Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

Many of us perfumers and perfume lovers have read about the opening of the refurbished International Perfume Museum in Grasse, France in October, 2008. There is a short, illustrated piece from Metropolis magazine that captures the theory and application behind the design, and for me, a former landscape architect who loves design as much as I love perfume, it transports me there, immediately. I am able to understand how and why the architect Fréd­éric Jung arrived at the final design. Here is a link to the article.

I blogged a few days ago about the decline of the rose-de-mai farmland in Grasse and a French Perfumer, Isabelle Gelle commented on the Natural Perfumery group listing the reasons she perceived to be at fault, and offering her prediction as to the future of rose (and other natural aromatics) production. Reprinted here with permission: To me, there are 2 main guilty ones: 1) the consumers who will not pay for pure rose products because as mentioned in the article 'rose is not rose' any longer - I actually browsed the latest website of Scents of Time in which I saw that the great idea of reproducing various Scents of Time has been once again transformed into another 'chemical' venture, using the now widely spread HEADSPACE technique (which is still leading to reproducing scents in a laboratory). 2) the European Union who by trying to place every citizen in a sterilised bubble and create a Federal Europe is slowly killing national identities and regional specialties.

Rosa centifolia harvested in Grasse, France Natural perfumer Haley Alexander van Oosten visited the rose fields of Grasse, France for the harvest and reports on some sad, inevitable news in the Huffington Post. She reports that the general public is so used to the scent of fake rose that they choose it in a sniff comparison. The price difference, declining demand and land development pressures may soon make this lovely oil a thing of the past.