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Sniffapaloozza interview with perfumer AbdesSalaam Attar

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ambergris_fragrance

RB: Dominique, I must tell you, you have a fascinating web site and blog. You have articles on all sorts of fascinating subjects as well as carry many products-I love your web site.  Tell us about what you have created. 

“Create” is a big word for a small creature.  I have created nothing. The smelling plant itself does not create her perfume but she composes it  by transforming molecules and by binding already existing atoms that she finds in the air and in the earth, using the energy of the sun.
A natural perfumer is like a deejay assembling together melodies that are the songs of praise that nature sings to its creator. You could also compare the natural perfumer to a writer who narrates novels or writes epics and poesies with the language of smells: Every smell in the nature has a meaning and this meaning speaks to our heart. Never to a writer was it asked what was the last novel or poem he created, but only what he wrote. Read more

Thoughts from Timbuktu – fixatives

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Timbuktu photography

Our customs change as generations pass but the words of our language remain, some of them taking a different meaning or even becoming misleading.

A century ago perfumes were largely used on handkerchiefs, scarves and gloves rather than on the skin as they are today.
There is a big difference between thinking about “the perfume is my dress” and “the perfume is myself”.
“The perfume that is myself” is worn on the skin and becomes part of one’s body, while “the perfume that dresses me” is worn on the clothes that dress us.

The animal pheromones originally used in perfumery are designed by nature to be long lasting. They are territorial sexual pheromones that male animals leaves on a territory in order to draw a boundary for other males and at the same time seduce females of their specie. Read more

Sniffapalooza Interview on natural perfumery

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freedom

Sailing towards new horizons

For the English interview just click  HERE

The interview features Natural perfumery aims, ethics and philosophy.

AbdesSalaam Attar interview with Raphaella Barkley

King’s folly

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ambergris_eggs_cooking

I received a request of help for a TV shows: what about cooking eggs with Ambergris?
An English cook (are the 2 words compatible for a French man) “recreates” dishes from the past and the show “culminates in a lavish feast”.
I do not like at all the “lavish feast” part. I just returned from Africa and hold god given food in too high a respect for appreciating it being made a show of waste for the rich.
I have seen in all my years of travelling before becoming a perfumer that humanity is divided in 2 parts: one part has problems for eating, and the other part has problems for losing weight.
I am convinced that if someone is hungry on earth it is only because someone else is eating his dinner.

Nevertheless, a true perfumer is always a cook as well, and this English trip tickled my French man’s curiosity. I said to my daughters: today I cook something special, the egg with ambergris.

I cooked my egg putting it in a pan with a little bit of olive oil, then I grated some ambergris on it and I covered the pan and let cook at very low fire until appears a white layer over the egg (snowy fried eggs).

We ate the egg and it was as good as usual, being happy a egg from my own happy hens, but the ambergris flavour got completely lost in that dish, and we all were fully deluded.
If that was the dish of a king, it must have been an English king (this is only the opinion of a French man though).
I was so incredulous that I started all over again, with more ambergris and taking care of cooking the ambergris even less.

Well, it is not because I am French, but this English dish is a complete flop.
A good news anyway is that Ambergris eggs seem to loosen your bowels. Was the king constipated?

Still I am opened to another English culinary experience, if someone cares to counsel me something really special.

Tri-dimensional Perfumery

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Tri-dimensional Perfumery

muskdeer-pods

My search for the real musk deer scent has carried me in some of the farthest spots of the Hindu Kush but at last, I found it from its fount.

I fully understand the need of all perfumers for a sustainable musk scent substitute, but the point maybe is rather about the use of an animal note in our botanical scents, such as Ambergris, Civet, Hyraceum or Castoreum, in order to obtain a perfume with a third dimension.

Like the small machines resembling binoculars through which you look in order to watch 3-dimensional photographs, there are only 2 images in the machine but the vision is truly tri-dimensional.

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