Hello, Fragrant Friend 👋,

✨ Exciting kickoff! We just had our first brand identity & packaging session with Tsubaki Studio 🇲🇾. Our vision for the world's first fragrance publishing house dedicated to independent perfumery: Think museum-level curation. Curious what we mean by "publishing house"? Read my manifesto here.

🧪 As you read this, Chester has delivered four fragrance modifications—a major milestone! Next up: we'll pick two winning formulas for our community evaluators.

🧴 Meanwhile, we're sourcing bottles and caps from Europe and Asia so Tsubaki can begin drafting our packaging. Early previews will be shared soon in our WhatsApp group. Want in? Join here.

More soon!!

🗓️ Contents of this Issue

1. Note Worthy: Myromi, Art and Olfaction ‘25, and Best Mode Scents 🏆️ 🦹 

2. Strictly Independent: Eris Parfums 🇺🇲 

3. QUIZ: Fragrant Exports of the Comoros Islands 🇰🇲

4. Scent MythBusters: The olfactive pyramid is the only valid way to understand fragrance 🔍️ 

Note-Worthy 🔎🌸

#MYROMITECHNOLOGY: Myromi tackles product development challenges with a patent-pending portable device featuring eight flavour channels. Users explore profiles, create blends, and gather immediate feedback. Givaudan will roll out this innovation throughout 2025, transforming how food experiences are created.

#AWARDFINALISTS2025: The Institute for Art and Olfaction's 11th annual awards showcase 30 finalists across Artisan, Independent, and Experimental categories. Selections span four continents, from Bad Lily's untamed Lily of the Valley to Pine's straightforward approach. Winners will be announced 29th May in Los Angeles.

#BEASTMODEENGINEERING: Today's fragrance enthusiasts seek powerful "beast mode" scents. Brands respond with solid perfumes in refillable containers, longevity enhancer sprays like "Optimal Habitat," and molecular technology like Haloscent® that adapts to individual skin chemistry. This shift reflects broader trends toward conspicuous consumption. (👉️ Article by our beloved reader and friend ‘Jack Filip’)

Strictly Independent 🎨 🌟 

Eris Parfums is the kind of American secret that makes you wonder how many other olfactory treasures remain undiscovered. Founded by vintage perfume lover Barbara Herman after interviewing Master Perfumer Antoine Lie for her book "Scent and Subversion," this brand captures the essence of unconventional beauty and subversive glamour in every bottle. According to fragrance enthusiasts at Basenotes, Mx. is "a fragrance that is worn by the wearer, and not the other way around"—a luscious woody animalic that somehow manages to be both provocative and inviting at once.

Eris – Subversive Glamour

• For Fans Of: If you appreciate the gender-bending complexity of Comme des Garçons, the artistic storytelling of Serge Lutens, or the provocative edge of Nasomatto, Eris Parfums' creations will transport you to a realm of olfactory rebellion with their first spritz.

• Founded: By Barbara Herman (vintage perfume collector and author) in 2016 in the United States, where she continues to develop fragrances that challenge conventional perfumery.

• Perfumer: Antoine Lie (a French master perfumer who studied chemistry in Strasbourg before training at Givaudan under Jean Carles)

• Number of Scents: 8 (including MA BÊTE, MX., GREEN SPELL, SCORPIO RISING, NIGHT FLOWER, BELLE DE JOUR, MXXX., and DELTA OF VENUS)

QUIZ 🎲 

Scent MythBusters 🎭️ 

TL;DR

Flower absolutes capture only a snapshot of a flower's complex aromatic profile. Tuberose, jasmine, and gardenia demonstrate how a living flower’s scent varies dramatically depending on the time of day, harvest conditions, and environmental factors—dimensions that extraction methods simply cannot preserve. The absolute is merely an interpretation, not the complete olfactive story.

The Misconception 🕵️‍♀️

That luxurious tuberose absolute in your favourite perfume perfectly represents what you'd experience burying your nose in the actual flower. We've been conditioned to believe that extraction methods—however sophisticated—can capture a flower's complete aromatic identity in a bottle. After all, isn't that what perfumers are paying premium prices for?

The Reality Check 🛑

As anyone who has encountered both a living tuberose and its absolute can attest, they're related but distinctly different experiences. When I first compared a fresh tuberose bloom during daylight hours with a prized tuberose absolute, the disconnect was striking. The absolute offered a concentrated, almost waxy-creamy intensity, but missed the green, slightly mentholated facets present in the living flower.

Why? Because tuberose, like many white florals, is nocturnal by nature. As darkness falls, the flower releases entirely different aromatic compounds—indoles intensify, the scent becomes headier, more narcotic, and develops a distinctive mushroom-like undertone that's largely absent during daylight hours. These dramatic chemical shifts are the plant's evolutionary strategy to attract night-flying moth pollinators.

Some examples:

Tuberose Transformation: The same tuberose flower that offers a relatively subdued scent at noon becomes an olfactive powerhouse by midnight. Perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux describes it as "wearing a different dress for the evening"—yet absolutes are typically produced from flowers harvested at a single point in this cycle, usually early morning.

Jasmine's Dual Identity: Similarly, jasmine (aptly nicknamed "Queen of the Night") undergoes a remarkable metamorphosis after sunset. Jasmine sambac harvested at 5 AM contains dramatically different proportions of benzyl acetate, indole, and linalool than the same flower at 10 PM. The absolute, typically produced from dawn-harvested flowers, captures only one facet of this complex aromatic journey.

Gardenia's Extraction Challenge: Perhaps the most telling example is gardenia, whose delicate scent molecules are so volatile and heat-sensitive that traditional extraction methods destroy key components. This is why most "gardenia" in perfumery isn't gardenia absolute at all, but a reconstruction using other materials. The true flower's scent—which shifts from green-piquant in the evening to creamy-sweet by morning—remains one of perfumery's most elusive targets.

Why This Matters 🎯

Understanding this distinction isn't just academic—it transforms how we experience both natural materials and the perfumes made from them. Absolutes aren't failed attempts at capturing a flower's scent; they're creative interpretations with their own artistic merit.

So, is the myth busted?

Absolutely. An absolute is to a living flower what a photograph is to a feature film - it captures a moment, but misses the movement, the evolution, and the contextual richness of the complete experience. Next time someone claims they know exactly how tuberose smells because they've experienced the absolute, gently suggest they visit a garden at midnight for the full, intoxicating performance.