LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRAGRANCITÉ – ett doftmanifest

Parfymören Christophe Laudamiel, skaparen av Polo Blue, några dofter från Humiecki & Graef eller Island av Michael Kors presenterade ett doftmanifest. Ett manifest som kan anses onödigt för vissa, men i själva verket väldigt viktigt för utveckling av våra sinnen. Det heter LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRAGRANCITÉ och kan sammanfattas som att det är inte bröd och skådespel som räknas, det är luktsinnets betydelse i vardagen som bör vara prioriterad i samhällets utveckling inklusive utbildning sedan tidig ålder. Vissa punkter älskar jag, vissa stämmer superbra, vissa mindre och vissa fattar jag ingeting utav (kanske bara Näsor som fattar 😉 ). Men han har en poäng där, rent generellt!

Mycket läsning, men jag vet att mina läsare är inte rädda för bokstäver ;).

Här kommer den i sin ursprungliga form:

”FIRST, THE PUBLIC SHALL BE ALLOWED TO LEARN REAL INFORMATION meaning that…

…children shall be given olfactory education in schools and at home to awake the senses, communication and intelligence,

…universities shall open real Perfume Studies departments and university courses shall use also smells, fragrance compositions or olfactory science to illistrate their points,

…top students at top universities shall routinely join the fragrance industry as much as joining the aerospace industry or Wall Street: to become perfume diffusion engineers, perfume managers, perfumers or anything perfume,

…some perfumers shall become academic authorities and be elected Members of the Academies of Arts and Sciences around the world,

…consumers shall be allowed to know that man-made molecules are fabulous things, they help protect the planet, foster the art and technologies and they have been used in the best fragrances continuously since the 1880’s,

…the public shall be made aware that most of us can smell well enough when we train, when we start putting our noses everywhere,

…blind people around the world shall be offered extra olfactory stimuli and experiences,

… the public shall be taught that the brain gets as much information, pleasure, intelligence and decision power via our noses as via our eyes. One doesn’t damage one’s nose, lungs or brain by smelling as they are made just for that: to smell. Perfumers are not known to have rotten lungs or worn-out noses. Human beings get fresh olfactory cells every 4-6 weeks like sharks get regularly fresh sets of teeth. Smelling doesn’t provoke much more allergies than music provoke epilepsy crises. Let’s stop the drama coming from ignorance,

…teachers and psychologists, as well as doctors and nurses, shall walk around with a scent kit. Via smelling sessions, they shall obtain stories patients won’t recall by oral or visual questioning. In return patients shall enjoy that healthy brain aerobic called smelling,

…during any fragrance speech there shall be passed around at least one thing to smell. During fragrance awards, the winning scents shall be blasted in the auditorium, rebaptised scentorium, for the audience to enjoy what the presentor is bragging about,

…perfume writers and critiques shall go to perfumery school, Columbia shall have an olfactory journalism class and yearly prize,

…the Osmotheque® conservatory, the only international fragrance archives headquartered in Versailles, France, shall be treasured and honored like a Library of Congress,

…people shall learn to archive their fragrances in a fridge or a wine cooler, and perfume bottle collectors shall respect what is inside bottles as much as bottles themselves,

…people shall understand that a perfume piano also called perfumery organ has about 1,500 keys, also called notes or ingredients, compared to only 88 keys for a musical piano,

…people shall discover that composing a fragrance is more than mixing a little bit of vanilla with a bit of amber, and that, by the way, amber per se is not even an ingredient in perfumery,

…alcohol for perfumery shall be considered a wonderful thing, because it is just that: a wonderful nothing. We use the same alcohol as you have in vodka, beer or whiskey. Are you allergic to these? Alcohol solubilizes most essences and sprays well. Water does not. And it evaporates so fast, it doesn’t disturb the smelling,

…my pdf file extension is actually called Fedex®. Fedex® truck, I love you, you make my day every day: your drivers and planes are my daily postal ponies or text messengers. File size is not limited to 30 MB but by the international aviation regulations on dangerous goods shipping. Indeed plain orange and lemon oils because they are flammable, and cinnamon oil because fish don’t like cinnamon so much if a drum happens to fall into a river are classified dangerous goods. To send our pdf’s or powerpoint “slides” we need first to pass a 2-day course at $700 a pop, be familiar with a 200-page handbook and undergo a refresher course every 2 years. After hitting the send button, the pdf arrives 1 to 4 days later with $40-$250 less in your bank account. All that just because of the natural laws and jaws of nature, gravity, volatility and flammability,

…we shall stop complaining there are too many fragrances on the market. We shall instead get an education and learn how to sort through the crap. No one complains there are too many songs in Apple® Music or too many pictures in Instagram® posts.

SECOND, LET’S JUMP TO THE NEXT LEVEL, meaning that…

…fashion designers shall spend more than $1 for ingredients and creative work inside $60 designer colognes,

…Shark Tank® gurus as well as speakers at scent marketing conferences shall stop thinking scent is all about merchandising to enjoy higher margins vs. fashion, in order to support fashion. Is that the respect the sense of smell and the public deserve?

…perfumes shall be considered more than accessories and perfumers shall become again the authority in fragrance design. Music is not considered an accessory, painting is not considered an accessory. How shall perfumery be treated as an accessory?

