Dear Nathan, it was indeed my intention to send Aalacho N° 2 to the basenoters to whom I have send the number one.
It was also my intention to invite you in the discussion of your perfumes once both of them would have been tested by the best of Basenotes expert noses, but Hirsh preceded me.
You are not responsible for the changes in my bespoke procedure (and price increase), rather I decided to change it after the fragrance Mona Lisa composed for Mona.
After I interacted with Laura Donna (
http://lauradonna.com) on this last one, I decided that it was important that the person who was having a bespoke perfume could smell the ingredients first. Otherwise there was the possibility that he would be deluded in his expectancies. I hate to delude people.
Dear Hirsh, violet leaf is a very green and narcotic scent of the same family as Narcissi and Jonquil. Not at all like violet flower that exists only as an artificial note.
I found the brief of Nathan in my archives:
“I appreciate bold statements that stand out from the crowd, and I love dry, woody orientals with incense smoke. I'm not a fan of vanilla or heavily sweetened fragrances -- I rarely eat dessert and prefer coffee, instead, but I do appreciate a mellow sweetness. I do not purchase floral fragrances, and tend to avoid perfumes with flowers and/or fruits, including citrus. I like dark earthy musks, the smell of burning leaves and woods (we used to burn cherry wood in the fireplace when I was a child), mossy forests, raw honey, salt, black leather.”
I based my composition on his brief more than on the ingredients listed. When I realized that Nathan was deluded by the fragrance he had received, I just made it again without any liberty, exactly with the accord and the ingredients he had asked me in the first place and sent it to him free.
At this time I only knew that he was a fellow basenoter, and I was not aware of his talent as a reviewer, who is now a finalist at the 2009 FiFi Awards Nominees.
Congratulations Nathan.