Artisan Fragrance Salon, SF 2013

This past Sunday I participated in the second annual Artisan Fragrance Salon which took place on at Fort Mason in San Francisco alongside a large Chocolate event. Greg was teaching an Artist As Brand workshop in Seattle and Eve is away at college in Vermont, thus I had Jerusa help me out at the booth. Jerusa is a very dear friend, lover of fragrance and doctor of psychology in the bay area.

Since I chose to fly up and make it a quick trip I hooked up with the extremely talented gals from Studio Choo, a local San Francisco floral design team. Alethea and Jill created three absolutely gorgeous bouquets for the table. The main, large arrangement included lilacs, jasmine, boronia, ranunculus, sweet peas and many more flowers in perfect harmony with the palette of the booth. One of the reasons I longed to work with the talent at Studio Choo is that they combine exquisite aesthetics with a love of things wild and natural, choosing to work with locally grown, fresh and seasonal flowers whenever possible.

The event opened to the public at 10am, at 11:30 I presented "The Cabinet of Aromatic Wonders, A History of Natural Perfume" to a very attentive group with all seats full in the Fragrance Pool area. The content for the talk came from the aromatherapy classes and workshops I taught back in 1996. After the presentation I went back to the booth where Jerusa was successfully holding down the fort all on her own.

Green Witch, once again, garnered the most interest. Something that I had not yet witnessed was numerous men showing great interest in Vespertina, which now has me rethinking the branding of the fragrance. The incense and wood note paired with the florals in Vespertina smelled quite perfect and wonderful on the four men who desired to test it on their skin.

Fig. 1: Noir was unveiled and greatly appreciated. The perfume is now finished in both solid and liquid format and will be making an appearance at the shop shortly. One of the things Greg did while on his last day up in Seattle was a photo shoot for Noir using the model Jessica Lough. Although I haven't seen the photos yet Greg's excitement from the shoot is quite palatable. He and Jessica, along with the models boyfriend Andre and workshop facilitator Tara Chang Larson all had great creative chemistry together.

It's difficult to gauge whether these events are "pay off" or not. For me I greatly adore meeting each of you in person and hearing the stories you share. There is also a feeling of camaraderie amongst the perfumers who represent a variety of disciplines from those who formulate and create each fragrance by hand, those who use formulators and labs, those who sell at stores like Anthropologie and the newbies just starting out. Perfume is an art form with an extremely diverse palate from the spectrum of pure botanicals to synthetics and everything in between.

Here's a few photos from various booths in the fragrance salon, everyone had taken their presentation to new heights compared to the last SF event. As you can see, pretty much everyone is utilizing some sort of bell jar for experiencing the perfumes.