…fragrances shall deserve better treatment: movies are not critiqued by blind people, awards are not given complaisantly by actors to themselves, wines are not judged by how much gold there is or how big the names are on the bottles, champagnes are not launched after a 5-day aging process instead of 5 years because bottles waiting in a cellar cost money,

…fine fragrances shall not be pre-cooked to make sure they resist the heat of sitting on a tarmac in Dubai or under the spotlights in a store. Would you only buy heat-resistant champagnes?

…start-ups and spin-offs in the fragrance industry shall be encouraged and nurtured just like start-ups in computer science and biology. Thank you Accords-et-Parfums, Firmenich and Takasago for your visions and pioneering new ways. We and the industry shall forever be grateful,

…the fragrance industry shall recruit, dress, talk and perfume itself in a much more colorful way,

…printer manufacturers shall make printers to spit out custom-marked smelling strips for the public at Sephora® stores: to get a fresh uncontaminated strip each time with the correct name of the perfume printed on it, and to remember later what scent was sprayed on what strip,

…the biggest outing organized at the World Perfumery Congress and the biggest competition at the American Society of Perfumers shall not be some golf tournaments but a real smell challenge where people queue in line to smell the finals,

…the fragrance industry shall organize more truly fragrance-focused awards. Justin & Justin: i love you, but your fragrances have a long way before winning some real academy awards of perfumery. One of yours was sacred Scent of the Year 2014, for business results perhaps, but not for scent, sorry. Again, love u both,

…we shall publicly recognize scent heroes: research scientists, botanists and authors who contribute to the development of ingredients, technologies and general olfactory knowledge,

…there shall be copyright laws to truly and routinely protect fragrance creations, olfactory designs and scent logos,

…perfume remixes by perfume remixers shall be as exciting as music remixed by DJ’s, and perfume remixers shall be happy to pay royalties to the original composers,

…every fragrance house shall publish a code of ethics.

THIRD, LET THE EXCITEMENT BECOME WELCOME, BIENVENU, WILLKOMMEN, ENCHANTÉ, meaning that…

…it shall be further exposed that perfumers are not just inspired by flowers and the smells of their grandmothers. Smelling can be quirky, punky, sexy, intellectual and more,

…people shall go to theaters, movie theaters, museums, libraries, events and stores because of scented events. All the Instagram® posts of this world will not replace the combination of scent experiences with visuals and sounds,

…fans shall fight to be front row to get a whiff of the actors, models or arriving guests,

…scent-shows, as opposed to fashion shows, shall see twins, the rockettes, naked models or models dressed as ghosts, each wearing a different scent for the audience to experience, as they swish through the aisles of the sniffers-viewers audience,

…publishers shall routinely beef up their paper stories with scented pages and smell inserts. Scent tracks and cartridges shall be provided prior to TV or movie programs as key parts in those programs,

…a “bad” smell shall not be said to be bad: like a horror movie, it can be a damn good bad smell. And like shooting a horror movie, it has to be designed damn well to be damn bad,

…children shall bring home a scented present, or hide a scented object in their parents’ suitcase as a travel amulet. Parents shall hold scent bars and surprises, bring back an unknown scent from an unknown place. These will be unforgettable experiences which mark for life, enrich culture and diversity, and stretch the imagination. Grandparents shall have their final scents designed to be remembered the way they want to be remembered before they go,

…teenagers shall be wearing scents upsetting to their parents,

… “Girls” shall know their vanillas and patchoulis as much as their lipsticks. “Guys” shall know their oudhs and vetiver distillates as much as their wines and whiskies. And exchange “girls” and “guys”,

…the public shall appreciate the sustainable spirit of fragrance: by using fragrances we effectively help 40,000 farmers in Haiti grow vetiver plants. By loving jasmine and violet leaves coming from Egypt as well as orange flowers from Tunisia and Somalia we help bring children to school and give women jobs. By enjoying vanilla extracts we allow villages in Uganda to afford basic water equipment whilst using Bergamot from Calabria helps providing jobs to young generations in one of the poorest Italian regions,

…scents and scenting shall be again core religious and spiritual practices. People shall attend celebrations in churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, as well as practicing yoga, around smelling experiences. They nurture memory, the sense of togetherness, the sense of whole, and promote extra internal and external communication,

…buildings shall get several rotating scents over the course of a day, so that you can feel you are inside a breathing building full of soul,

…perfumers shall travel in private coaches or private jets equipped with a full perfumery laboratory and organ to smell and create on the spot. Hotels have grand pianos on location, why not scent organs?

…forensic scientists shall analyze stable and discreet scent molecules to investigate crime scenes in order to get clues. Indeed, some scent ingredients can stay for days, others for months or years in a house or on a body or can resist a wash (rain/rivers/flood/blood), insects or worms. What a wonderful movie plot could be created here!

…a TV show shall be staged to reveal the backstage of perfume: sourcing of precious ingredients in remote inaccessible places — fragrance ingredients don’t grow in downtown Manhattan or inside good old Paris — the drama of perfume composition and their actors, the drama drama of perfume criticism and the go-get-lost of perfume selection,

…someone shall take on creating a Pantone® scent chart and a true vocabulary of scent. The nose is 100 times to one million times more complex and varied than your eyes. Let’s get started with specific language of all kinds,

…chefs and perfumers shall work together in the same labs, chefs using molecules and patchouli and tuberose and green mandarin essence and much more complex mixtures than just a spice mix, and perfumers using the art of heating, cooking and aging on rose oils, absinth, oudh and other immortelle absolutes.”

”Let’s open our nostrils, our brains and go for it” säger Christophe Laudamiel – vad säger du om hans manifesto? 🙂