Happy Holidays and a wonderful New Year to you all!

oxox

DSH

Of course, I, like Gaultier himself, was inspired by the color and texture of the story more so than the characters themselves (although for Gaultier it was Delacroix’s colors that inspired him).  One phrase in particular struck me: that of  …“A Twilight Blue Oriental Perfume”…  Oh yes, this is the place to start (and finish).

I don’t want to give away the story as I highly recommend it s a novella or an audio book, so I won’t go too deeply into the other elements of the story and the design.  I will share with you some of what I wrote for the short press release:

“Just as T. Gautier was inspired by the luscious colors of Delacroix, I found the sensuously atmospheric descriptions throughout the love story to evoke otherworldly perfumes and luminosities.
The phrase “ A twilight blue oriental perfume” most captured my imagination from the first time I heard it along with the image of faded flowers along side a bed of gold and silver, attended by a negro page wearing black velvet holding an ivory cane; and the satiny hand of “Clarimonde” as she lay dying. This cool, almost misty scene that might have been a last glimpse of Clarimonde paired with an alternate universe of warm opulence in Venice were always shimmering in my mind’s eye as I created “Paradise Lost”. ( As you can tell, I do not want to give away too much of the story for those who have not read it).
The colors always flickering and wafting about my mind were cool periwinkle blue, the rich cobalt of “the blue hour”, faded terre verte earth & faded pinks, golden naples yellow, vermillion, deepest black velvet and oxblood”.

In the end, I called my perfume “Paradise Lost”, not just for the double literary reference but as I felt this was the crux for me: a paradisiacal, albeit illusory, love and life that is lost when questioned and made untrue.  Would that we would all choose to keep Paradise.

For those of you who do not know if this series, it has been a great honor to be invited to participate in creating a new perfume through a series of letters with Mandy Aftel.  As we both create all botanical perfumes (of course, I also create mixed media as well) I had originally though that it would be  a way to explore some unusual naturals and we would both design in this palette.  For me it was not to be; I ultimately decided on a small portion of synthetics to create the overall architecture and for Mandy, she needed to morph her ingredient list from the original concept.

You would think that it’s normal to realize that things don’t always turn out always as you planned, and that’s true in life, but for me and with perfume designs, they usually do.  Maybe that’s because I plan it all out so thoroughly in my head before formulation that they just do.  As this formulation project was such a different process for me I was actually pretty amazed at the result.  It’s not what I had planned ( a grand , classic floral- floral ) but I do love what I made (a sexy, autumnal  spiced plum chypre).

** To check out the series of letter in their entirety, see Nathan Branch’s Blog.

Now about our party:  Come one, Come all  to the Essense Studio 3rd annual anniversary / holiday party on December 3, 2011 from noon to 7:30pm.  We’ll have delightful refreshments, door prizes and of course wonderful Holiday launches for you to come get a sample of.  We’d love to see you, so if you will be anywhere near Boulder, Colorado on December 3, please come see us.  ** We’ll also have a preview at our December Nobo Art District Open House the night before, so do come out!