A personalized natural fragrance workshop in Montreal

For almost three years now, we've had the pleasure of sharing our love and passion for natural fragrances and essential oils with you through our collection. It's a great joy for us to be able to help you discover our different olfactory universes and take your senses on a journey.

Following numerous requests, we are delighted to be able to offer an immersive experience into the fascinating world of perfume, its history, its jargon and, above all, its creation process.
 

The perfume creation process is a mysterious universe

An art that combines creativity, intuition and knowledge, little is known about the creative process. How is a perfume made? How do you choose the different essences that go to make up the precious juice? How do you blend them? These are questions you've often asked us!

We're proud to be able to teach you more about this mysterious world, and to reveal our creative secrets during our personalized natural perfume creation workshops. I say "our" creative process, because each perfumer has his or her own creative process and methods for designing a fragrance, and each has his or her own affinity with scents. Perception of scents varies from person to person, often influenced by factors such as past experiences, emotional state and genetics. Some smells may be more intense or pleasant for some people, while others perceive them as less perceptible or even unpleasant.

Creating a natural fragrance is more of an art than a science. It's a bit like learning to cook. These two activities share many ingredients: spices such as coriander, ginger, cardamom and cinnamon; herbs such as basil, rosemary, thyme and mint; citrus fruits such as lemon, orange and grapefruit; and even flowers such as rose and violet.
Cooking is as much about taste as it is about smell. It's a creative process in which you choose quality ingredients, mix them, smell them, taste and adjust your preparation, rather like creating a perfume, although I strongly advise against tasting your aromatic composition.
Generally speaking, if you enjoy cooking, you'll enjoy creating fragrances.

However, there are essential points to know in order to create a stable, balanced perfume, and if you don't have anyone to guide you, it can be difficult to discover them on your own.

The ABCs of natural perfumery

Notes, accords, olfactory pyramid, olfactory families: terms you may have heard before, but what do they really mean? What are they used for?
We've designed this creative workshop to tell you all about it.

Lasting three hours for 4 to 5 people, it has been developed in three main parts.

1. Theoretical part

The world of perfume is a very poetic one, but it's based on well-defined foundations. To build a stable, balanced fragrance, you'll need to acquire a certain amount of knowledge.

In the theoretical part, we'll take you through the history of perfume creation and its evolution through the ages, to understand the difference between a natural perfume and a traditional one. Discover what synthetic molecules are and why they are used in synthetic perfumes. Learn the perfumer's lexicon, the different olfactory families (blog 7 familles olfactives) and the tools needed for creation. This condensed course usually lasts 45 minutes to an hour.

2. Choosing essential oils

For me, this is the most important part.
Creating a fragrance means sharing an emotion, a memory, telling a story and revealing a part of yourself. (blog A sense to our emotions)
Depending on the character of the fragrance you want to create, and the emotion you want to convey, the choice of materials will be crucial. This stage often takes a good hour, as it requires a great deal of olfactory curiosity to discover the essential oils. There are hundreds of natural materials and sometimes several species of the same material, for example Jasmine Sambac and Jasmine Grandiflorum. Each essence has its own olfactory identity, facets and volatility.
From this multitude of scents, and after having tried several combinations of essential oils, you need to find and select the 9 to 12 essences that will work harmoniously together to create your fragrance. This may seem complex, but we're here to suggest combinations and guide you, and we have a very good method for doing so.

Have I piqued your curiosity? Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything more at the moment, so I'll let you come and discover our experience and share a beautiful moment with us.

3. Blending the materials

This is the moment we've been waiting for! Once the essential oils have been chosen, it's time to blend and assemble them to build your fragrance as you go along.
Drop by drop, tenth of a drop by tenth of a drop, we'll guide you, while letting your olfactory creativity express itself, to find the balance and trail of your first creation. It's important to remember that this doesn't mean you'll create your dream perfume on the first try. It can take months, even years, before your imagined scent comes to live.
The true creative process of a natural perfume maker lies in the blending process.
The first version is often a starting point. The essences that will make up your perfume need time to blend and interact fully together, a process known as stabilization. Once you've created your composition, you need to let it rest for at least a week, a month being ideal, because while the fragrance is resting, changes will be at work.
After this period, you'll have the final scent of your creation. From time to time, this rest has allowed the blend to improve; sometimes, you realize that you have several things to rework. Sometimes certain essences take over from others and overwhelm the other scents, or certain materials are too present and take up too much space in the composition, or the formula is too linear, not original enough. Sometimes it's the whole blend that doesn't work, and this is often a very instructive case. At this stage, the perfume maker has to think, smell and consider, and be able to come up with a solution and run new tests.

It takes time to learn all the essences and how they will evolve and interact together, but anyone can create something beautiful.

Many of you have already placed your trust in us and come to experience this beautiful moment of fragrance with us - thank you! Sharing our knowledge and expertise with you, and witnessing your creativity, is a source of happiness for us.

We sincerely hope that this text has aroused your curiosity and made you want to live this beautiful olfactory experience with us. Our perfume creation workshops take place mainly in Montreal. However, we are flexible and will travel to your corporate or private events.

Feel free to contact us to discuss your plans, and we'll be delighted to make your event an unforgettable fragrance experience. We look forward to sharing these magical moments with you.

Natural perfume workshop