The Jury

Contrary to popular belief, I am still alive and kicking! (Though mixing and smelling is more like it). Wednesday and Thursday we have an end-of-year evaluation, which consists of professional perfumers and evaluators coming in to check out our work. I will present four perfumes and their briefs:

• my very first one (based on a photograph of a girl in a yellow bikini)
• a "middle" project (based on a fashion exhibition in Paris), and
• my two last perfumes (one from a brand my classmate created, one from a piece of music written by a former Takasago businessman).

I'm hoping other people will see a clear evolution in my abilities and choices of raw materials. Looking back on the year, my formulas, and my perfumes, I see many ways to improve, which is extremely satisfying -- if I didn't understand it before, now I know why my perfumes smell the way they do. I can see the mistakes I made, and I feel confident that I could make better ones in the future. So far I've only scratched the surface. It takes years and years to really plunge your whole arms in, to have enough understanding and control of the materials to manipulate fragrances and become a great perfumer. I'm going to miss having access to the lab!!