bottles. The egg has been cut in two and is hinged to allow access to the perfume bottles inside.
Below some other perfume bottles with an egg shape:

Sashka
Beyond Paradise Blue

Lovely Obsession

Mischief

Black Cashmere

Agent Provocateur

Another beauty from Agent Provocateur Maîtresse

Happy Easter!

Un Air de Molinard

Some perfumes smell nice, but some do trigger an emotion and suck you into another world. Well, Un Air de Molinard is such a perfume. When I get the first waft of this perfume it's incredible fresh but not sparkling fresh, it's fresh soft. It's tender but not timid, recognizable but also mysterious. When wearing this fragrance, an inner peace comes over me.

It opens with mandarin and pampelmousse what gives the fresh top notes, these notes are combined with cassis, to deepen the citrus notes. The iris in the heart soften the citrus notes and gives this perfume a soft dry powdery feeling. The heart possesses rose, jasmine and osmanthus. The heart is not heavy flowery but delicate, sweet and soft. Iris and osmanthus are the dominant notes in the heart. Osmanthus has a sweet flowery smell that combines wonderful with the citrus notes of the top. Slowly the base notes are revealing the soft woody warm scent of vanilla and vetiver. I like the combination of vanilla and vetiver because vetiver gives vanilla a more sensual feeling the vanilla will not smell only sweet but also woody and a bit smokey. Musk is also present what gives this perfume a vibrant warmth and a little amber to give it a warm dark sweetness.

When you wear this perfume you will not constantly smell this fragrance but now and then get a waft of it, to let you know you are wearing this wonderful fragrance. Un Air de Molinard is a perfume from an exquisite Molinard 1849 Collection, a vintage revival of seven classic fragrances by Molinard of the 1920's and 1930's, limited in it's distribution, currently available at Aedes and Barneys, I couldn't find it on the site of Molinard. The beautiful bottle is designed by Rene Lalique. Thanks to Chaya I could experience this incredible beautiful fragrance, an experience I will never forget, thank you Chaya!

Chemophobia

Do the chemicals: 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-ol or
1,3(E),5(Z)-undecatriene or 1-p-menthene-8-thiol sounds like dangerous chemcials to you, or would you hear any alarm bells when you know that these chemicals were ingredients of the perfume you are wearing right now?

Probably because you don't know what these names stands for they can sound like intimidating names. Unknown names or things we don't understand can scare us sometimes. In fact these chemicals are just aromatic chemicals that are found in nature. 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-ol is a component of natural Yuzu oil, you can read about this chemical here.1,3(E),5(Z)-undecatriene is a component of natural Galbanum oil, you can read about this chemical here.1-p-menthene-8-thiol is a component of natural Grapefruit oil, you can read about this chemical here.

Every living thing, including you and me, is made of millions of complex chemicals. Natural essential oils are blends of many chemicals. The word "chemicals" has become an emotionally-loaded word and has a negative sound to some people because virtually the only time the media reports about it, it's a negative report. The word "synthetic" is looked upon with suspicion, at best. Conversely, "natural" is often thought of as inherently harmless. Natural does not equal safe and synthetic does not equal unsafe.

Tony Burfield from Cropwatch wrote an article about chemophobia he said that the finger of suspicion is also pointing at fragrance volatiles - one is tempted to say, raising it to a level of near-paranoia. He writes about an article that Pat Thomas once wrote where he suggests that there is no difference between conventional perfumes and pollution, saying 'fragrance chemicals...include...many other known toxins capable of causing cancer, birth defects, central nervous system disorders and allergic and asthmatic reactions. Pat Thomas discussing fragrance chemicals found in the perfume Eternity Eau de Parfum (Calvin Klein). Here are some examples of fragrance chemicals that he described as being harmful:

Benzyl acetate – said to be irritant and also said to be linked to pancreatic cancer.

Benzyl acetate occurs in jasmin, narcissus & hyacinth head space odours and in gardenia oil, ylang ylang oil & cananga oils.

Eugenol – said to be an irritant, a cause of contact dermatitis, pesticide & insecticide ingredient.

Eugenol occurs in the head space of hyacinth flowers & carnation flowers; and in the oils of clove, cinnamon leaf, pimenta berry, W.I. bay oil, & basil oil CT linalol.

Benzaldehydehyde, 4-hydroxy-3-methoxy (aka vanillin) – irritant to mouth throat eyes etc... kidney damage, CNS disruption

Benzaldehydehyde, 4-hydroxy-3-methoxy occurs in vanilla beans, peru balsam, & benzoin resinoid.

Tony Burfield also says:

"Of course in the real world, toxic effects of chemicals are directly related to the dose, and splashing 0.03 ml of alcoholic perfume containing minor concentrations of these components behind the ears is unlikely to promote the effects listed above, even in a small minority of extremely susceptible individuals. Further, many of these components identified are identical to those components naturally occurring in the scents emitted from flowers, meadows & pine forests, or are responsible for the odour & taste of spices and natural flavourings etc. – so what are we to do? Mow down all the flowers and trees, since they give off these dangerous

volatiles? "

End quote.

Yes there are dangerous and toxic chemicals and yes there are dangerous and toxic naturals, but that doesn't mean you can group them all together and say that all chemicals and all naturals are bad and toxic.

Toxic ingredients have to be banned out of our perfumes, that's for sure. That's why Ifra made a guideline to tell us which ingredients should not be used or tell us the amount of ingredients we can safely use in our perfumes.

Here are more links about chemophobia:

http://members.tm.net/lapointe/ChemTox.htm
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=919
http://www.crscientific.com/chemophobia.html

Have a fragrant safe day!