Dominique Dubrana

"...I am French myself and I honour my origins as I have been one of the first natural perfumers when I started in 86 in Italy..."

Oui, on peut s'exprimer en anglais, vivre en Italie, être converti au soufisme ET être français.
On appelle aussi cela être "a grand excentric".

La photo illustre un article paru dans le New York Times, en août 2010, article consacré à Dominique Dubrana - AbdesSalaam Attar de son nom d'artiste - créateur des parfums naturels La Via Del Profumo.

Monsieur/Signore/Sir - Dubrana tient aussi un blog, in italiano et in English, pour lequel il a récemment écrit une série d'articles sur "The natural perfumery trend". C'est en réponse à l'un des commentaires de cet article qu'il écrit ceci :

"... I am French myself and I honour my origins as I have been one of the first natural perfumers when I started in 86 in Italy.
I am convinced that I could never have developped my trade in France. Italian people are impregnated with a very antic culture of aesthetics which makes them able to recognize beauty wherever they meet it, while the French will never recognize it unless it is authentified by general recognition (or a brand name like L’Oreal or Guerlain).
The French, let us remember, have not only killed the casts of nobilty and priesthood in their revolution, they have also killed nobilty and spiritualiy in their National character when they did that. This is why, unlike Italians, they are without true references in aesthetics, because the sense of aesthetics in inherited with cultural archetypes of nobilty and spiritality.

There are some micro-perfume businesses and shops in France of whom I have heard and also a french perfumer in the NPG, but yes French natural perfumers are not as many as they should considering the french history of perfumery.
Be assured that as soon as it becomes obvious that there is some money to make with natural perfumes, the French will jump into the trend as everyone else."

 

Pour plus d'info (en anglais), une sorte d'"interview/discussion" peut aussi être lue sur le blog WAFT, sur les fils des commentaires de ces deux articles:

Ask AbdesSalaam Attar - La Via Del Profumo

Ask AbdesSalaam Attar Day 2

 

Sur le site américain The Perfumed Court, il est possible de se procurer des échantillons de taille plus modeste que ceux proposés par La Via Des Profumo :

Oui, en prime, on reçoit alors des bombons... Peut-être pour que l'acheteur écolo français puisse se consoler d'avoir fait faire à ces échantillons quelques 8000 kilomètres par avions, plutôt que 700 en train/camion ?!

 

Enfin, pour encore plus de réjouissement, le blog Dr Jicky & Mr Phoebus vient de publier une jolie "review" du parfum Sharif.

 

 

 

Annecy life style

All in all, at the moment, my life is rather nice.

This is the kind of place I work at:

The door and kitchen floor of an old farm. The lady who lives there doesn't have cows or rabbits anymore but she still has some hens. She offered me 6 eggs once. A glass of blueberry sirop another time.
Eventhough what I do is nothing super sexy or super intelligent... Well, it's a job. Sometimes as I'm working I get the feeling I'm just home, doing my own cleaning routine. That's just that. Cleaning. I didn't get any particular training, I just do my best, do as much as I can, as well as I can. Sometimes I work in an appartment in town, sometimes in such an old house in the countryside, sometimes it's a small place, sometimes a large one. I get to travel, to listen to some music while on the road. I guess it could become a serious kind of adventure in winter, on small countryside roads, under the snow.
I'm not sure yet wether I'm going to be hired for a longer amount of time or not... This was meant to be a summer job but they might keep me... And if not, I guess I'll look for a similar job somewhere around here.

An abandonned farm, next to a house I worked at today.

 

My nephew loves car. "Vroum vroum!". He always wants to get inside and play with all the boutons and levers : he happened to brake one lately so we're more carefull now and keep the doors locked...

Yes, he's fond of cars... All sorts of cars! He's only two (precisely today!), blond, blue eyed, maybe slightly under weight for his age but, never mind! already quite strong and very very dynamic! He doesn't speak much yet, but still makes some sorts of speaches sometimes, go wonder what he means! He can say simple words such as "coucou", "boum", "gn'acky" (which stands for knacky, a kind of sausage he's particularly fond of) or "caca" (when he's filled his diaper!). He enjoys walking barefoot everywhere and persecuting the dog and the cat. He's a half devil-half angel kind of creature, very irresistble.

My franticompulsive obsesspassion for perfumes that seams to have burst out of nowhere last May doesn't seem to be fading.
Right now I'm trying Early Roses by Teo Cabanel.

I tried it first at Les Galeries Lafayette last Saturday. A pshit on a... argh, what is the English word for "mouillette"... errr... you know, those tiny pieces of paper you can make collection of and keep in books?

