Diverse Expectations

We welcome everyone to our workshops; along with that open invitation comes a wonderfully diverse range of people. And as we often get our ideas from those who think differently from us, a variety of minds is not only welcome; it’s quite the treat. But we also get diversity of expectations, and at times, people’s expectations get in the way of them having the fullest experience possible.

If perfumers who have been experimenting and creating formulas most of their lives haven’t yet made The Greatest Perfume Ever, it’s likely that reading a few blogs and forums, and attending a week-long workshop isn’t going to quite do it either.

What you should expect is to experiment with interesting materials, know a lot more about both the theory and practical side of perfumery than you did when you arrived, make something that smells pleasant- not the greatest scent ever created but something lovely- and have a nice time that adds some extra joy to your week (the joy bit isn’t guaranteed, but it happens too often to be a coincidence).

Here’s something Sarah wrote a few months back, explaining how and why you should set your expectations.

Please do not expect to find The Answer To Making The Greatest Perfume Ever at your first attempt, either here or anywhere else. It’s possible; but you increase your chances of making the fragrance you hope to make, if you know what to make it with. We can acquire the skills to wield our materials deftly, composing blends which please us. Acquiring skills always takes time; it's like learning your scales and arpeggios when you take up a musical instrument; you practise and you get better. If you see the slow process of learning as tedious, holding you back from creating your masterpiece, then you won’t enjoy it. If you decide to immerse yourself in it, appreciating every step forwards, sideways and occasionally backwards, then you will.

For aspiring perfumers, there is endless advice online but it’s tricky to sort the accurate sources from the misleading ones. If you have a list of “notes”, even if they were written on your favourite brand’s website, this will not help you to make a similar perfume. Obstacles are thrown in the path of every aspiring perfumer starting out alone. At the start, you might need to unlearn some online recommendations, especially those cobbled together from publicly available information by a well-meaning machine that doesn't have hands to stir or a nose to smell with. This is a result of the industry's reticence: widespread misinformation is often accepted as fact. Don't be surprised if you try to follow some handy online formula suggestions then discover that the materials don’t exist or the results smell awful.

On a scale of “I know nothing at all about making perfume and I’m just here to enjoy myself” to “I have looked up all the notes of my favourite discontinued fragrance, and I know exactly what I want to make this afternoon”, people come to my live classes with expectations from zero to wildly unrealistic, and occasionally very well informed. I’ve met people who’d read Patrick Suskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer wanting to know how practical it would be to create the realistic aroma of a human body or their favourite dog. (It’s not at all practical.) I'll be asked for non-existent materials like cherry blossom, fig, poppy, and guava. These are all accords, by the way, blended to evoke a note of the fruit or flower from their component aromachemicals. The most common unattainable aim I’m presented with is the desire to make a fragrance which will make the wearer irresistible to everyone. Usually pheromones are dropped into the conversation in the hope of dropping them into the scent. For many reasons, this is neither possible nor desirable. One of the hardest tasks is adjusting their expectations when they’d planned to create their ideal fragrance in one afternoon. I’ve still not made mine and that’s after 16 years of practice.