raidersofthelostscent: January 2016

Smell Festival 2016 – illustration by Casajordi

Gabriela Guidetti meets Francesca Faruolo

Today I meet a special friend, Francesca Faruolo. Francesca lives in Bologna, where in 2010 created one of the most artistic event in Italian perfumery universe, the Smell Festival, an international festival dedicated to the culture of smell and to the art of perfume. This olfactive journey has its highlight moment in May and covers the whole year with courses, workshops and events to offer the public a melting pot training of fragrant and sensory experiences.

Smell Festival's bag

- Hi Francesca, when did you fall in love with perfumes?
“Since I was a child.... No, I am joking. I discovered my passion for fragrances about nine years ago. In that specific moment of my life perfumes began fascinating me as never. Well, I did use perfumes before but the the fact that most fragrances were connected to fashion brands discouraged me: I wasn't attracted by that sparkly mainstream world. Even though Laura Biagiotti, Chanel, Hermès weren't exactly my thing, I really loved the romanticism of Roma, the subtle decadence of Calèche, the rough green notes of n° 19. Then two “prince charming” perfumes woke up my interest: Jean Claude Ellena's creations and, even more, Serge Lutens' ones, that perfectly suited my taste and my aesthetic sense."

Smell Festival 2015 – Mellifero #1, artistic project by Dacia Manto

at MAMbo – Museum of Modern Art in Bologna

- What has been your experience in the perfumery?
"When I realized that I was extremely attracted by the olfactive sphere and the world of perfume, I took my working life in that direction. I created Smell Festival and Smell Atelier in order to enrich myself with new experiences and gain specific knowledge in the perfume sector. This put me in touch with fragrance creators, companies in the perfume industry and niche perfumery shops. I had the opportunity to write about fragrances and olfactory culture for my blog and for some Italian magazines. In addition to this, I provided consultancy to small companies. But, most of all, I promoted hundreds of meetings, workshops, exhibitions focused on smells, essences and perfumes creating something really new".

Francesca Faruolo

- Can you give us a memory in particular linked to Smell Festival?
"One of my dearest memories of the Festival is linked to the very first event we organized. On an evening of May 2010, in a bookstore in the centre of Bologna, we invited Rosalia Cavalieri, to talk about her book about the sense of smell and Vero Kern to talk about her experience as a fragrance creator. We had no idea what to expect from that evening. Bologna doesn’t play a key role in the Italian perfume industry and we had no relations with other fragrance lovers in our territory. We were starting from zero and that was a true blind date with our public. Seeing about one hundred people gathering in the bookstore and no seats left was really exciting! Until then the Festival was just an intuition, a vision in my mind and in the mind of few pioneers who supported the idea. Now It was becoming real".

Souvenirs of the first edition of Smell Festival in 2010

-Can you reveal in advance anything concerning the next edition of Smell Festival?
"The seventh edition of Smell Festival will take place in Bologna from May 18th to 22nd. This year's theme, “Magiae Naturalis”, is inspired by a book by Giovanni Battista Della Porta, the famous Neapolitan humanist, alchemist and scientist who gave an outstanding contribution to the spreading of distillation and perfumery techniques during the late Renaissance. His contemporaneous Giovanni Demisiani wrote about his work: “Apelles was able to reproduce the color of flowers, but in his paintings the green bush doesn't scent. Giovanni Battista paints with scents, shaping with his noble work all that art can't seize".

Smell Festival's public at the Music Museum in Bologna

Smell Festival 2014 - Electronic Eather, art installation by Marcos Lutyens at MAMbo

– Museum of Modern Art in Bologna

-Future projects?
"Lately I have held a series of workshop entitled “Fleurs! The Alchemic Life of Flowers”. Now I would like to put order to my notes and write a book. Will I ever find the time? Writing is an important part of my work.
Moreover, this year I will reveal a secret project I have been working on for a long time. It will give a definitive answer to the question: “Why a Festival dedicated to the sense of smell and the art of perfume in the city of Bologna?”. I don't want to say more about this to avoid bad luck. Take a look at the program of the Festival at the beginning of May... you might find a nice surprise!"

