The woodland universe of an olfactive workshops course leader

During the starting up of my business, I have been looking carefully upon the visual identity of the Perfumers Amateurs's website, and upon all the graphics which had to represent and accompany my approach along this adventure.

Rather than an operational picture, as a perfume bottle, or than a suggestive picture, as a bouquet, or a blend of citruses and spices, I have chosen a logotype showing an extract of a sylvan universe, close to my olfactive and personal affinities.

Conifers are not the first raw materials we think about, when we talk about perfumes. But I fell in love with the scent of the black hemlock absolute (branches and extremities), smelt when I was studying at Cinquième Sens. As I tried to learn more about this tree, I saw photographs and I decided that black hemlock would stay with me, whatever the way, during this project. The needles and the cone of the logotype of Les Parfumeurs Amateurs, drawn by the graphic designer Nelly Lemar from ScrivaCom, evocate this conifer established on the Western coast of North America. For English speakers, it is the black hemlock or the mountain hemlock, for the botanists, the tsuga mertensiana, in French, la "pruche subalpine".

Before any olfactive comparison, the first words crossing my mind qualifying the black hemlock absolute are : rich, deep, noble, dark as a forest or as the night, generous and warm like a chimney fire in winter.

I have smelt it many times, I regularly come back to several impressions that follow one another or overlap : a blend of "Stoptou" candy and of strawberry marmalade, frankincense EO associated with cardamom and sprinkled with "Ajax" powder, a frindly aromatic touch of laurel or verbenon rosemary, of picea abies, patchouli submerged by a sea of cloves which, freed form its stillage exhalations, would maintain this conifer absolute within a sweet confit, joined by smoked notes, balsamic, almost powdered, livened up with a tiny touch of ginger. A note of immortelle absolute could also emanate from this scent, after a few hours of evaporation.

Smelling the spruce EO (tsuga canadensis) used for aromatherapy purposes, is not adapted for those who want to live the olfactive experience of the black hemlock absolute.

Perfumes containing this raw material :