The fine fragrance market sees the birth of 400+ perfumes every year and most of these will be gone with the wind by the following year. So what makes a fragrance a stand out from the rest?  A signature. A fragrance’s signature can be defined many ways but is always based on the fragrance structure or notes.  And over the past several years, I have noticed a growing trend of using flavor infused notes to create fragrance signatures.

I came across this article a few days ago and thought it was of great interest. A school in England has started using scents as a clever way of communicating to children with multisensory impairments.

Sofia’s world is largely a dark and silent one. As a blind and deaf child of 9, her sense of smell is one of the few means by which she can interpret the landscape.And what she is smelling today, on a small, laminated square, is the seaside. The ozonic scent of salty air, wet sand, seaweed and ocean spray has been replicated and impregnated on to a scrap of paper.

I’d like to take a moment to address an issue that affects many consumers today:  why are fine fragrances so expensive?

The fact of the matter is that most fine fragrances on the market are priced the way they are because of expensive marketing campaigns, packaging, and mark-ups rather than the fragrance itself. 

When creating a fragrance, one of the parameters that can be carefully controlled throughout the entire process is the cost of fragrance oil, which is calculated in dollars per kilogram.  For many companies, this price is a larger determinant in the fragrance development than creative direction, as companies set these prices at levels that work best in a spreadsheet rather than the fragrance itself.  So unless extremely rare and expensive raw materials are being used, which is rarely the case, the fragrance oil can remain at a pre-determined price level throughout development and production.

Le Cherche Midi was recently introduced to a great cause that we immediately acted on and wanted to let you know about: Donate to a Diva. The holiday season is fast approaching and for years, Cindy Tawiah’s salon, Shades of U, has hosted residents from local battered women’s shelters for a day of pampering.

We live in a world of stimulation overload.  Buzzing, beeping, chirping, chattering, flashing, blinking - we are constantly bombarded by sights and sounds that divert our attention through a sea of stimulus at an ever increasing pace.  So when I began to explore the sense of smell through Le Cherche Midi, I was surprised and exhilarated to be awakened to a whole new world – one that I’ve been living in my entire life.

From an early age, we are taught how to make and hear sounds, how to see and interpret colors, but we are never really taught how to understand and identify smells.

Nothing captivates, intrigues and fascinates like a perfectly formulated fragrance. So then imagine the reactions and possibilities if you had a scent that was uniquely composed just for you.

Hello again!  This blog is going to be a little more technical than usual, but I wanted to post this in response to a couple questions we consistently receive regarding our newest product, the Fragrance Cube.  I hope you enjoy, and keep the questions coming!

For those of you not familiar with how fragrances are made, let me give you a grossly oversimplified summary of how it works.  The fragrance world is dominated by a few very large (think billions of dollars) fragrance ‘houses’ that produce most of the flavors (yes, things we eat) and fragrances in all the products we consume.  Within these fragrance ‘houses’, thousands of people are hard at work every day perfecting and improving many of the smells and tastes that you and I love, hate, or never even notice in our daily life.  With so many categories and so many products, these fragrance houses are usually organized by the application in which the fragrance or flavor will be used, the most prestigious of which is fine fragrance.  Within the world of fine fragrance, the most important role is that of the perfumers – the professional artists that are responsible for creating the olfactive masterpieces that you and I wear on our skin as perfume, cologne, or eau de toilette.