Smell Atelier: “The Alchemic Life of Flowers” by Francesca Faruolo

- And finally, which perfume is Francesca Faruolo?
"I will tell you what perfume I would like to be. Days ago, playing with the flower cards created by Mirra Alfassa, the French mystic known as Mère, I picked card number 42. It represents the Basil plant and its message is: “Abundantly scented, it fills the heart with joy".

Francesca Faruolo

For info:
www.smellfestival.it
www.facebook.com/smellfestival

A very big, big thanks to Gabriela for this interview, and Laura, Enzo, Alba for paging, maintenance and valuable advice..

-------------ITALIAN------------

Smell Festival 2016 – illustrazione di Casajordi

Gabriela Guidetti incontra Francesca Faruolo.

Oggi incontro un'amica speciale, Francesca Faruolo. Francesca abita a Bologna dove nel 2010 ha dato vita a uno degli appuntamenti più creativi dell'universo profumiero italiano, lo Smell Festival, rassegna internazionale dedicata alla cultura dell’olfatto e all’arte del profumo. Questo percorso olfattivo ha il suo clou nell'evento del mese di maggio e si dipana durante l'anno in corsi, workshop ed eventi per offrire al pubblico un melting pop formativo e fragrante di esperienze sensoriali.

Smell Festival's bag

Ciao Francesca, quando ti sei innamorata dei profumi?
“Fin da quando ero piccola...”. No, scherzo, la vera passione per i profumi è scattata nove anni fa. Solo allora in un momento particolare della mia vita le fragranze mi sono entrate dentro e hanno iniziato a parlarmi come non avevano mai fatto. Non che prima non usassi profumi. Ma il fatto che la maggior parte delle fragranze fossero associata ai grandi marchi della moda era per me un deterrente: non ero attratta dal quel mondo sfavillante e mainstream. Eppure, anche se Laura Biagiotti, Hermès, Chanel non erano esattamente i miei idoli, ho molto amato il romanticismo di Roma, la sottile decadenza di Calèche, le ruvide note verdi di n° 19. Poi due principi azzurri del profumo sono riusciti a svegliare definitivamente il mio interesse: Jean Claude Ellena e soprattutto Serge Lutens nelle cui creazioni ho trovato una forte corrispondenza con i miei gusti e il mio senso estetico.

Smell Festival 2015 – Mellifero #1, progetto artistico di Dacia Manto

al MAMbo – Museo di Arte Moderna di Bologna

Qual è stata la tua esperienza nel settore della profumeria?
Quando ho capito che la sfera dell'olfatto e il mondo del profumo mi appassionavano oltremodo ho dirottato le mie attività lavorative in questa direzione.
Ho creato Smell Festival e Smell Atelier per poter lavorare nel settore del profumo arricchendomi di esperienze e costruendomi una formazione specifica. Ho così potuto entrare a contatto con creatori di fragranze, aziende essenziere, profumerie di nicchia. Ho scritto di profumi e di cultura olfattiva per il mio blog e per alcune riviste. Ho anche fornito consulenze alle case di profumo. Ma, soprattutto, ho promosso centinaia di incontri, workshop, installazioni che hanno avuto per protagonisti odori, essenze e profumi inventandomi qualcosa che prima non c'era.

Francesca Faruolo

Puoi regalarci un tuo ricordo particolarmente caro legato a Smell Festival?
Uno dei miei ricordi più cari del Festival è legato al primo evento in assoluto che abbiamo organizzato. Era una sera di maggio del 2010 e in una libreria del centro di Bologna avevamo invitato Rosalia Cavalieri, autrice di un libro sul senso dell'olfatto, e Vero Kern che avrebbe raccontato la sua esperienza come creatrice di fragranze. Non sapevamo cosa aspettarci da tutto ciò. Bologna non è una città rinomata per le fragranze e non eravamo in contatto con altri appassionati della nostra zona. Visto che iniziavamo da zero, quella sera avevamo un vero e proprio appuntamento al buio con il pubblico. Quando vedemmo arrivare un centinaio di persone, tanto da esaurire i posti a sedere, fu un momento davvero esaltante! Fino ad allora il Festival era stato un'intuizione, una visione che esisteva nella mia testa e in quella dei pionieri che diedero fiducia all'idea. Adesso stava diventando realtà.