Well, anyway I gave Early Roses a go last Saturday and at first (oddly?) I thought it was just another one of those sweety juicy florals (a bit like Jeanne (Lanvin), I'd say)... But I kept the little piece of paper, I put it away for some time and the next day sniffed it again and it had transformed into a more fully bodied kind of ambery rose, very nice one.
I wonder why Cabanel doesn't get more reviews... I wouldn't say this rose is a stunning one but it's, well... Lovely. I put some on my wrist and some on my nightgown (sort of an ancient pure cotton one): it ages much more slowly on the cotton.
It seems to me to be quite a realistic rose, as a woman very simply dressed up... Simply but nicely. I was able to notice some jasmine and soft spices at the very beginning but now there's just a nice musky rose left on my skin while on the cotton, it smells still a bit fresher, slightly gently spicy.
To me if feels a bit like an autistic kind of rose, a bit closed on itself, in its own lovely rose world. Plain and simple.

Last Tuesday morning, I didn't work and was able to go chasing some butterflies and samples. Going to L'Artisan Parfumeur boutique, I didn't mean to ask a sample of La chasse aux papillons extrême but was offered one anyway and one of Drôle de rose as well: I couldn't decide which one I liked best...
When I say "like best", actually I'm not sure yet L'Artisan Parfumeur has anything to get me seriously hooked on. I wanted to try something with tuberose. I tried Nuit de Tubéreuse something like a month or two ago and just got smashed in the nose by an extremely spicy green kind of thing (on skin; later I put some on a piece of tissue and only then could catch the "mango" note). La chasse... and Drôle... seemed to be much more educated. Sweet. Soft. Pretty. Tender. Nice.
L'Artisan getting so many many extatic reviews everywhere in the perfumistas world, from here to America, I tend to deduce from all this fuss that there must be something in this shop for me too!
So I wore La chasse... all tuesday afternoon (on my shirt), and it's lovely indeed but after a few hours I'd say I was getting tired of so much good education, softness, politeness, discretion. And it's not like this Cabanel rose I'm wearing now, that is just lovely too, and almost as gentle... But not quite so, for it reminds me of the real rose, with it's thorns, the dew in the morning, the spiders hidden in the flowers and so on. You never realy know what you're about to touch when you reach out for a rose in a garden.
La chasse..., in comparison, to me, looks a bit like a painting of a garden instead, not the real thing.
I still have to try Drôle de rose though... And as in the Artisan boutique there's a perfume kind of bar, with glasses filled with a piece of material sprayed with perfume, I was able to smell several things and got a bit caught by La Traversée du Bosphore. I don't remember which notes the sellwoman told me about but I was surprised such notes were appealing to me...
So now I have this silly desire to go back there and buy a tiny candle of La traversée... And at last I'll own something by L'Artisan... It's quite pathetic in a way... A bit snobish. Maybe I'll hate it in the end... Maybe it'll allow me to be offered a new perfume sample?!

There's one thing I don't mind at all though: paying for samples. What bothers me is that not all perfumers have samples for sell on their website and some offer very chic generous kind of samples... Samples that come in nice phials, bottles, things... Nice and expensive. Last Tuesday I also went to the Sephora boutique and asked for a sample of Arpège (Lanvin). It was filled before my very eyes, put in a totally anonymous colourless phial and do you think I mind it doesn't look "good" or "special"? It's Arpège in there! That's all that matters!!
When I see the prices of La Via Del Profumo samples, for example, I think "Well, maybe for my birthday...?". And it puts me down a bit. I wonder how much would cost a 2ml sample of one of those perfumes if the phials were mere glass... Or maybe little plastic sprays such as those by Parfum d'Empire : very practical 2,6ml sprays, which is quite generous enough for me to try and re-try. Or why not making basic samples as well as collection phials for those who can afford it??
Arrgh... Budget...

What I've also started to go hunt for is some raw material:

There. The Arpège and a Coco sample on the left, along with some tuberose abolute (Aroma-Zone), some fake tuberose that I got on ebay (don't always trust Ebay sellers!), two phials offered by a specialist (a tuberose absolute dissolution and a reconstitution) and a jasmin (grandiflorum) absolute (Aroma-Zone) on the right end.

The tuberose absolutes got me totally lost. It doesn't remind me of Fracas or Jardins de Bagatelle, at all. The AZ absolute comes in a solid form that I'm going to have to dilute a bit into alcool to get a better view of it, have I been told. It makes me think of walnut, walnut cake, walnut licor. And the absolute dissolution I was offered reminds me of dried smoked meat... Something salty and something a bit waxy too... I don't get it!!!
I won't even try to say anything about the jasmin absolute. I won't.

One thing though: it seems my nose got tired lately: this summer I got a special guest who spent 3 weeks with me (he left 10 days ago) and I'm not used to so much company and I'm quite sure it resulted in some unusual tiredness that put my nose down a bit.... I've just given the jasmine absolute another go and it seems that it talked to me a bit. I heard it a bit, as if I was starting to be able to catch some words out from a new foreign language... Well. Interesting. My nose would be recovering?...

Oh and there's been a huge storm here in Annecy yesterday... Well, not exactly huge but very brutal although quite short. Hail :

 

Under the bench, on the balcony.

This morning, at 8, as if automn had come...

 

And there's this photo I took two or three weeks ago now, in the Saint Pierre cathedral, in Annecy:

 

"Flame free system - switches on automatically"

We can kick fire out of churches but... Fire and ice from the sky?