I left off in conversation about Fleuriste, and it’s cool, florist’s fridge effect as something made possible by the modern miracle of aroma molecules. Now, in part 2, I find myself stepping back…not just in time and space (sort of) but also taking a half step back toward classicism and warmth in the next carnation design.
With l’Opera des Rouges et des Roses, I didn’t set out to create a new carnation fragrance as if I was inspired and found the need for this fragrance. Well, I did realize that it fulfilled a need in my range that I didn’t really have which was a garden bouquet perfume that featured carnation, roses, peonies, and jasmine. One of the things I love about this design is that it flickers and flirts between hot and cold, fresh and lush until the final drydown stage where it just belts out an aria and dares you not to give a standing ovation. It has PRESENCE. At least that’s how *I* experience it…you might feel differently about it.
“l’Opera” as I refer to it in my studio was a fragrance born out an art project / installation project for Denver Art Museum’s “In Bloom” show of 2015, which ultimately was called the “scent experience”. The idea was to create a fragrant room that would evoke the experience of walking into Monet’s garden at Giverny. What came together was an amazing kind of aromatic sculpture that was ever shifting in the balance of the fragrance since the design was developed in three pieces that when blended together created the whole. To make this sculpture ‘moveable’, the fragrant ‘pieces’ were sensor driven, so that as people moved through the space they would trip the sensor to send out more of the fragrance in their area. Depending on where you walked, you would smell something somewhat different in the room, as in a real garden. Pretty cool, right? As I worked out the designs, it came together as a kind of timeline as well as a way to experience the actual fragrances of the flowers. So, the initial scent was the smell of moist dirt, foliage, grass, and trees with green leaves with a faint whiff of flowers, but none you could put your finger on (Le Jardin Vert); the next was a cool, early morning/ early Spring bouquet of dewy violets, irises, and lilacs (La Danse des Bleus et des Violettes). Lastly, came the warm, afternoon / late Spring bouquet of peonies, old roses, carnations, and jasmine (l’Opera des Rouges et des Roses). I wanted to give the sense of time passing from morning through the afternoon as well as early Spring to late Spring. (Monet had a LOT of flowers in his vast gardens and I wanted to showcase many of the flowers depicted in the show…so it was a tall order of many flowers). I think that the space was a success and I haven’t heard of many other museums creating as memorable, creative, or daring additions to shows that might have come off as rather staid without it.
The design for “l’Opera” has become a perfume with many lovers in its own right; not just as a piece in the design that became “Giverny in Bloom” which is the ‘complete’ experience. As a carnation perfume it has some references to Bellodgia de Caron as its focal is the carnation and rose duet. As it is meant to be a garden perfume, l’Opera seems fresh when compared side to side with Bellodgia (extrait). The required aldehydes and more powdery drydown of Bellodgia make it seem more ‘constructed’ than l’Opera. But I can see how Bellodgia is the great-aunt of l’Opera, with the need to be dramatic, and still a love interest. Bellodgia is the belle of the ball waltzing about in crinoline and pearls, whereas l’Opera may have a wilder heart; a love child made of the garden of eden and the theatre.
At first, I hadn’t planned on more than one carnation fragrance but you know how it goes… the creative urge knows no bounds, and so another idea begat another, etc. While “l’Opera” is a bouquet and not a soliflore, I still think of it as a carnation and rose affair. What ultimately completed my needs (and my clients’, I think) was last year’s duskier and darker addition to the lineup. But that’s for the next post.
* the images used were taken by me at the Denver Art Museum’s “In Bloom” show in 2015.
DSH notebook 