Pubblico di Smell Festival al Museo Internazionale

e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna

Smell Festival 2014 - Electronic Eather, installazione artistica di Marcos Lutyens

presso il MAMbo – Museo di Arte Moderna di Bologna

Puoi darci qualche anticipazione sulla prossima edizione?
La settima edizione di Smell Festival si svolgerà a Bologna dal 18 al 22 Maggio e avrà come tema “Magiae Naturalis”. Il titolo riprende l'omonimo trattato di Giovanni Battista Della Porta, un illustre umanista, alchimista e scienziato napoletano che diede un rilevante contributo alla conoscenza delle tecniche di distillazione e profumeria nel tardo Rinascimento. Il suo contemporaneo Giovanni Demisiani scrisse della sua opera: “Apelle imitò il colore dei fiori, ma il cespuglio verde da lui dipinto non emana odore. Giovanni Battista dipinge invece con i profumi: plasmando con la sua nobile opera ciò che sfugge all'arte.”

Ricordi della prima edizione di Smell Festival , 2010

Progetti futuri?
Da tempo tengo un ciclo di workshop intitolato “Fleurs! La Vita alchemica dei fiori” e ora vorrei finalmente riuscire a sistemare gli appunti per ricavarne un libro. Troverò mai il tempo? La scrittura è una parte importante del mio lavoro.
Inoltre quest'anno rivelerò un progetto su cui sto lavorando occultamente da tempo e che darebbe una risposta definitiva alla domanda “perché un festival dedicato al senso dell'olfatto e all'arte del profumo proprio a Bologna”? Non dirò di più per scaramanzia, ma i primi di maggio date un'occhiata al programma del Festival... potreste trovare una bella sorpresa!

Smell Atelier: “Vita Alchemica dei Fiori” di Francesca Faruolo

E per finire, che profumo è Francesca Faruolo?
Ti dirò che profumo vorrei essere. Giorni fa, giocando con le carte dei fiori di Mirra Alfassa, la mistica francese nota con il nome di Mère, ho pescato la numero 42 che rappresenta la pianta di Basilico e porta questo messaggio: “Abbondantemente profumato, riempie il cuore di gioia”.
Info:
www.smellfestival.it
www.facebook.com/smellfestival

Francesca Faruolo

A very big, big thanks to Gabriela for this interview, and Laura, Enzo, Alba for paging, maintenance and valuable advice.

If you love "leathery" scents, you should know Bandit.

Alongside with Cabochard (Grès), Aramis, Knize Ten, Jolie Madame (Balmain), Cuir de Russie (Chanel), and a few others, Bandit is one of the most famous "leathery" scents ever made.

It's one of the greatest perfumes (together with Fracas) produced by Robert Piguet, created during the Forties by Germaine Cellier.

There are a lot of articles about Bandit (and about Robert Piguet's perfumes) so if you want read reviews, you will find as usual a lot of references at the end of the article.

A bit of recent History: after many glorious decades, the "Robert Piguet Parfums" brand was sold in 1985 to Alfin Fragrances, then sold again in 1995 to Fashion Fragrances & Cosmetics Ltd, which currently own the brand. It took a certain amount of time to completely reformulate and relaunch the scents, in 1998, with the label of the "original formula, certified by Givaudan".

Recently, at the end of 2012, Bandit underwent a reformulation due to IFRA restriction laws.

These are the notes according to Robert Piguet website:

Top: galbanum, ylang

Middle: leather , jasmine

Base: Patchouli, oakmoss, vetyver

And here are the bottles used for this comparison "Then&Now", spanning nearly 35 years, from the end of 70s to 2015.

