Pitti Fragranze 2011 - Notes from Florence (1)

Notes, accords, compositions. A few people maybe payed attention to it but Pitti Fragranze this year at its nine edition welcomed visitors with an installation about the synaesthesia between perfume and music: a huge flacon pops out from the floor to spray through the vaults of Leopolda station a cloud of musical notes, vibrations dressing the space with sound the same way olfactory molecules fill it with their aroma. If music composers have to do wonders with only seven notes, fortunately perfumers have much many olfactory notes to play with and express their creativity composing new harmonies. So I celebrated the first birthday of La Gardenia nell'Occhiello hunting around for music for my nostrils.

Through this clouds of notes also this year came out well defined themes, melodic lines tracing the evolution of artistic perfumery at the moment and in the future. In a market where more and more the commercial tries to delete the glory of an artistic past by dint of reformulations and washings with shampoo-fragrances, the first trend come out is to try to revive last century's heritage. If from one side creatives like Vero Kern learned from the masterpieces from the past how to concoct contemporary classics since ever, on the other hand both new launches (Annick Goutal's Mon Parfum Chéri, Miriam by Tableau de Parfums/Andy Tauer, Maître Parfumeur et Gantier's Cuir Fetiche and Penhaligon's Juniper Sling) and renditions of classics (Grossmith Betrothal eau de parfum, Esprit du Roy e Eau sans pareil by Penhaligon's) or even completely new lines inspired by classic french perfumery (Atelier-Flou) were born from the desire to save a legacy that would get lost otherwise and translate it in a modern way without betraying it, using nowadays top quality raw materials.
Follow me and I'll tell you about the other trends in the next posts, aside speaking about the fragrances that I liked most. Of course I hope to have a feedback from who among you was in Florence.