One of my early personal projects at ISIPCA and based on a much older idea (I did it previously in fashion and in architecture) was The Golden Number perfume. When gold becomes immaterial into a potion of beauty from a divine equation.The golden ratio is a very important concept in aesthetics, in art, architecture and in nature (the organic growth of living forms). There is a long article on wikipedia and I will not insist on that. Two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger one equals the ratio of the larger one to the smaller.
My personal project had 2 major elements - research and aesthetics and the goal was to find if there is a key to the concept of olfactory harmony and beauty in perfumes. If harmony (and not beauty because this is something different) can be put into an equation or a proportion. It was not based on the naïve idea that a machine can generate beauty but rather on the classic concept of order as it is expressed in architecture by the use of a sophisticate system of proportions. An olfactory experience can be reduced to numbers and the idea was …. can we bring both order and beauty using a set of principles and a "divine proportion"?
The golden ratio is more related to visual elements and once you know it, you can detect / recognize it in many natural forms, paintings or built structures (from Parthenon to Le Corbusier). You seize it and understand it. If there would be something similar for fragrances, this would be rather a pure concept, more important for the creator and less for the public. Also what makes the big difference with the spatial configuration of an object (the nautilus) is the fact that "the space of odours" is not infinite. At least we do not know its limits / shape / structure for the moment and every new molecule that is discovered is a proof for that (the fact that we cannot seize its dimensions yet).
The first idea of this aesthetic adventure came more than 10 years ago when I was still a student in Architecture and we studied the book of Matila Ghyka (a romanian also) - The Golden Number (Le nombre d'or)
written in 1931. Much later I found a scientific paper that examined the concept of harmony analyzing the evaporation curve of several classic perfumes. There was a lot of tables and mathematic calculations but a very strong aesthetic input if you know how to use the data. Another forgotten paper from the 70's provided a theory about the harmony of perfumes with extensive calculations using physical data (vapor pressure and many other experimental elements). While the conclusions were correct, the physical data were not and the experiments I duplicated were most of them a failure. But this was until 2006 when I put my hand on a new database and a chemical software to calculate what I was missing. The missing links were completed and the empiric equations worked at least for my purpose (one was finding new accords that were both original and harmonious avoiding many trials - I do not have a machine like in computational chemistry or microbiology).
Now, there is a great difference between the concept of proportion in visual arts and the proportion for the perfumer. If the golden number is easy to understand in the internal geometry of a painting you cannot simply translate the visual into the olfactory - 10 grams of bergamot vs. 16,18 grams of Vertofix (the number φ = 1,6168...). It doesn't work like that!
One must take into account that a perfume has an evolution in time while the factors with a direct influence on what you smell (and when) are more a curve in a graphic (and not in a square).
For the perfume trials I took several ideas from the aesthetic concept and I used my equations to obtain the overall harmony in time and the harmony between facets to ensure a certain spiral effect for the perfume. The spiral (like the Fibonacci sequence and its symbol as an organic growth) meant that you will cover in harmony all the major notes of the spectrum with a very smooth passage (and less contrasts). The spiral is again more a concept - a succession of rounded rhythms (no angular contrasts) around main theme and you might not seize it with the same precision as the eye.
The idea of the perfume was to use a very limited set of ingredients, all important olfactory and the emphasize the harmony of elements with the whole.
That was the aesthetic purpose where the use of numbers and calculations was essential.
More important than the scent, my Golden Number was a method to organize elementary notes (still to be improved) and bring order in a set of very complementary notes. It is not the key to unlock beauty but to secure it. Harmony - Geometry set to molecules.
On an experimental scale (no products) there was also the extension of the line with some cosmetics the concept being The Golden Number - Advanced Tissular Harmony - The golden harmony is in your DNA
The following products were planed for The Golden Number: Crème de rêve restructurante intensive, Sérum extrême d'harmonie cellulaire, Masque divine à la feuille d'or (face mask), Potion d'harmonie céleste (a drink with gold). Harmony for the soul and skin - with no influence on the scent but on other properties. A mix of 7 ingredients and gold used at homeopathic levels for something more than skin beauty. I used gold as a colloidal suspension in a previous creation I did for a friend (a tuberose-exotic lily-honey note). My Golden Number was in fact an elixir. Fragrance and cosmetic potion (with some ideas I prefer not to detail right now).
