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Browsing by tag: naturals vs synthetics

Going solo, going natural ~ perfume in the news

Posted by Robin on 3 March 2008 7 Comments

Under its new owner, the French label's finances at first suffered. In 2002, for example, Ms. Wang launched a new Lanvin-branded perfume. Instead of entrusting the business to a licensee, as most fashion houses do, Lanvin decided to go solo.

[…] The problem with the perfume launch was that Lanvin didn't have the know-how or a distribution network, so it ended up with millions of euros worth of unsold perfume bottles between 2002 and 2004, according to Lanvin's 2004 financial records.

— From Fashion's New Patrons Struggle for Right Fit, a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal…

Read the rest of this article »

Better than the real thing

Posted by Robin on 15 May 2007 4 Comments

Sorry, but Gertrude Stein got it wrong. In perfumery, a rose is hardly ever just a rose. The challenge facing perfumers is not so much to mimic nature as to go one better.

— Another article about the "naturals vs synthetics" debate, this one in the UK Times Online.

To capture the fragrance of a flower without having to kill it, IFF uses a kind of "smell camera" that detects and absorbs the particles that surround a plant to record its scent. The information is then translated into a formula with the help of chromatography and spectrometry, techniques that help identify the many components that make up a flower's scent.

— From The Smell Factory, in Time Magazine.

Synthetic vs natural perfumes

Posted by Robin on 8 April 2007 6 Comments

The Canadian magazine Flare recently published a feature on the "synthetics vs naturals" debate in perfumery; the article features interviews with Mandy Aftel of Aftelier ("There is a place for both naturals and synthetics, and I think the consumer has a right to know which is which.") and perfumer Christophe Laudamiel of IFF ("In the minds of the public, natural means better. That's not true."). You can download pdf files of the two page article at Artisan Natural Perfumers Guild. Thanks to Anya for the link!

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