The Fragrance Studio

The way that fragrance industry works today has something from MGM studios back to its golden age, the 20's and 30's. Rising stars, featured perfumers, forgotten perfumers. Looking back to the names of early 80's and perfumers that authored big launches, it's not hard to see that something similar to "box office poison" (to describe the relation between at the end of the 30's between big studios and their female stars). There is something of being put in the shadow while the "studio" maintains its power. Or changing the company as has happened when Givaudan merged with Quest and several perfumers had to find a new job. Meanwhile, it's not hard to notice that several great perfumers working for the "big boys" are not featured very much to the public.
Maybe the next step, like in the movie industry or even design, will be the "booking agent" of the perfumer - to negotiate money and projects - as it is normal today in any artistic industry. There is also something honest from the consumer point of view. When you buy a good fragrance, you give more money for the design/ingredients/ads and not to its creator. If you accept that in contemporary society marketing is inevitable (and not always negative) a simple question comes to me: Why would Charlize Theron deserve more than the creator of J'adore? Another case is the use of the perfumer name and his professional image for the promotion of a fragrance. If you (a brand) intend to integrate the "behind scenes" of the creation of a product … would you pay more its creator? We are inevitably going in a direction that will emphasize even more the perfumer. It's simply to understand what happens in a market with 950 launches. When somebody speaks about his creation and its process, the fragrance seems less a product on a shelf and more a "creation". It becomes "human", unlike mass produced products in a supermarket. Chanel understood that decades ago when the brand started to speak about the jasmine fields and put Jacques Polge in the spotlight (he was featured a lot in the 80's and 90's, before Internet era).
And in the end, after reading what will be put on the market by Guerlain in 2009 (Mitsouko Fleur de Lotus, Eau de Shalimar Flower, La Petite Robe Noire, the new Habit Rouge) I think that Thierry Wasser is not the IN HOUSE perfumer for Guerlain, and the news + the event last year was just to fool the press. Another lie from Guerlain like the bad joke with Champs Elysée re - edition (10 000 EUR for a non original formula).
(In other words, we want Thierry! :)

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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art