A very quick post, today, as quick was my perfume session – just the time to dilute some raw materials and bottle the juices into a new batch of bottles. The short time was enough, however, to come up with a new (idea for a) fragrance.

‘Most novices tend to waste time in just picking smells they like and combining them together, with the hope to come up with a masterpiece’, said once my mentor. That was a great advice, which resulted in me making significant advances in relatively short time: you achieve wonders, by learning how to combine smells you actually don’t like. Eventually, you learn not to dislike any smell.

However, good old common sense can sometimes conduct to fortunate exceptions to the rule (‘There is no rule. This said, you should…’ that’s another typical line of the above-non-mentioned mentor). So today Virginia, who sat along to aid me, matched some Ta’if rose otto (the one Mulla Sadra blessed me with on his return from Hajj), with some cocoa absolute. Why? Just because she loved both, and she didn’t know about the ‘rule’.

Then we tweaked the concoction with some Calabrian bergamot at the top, and  patchouli at the base, in a very straightforward manner. Well, I have to say the result was awesome: although not a full-fledged fragrance, a very promising base to develop into something special.

The lesson I have learnt today from Virginia is that rose and cocoa work surprisingly well together, which is a simple concept worth expanding on.

Oh, and right: Virgina is 7 years old.