At Fragrances Concerto we try to respond to this old debate which divides and sometimes opposes.<\/p>\n
It is indeed an old chestnut<\/p>\n
On the one hand, there are the luxury brands, at least some of them, which have their own in-house perfumer(s), and which present them as artists, setting them up as romantic heroes, at once adventurers in search of the lost raw materials, beings endowed with a rare sensitivity and an absolute nose; then there are the fragrances houses, which tend to make them experts, master craftsmen, but never talk about art or artists.<\/p>\n
The difference is that brands communicate to the general public at the risk of overdoing it, while the manufacturers have to be discreet so as not to steal the limelight from their clients, but also so as not to make them too privileged employees in terms of status and salary. It must also be said that what our industry cultivates best, since its beginnings, besides flowers, is secrets, applying to the letter the adage “to live happily, let’s live hidden”.<\/p>\n
If, on the other hand, we place ourselves on the sole ground of what is “Art” and what is not, we consider at Fragrances Concerto that perfumery is indeed an art, since it is, beyond a long apprenticeship, the fruit of the imagination and its vocation is to embellish life.<\/p>\n
But from there to claim that perfumers are artists, there is a tricky step to take.<\/p>\n
First of all, they do not work alone and are all surrounded by a team of experts, evaluators and technologies that help them in their creative work. Secondly, they are generally employed by manufacturing or commercial companies, which are the owners of the creations. Last but not least, the financial stakes are always at the heart of the process, as perfumers respond to calls for tenders in order to win an industrial market. No perfumer, to our knowledge, has died for his art, or been amputated for not being understood by his contemporaries. And even when he is independent, and their number has been growing for several years, the perfumer works within the precise framework of a specification given by his client.<\/p>\n
The perfumer’s approach is too limited to claim to be truly artistic. It is strictly framed by marketing considerations, its price limits the use of certain raw materials, its target limits the territories of expression. Its exclusively commercial and industrial purpose makes perfumery an art emptied of its original substance.<\/p>\n
The perfumer, when truly animated by a creative fiber is often struck by a kind of creative schizophrenia. The artist within him wants to be able to express his ideas without hindrance, but the craftsman that he is must also respond to the needs of a market that employs tens of thousands of people and is one of the country’s biggest export contributors.<\/p>\n
But wasn’t it the same for the great masters of painting of the Italian Renaissance to whom the main patron, the Church, imposed Christ on the Cross and the Annunciations to Mary by dozens?\u00a0 This did not prevent Raphael or Botticelli from expressing their genius. Would they have offered us an even more grandiose facet of their talent if they had been able to disregard the moral and religious rules of their time? That is the whole point of this subject.<\/p>\n
At Fragrances Concerto, we consider that the perfumer is the articulation around which the whole body can articulate. Our way of responding to this creative dilemma is to take the strong constraints that frame a project as an integral part of the creative process and within this framework to push our creativity to its optimum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At Fragrances Concerto we try to respond to this old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1899,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[33,22],"tags":[],"a_la_une":[26,27],"yoast_head":"\n