Molinard Perfume Museum Grasse, France
Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 1:37PM 
Suspend for this blog post only everything I’ve told you about the nasty chemicals in perfumes because I’m now going to tell you about the time that I designed my own fragrance at the Molinard Perfume Museum in Grasse, France. If you’re ever in the area I recommend the experience. For €27 and a half hour of your time you can do it too! You work one on one with a fragrance consultant who helps you through the process.
Step 1 – choose your base note. This is the scent that’s going to stay on your skin the longest well after the top and middle notes have disappeared (in that order) so it’s really important that you like it. I had the option of selecting from about 15-18 “essences” some of which were clear base notes, some of which could be either base or middle note depending on the other essences they could be combined with. I thought initially that cypress was the winning base note but then when I combined cypress with the other 3 essences I had selected (I was allowed a max of 4 essences) I decided to swap it out for an essence called “marine.” Ironically marine smells nothing like the ocean (because the real ocean smells gross, especially at low tide) but it’s that scent which is in any product that is branded as relating to the sea or summer. Although it’s a synthetic scent, I absolutely adore it because it reminds me of summers in Maine, not because of the real beach but because I associate it with summer and summer smells.
Me and my fragrance - Acqua di Caterina