written in 1931. Much later I found a scientific paper that examined the concept of harmony analyzing the evaporation curve of several classic perfumes. There was a lot of tables and mathematic calculations but a very strong aesthetic input if you know how to use the data. Another forgotten paper from the 70's provided a theory about the harmony of perfumes with extensive calculations using physical data (vapor pressure and many other experimental elements). While the conclusions were correct, the physical data were not and the experiments I duplicated were most of them a failure. But this was until 2006 when I put my hand on a new database and a chemical software to calculate what I was missing. The missing links were completed and the empiric equations worked at least for my purpose (one was finding new accords that were both original and harmonious avoiding many trials - I do not have a machine like in computational chemistry or microbiology).Now, there is a great difference between the concept of proportion in visual arts and the proportion for the perfumer. If the golden number is easy to understand in the internal geometry of a painting you cannot simply translate the visual into the olfactory - 10 grams of bergamot vs. 16,18 grams of Vertofix (the number φ = 1,6168...). It doesn't work like that!
One must take into account that a perfume has an evolution in time while the factors with a direct influence on what you smell (and when) are more a curve in a graphic (and not in a square).
For the perfume trials I took several ideas from the aesthetic concept and I used my equations to obtain the overall harmony in time and the harmony between facets to ensure a certain spiral effect for the perfume. The spiral (like the Fibonacci sequence and its symbol as an organic growth) meant that you will cover in harmony all the major notes of the spectrum with a very smooth passage (and less contrasts). The spiral is again more a concept - a succession of rounded rhythms (no angular contrasts) around main theme and you might not seize it with the same precision as the eye.
The idea of the perfume was to use a very limited set of ingredients, all important olfactory and the emphasize the harmony of elements with the whole.
That was the aesthetic purpose where the use of numbers and calculations was essential.
More important than the scent, my Golden Number was a method to organize elementary notes (still to be improved) and bring order in a set of very complementary notes. It is not the key to unlock beauty but to secure it. Harmony - Geometry set to molecules.
On an experimental scale (no products) there was also the extension of the line with some cosmetics the concept being The Golden Number - Advanced Tissular Harmony - The golden harmony is in your DNA
The following products were planed for The Golden Number: Crème de rêve restructurante intensive, Sérum extrême d'harmonie cellulaire, Masque divine à la feuille d'or (face mask), Potion d'harmonie céleste (a drink with gold). Harmony for the soul and skin - with no influence on the scent but on other properties. A mix of 7 ingredients and gold used at homeopathic levels for something more than skin beauty. I used gold as a colloidal suspension in a previous creation I did for a friend (a tuberose-exotic lily-honey note). My Golden Number was in fact an elixir. Fragrance and cosmetic potion (with some ideas I prefer not to detail right now).
But everything changed when 1 million appeared on the market with its bottle. I gave up because I did not like to mix an aesthetic experiment with bling bling and I got tired of gold.
I will detail one day what exactly are the findings in terms of harmony (for synthetics because naturals are more complicated in terms of data) and how they can be translated in practice.
I will detail one day what exactly are the findings in terms of harmony (for synthetics because naturals are more complicated in terms of data) and how they can be translated in practice.
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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
(Goutal) is hiding behind 
(Goutal). The interpretation of the flower is almost academic - not a new and never seen before twist but a classic approach with good ingredients and a lot of love for delicate feminine notes (not the femme fatale!). All the notes that make a gardenia are here. You will feel the very green top note of the flower, the mushroom elements given by tiglates, the rose -lily of the valley accord with a soft juicy pear element, the lactonic jasmine background. With time the flower becomes more opulent and changes into an exotic small white flower frangipani-tiaré with heavy notes provided by ylang and a good vanilla. It is almost sugary in the end with even a light tuberose note. The bouquet is very rich and it shows all the complex shades of a fresh opulent white flower: from gardenia to a white lily over an exotic breeze. You feel both the intoxicating opulence of an open flower and the fresh green scent of a bud (like jasmine sambac bud and other new absolutes). The drydown has an exquisite powdery note that reminds me the gardenia absolute, soft benzoin and celeri graines essence. In terms of style Gardénia Pétale is reminiscent of the Beaux Art school - a perfume that does not break the rules of tradition but creates the best with them where the laws of hierarchy in composition are obeyed to offer the most accurate example of the flower with the minimum decoration. Here you know what you smell (a gardenia) and the other elements (flowers) are ordered with precision behind the main theme while the "foreign" elements that will "disturb" the theme bringing high contrasts are reduced to minimum. 