(if you are interested in Fracas comparison, see HERE )

1-1970s EdT (original RP Parfums)

2- 1980s EdT(Alfin Fragrances version)

3- 2012 EdP (modern, before reformulation)

4- 2015 EdP (modern after reformulation)

1- Late '70s bottle

2- 1980s

3- Year 2012 (modern version, pre-reformulation, batch 2E1)

4- Year 2015 (modern version, identical bottle)

TESTS

All tests were performed in the same room, at the same temperature and time, on paper, skin, and heavy fabric.

The results are somewhat surprising: all samples smell different each other, although on different levels. You have four different samples, and you got four different smellings. Please, don't mismatch my words: it's always Bandit, but with different nuances..

Instead of speaking about single notes ("a peppery opening, followed by jasmine, etc...."), I'd prefer to putting evidence on diversities (and similarites) between samples. So:

1- The older one from the Seventies appears as a rich, creamy leather scent, with a lot of depth. Top notes are not so prominent, but the "leathery" drydown is heavy and magnificent.

2- Similarly it happens with the sample from the Eighties, the only real difference being a sort of apparent "dilution", but very similar to the previous one. Less brutal, less intense, more "diluted", but with no so many differences.

3- The third sample from 2012 (modern, pre-reformulated) is pretty different, with a stronger floral/peppery opening and a quiet, although solid, leather core.

4- The fourth sample (reformulated, year 2015) is slightly different from the previous one. Curiously, I smell differences only in the topnotes, but not in the drydown, that's quite the same. In this fourth sample, topnotes are sharper and heavier than ever.
If you are interested mainly in "leather", you could prefer the first one; if you are interested in a more complex, variegate scent, your choice should be the last one.

Finally, there is no difference between EdT and EdP: longevity and sillage are the same. The leather drydown stands for at least 6-7 hours. Curiously, Bandit is one of those perfumes performing very well on any surface: paper, skin, and fabric.

---------------------------------------

According to... Gianni Bertetti.

(Gianni Bertetti, the living legend of vintage perfumes, narrates his story here )

"I could say many things about this scent by Robert Piguet, since I have been selling it for 50 years: since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's to you a very rare 400ml EdT ancient bottle."

--------------------------------------

THE FINAL WORD

by Luca Turin

"I'll start with a note of caution: I've owned several bottles of the original Bandit over the years, and this is not it. But read on. Reproducing modern versions of Germaine Cellier's masterpiece is both easy and hard; easy, because her perfumes had such bold, distinctive structures that even a pixelated version of Bandit, such as the last, dreadfully cheapened and traduced "original" version, was still recognizably the old scoundrel; hard, because Cellier was fond of using bases in her composition, to the horror of other perfumers. Bases are mini-perfumes, pre-packaged compositions that dispense you from reinventing the wheel every time you need a complex but recognizable note in your fragrance: peach, leather, amber, etc. Some, like Ambre83, Persicol, and Animalis, are so rich and so good that you wonder why nobody bottled them and sold them. The problem with Cellier's use of bases is that half of them have disappeared, so that even if the whole formula were to fall into your hands and you trekked to the address of the maker of Dianthiline12 in Grasse, you'd likely find a time-share development instead of a little fragrance factory. Modern reconstructions of Cellier's perfumes are above all a work of translation of the original formula into things you can actually identify and buy today. In my opinion, this can be positive: these perfumes always carried a sort of excess baggage to compensate for the starkness of the basic accord. If it can be done elegantly, a cleanup is in itself no bad thing. One just has to get used to the idea that, as vintage aircraft, what you see is a machine in which perhaps only th eserial number plate subsists from the original, and every spar and rivet has been made from scratch. This version of the 1947 original is a bit like a reconstructed Bell X-1 supersonic aircraft: sleek, beautifully done, and a mite too clean, as if ready for a movie shoot. But the magic is all there: bitter, dark yet fresh, beguiling without any softness, and still several unlit streets ahead of every other leather chypre around."

---------------------------------