This podcast starts off by expressing the power of scent and its ability to transport you to a particular place, person or time

The podcast featured a couple of guest speakers, Shyamala Maisondieu and Caroline Gaillardot. Shyamala introduces herself as a fine fragrance perfumer originally from Malaysia, who now works for Givaudan in Paris, one of the world’s largest perfume manufacturers. Shyamala says her childhood in south-east Asia influenced the scents she is drawn to, from frangipani blossoms to jasmine and ginger. She has dreamed up fragrances for brands such as Tom Ford and Comme des Garçons. Caroline Gaillardot is a perfumer who specialises in creating scents for beauty care products, including shampoos, shower gels and deodorants. She was born in Grasse, France (the worlds capital of the perfume industry), although she says she wanted to become a perfumer simply because she always loved to smell. She now works for Mane in southern France, which is one of the global leaders in the industry.

This podcast was a lot less informative than the last, it chats a lot more about the two guest speakers family history and how they grew to become perfumers. They suggest that a perfumer has come from a particular background. In history, with Grasse being the perfumery capital, many of the businesses were owned by Grasse families, however nowadays they are seeing a vast variety from different backgrounds wanting to be perfumers, not just because its been passed down in the family.

Typically perfumers are referred to as ‘noses’. Later on in the podcast they start to explain the methods they used to train their noses to remember over 1,000 scents. They try to associate each scent with a time or memory in their lives in order to trigger something in their minds so they remember the scents as a sort of, alphabet. The guest speakers then talk about that their process after being given a brief is. In order to be a successful perfumer, you must take into account the brand, the target audience, key points for example ‘is there a key ingredient e.g. Vanilla?’, even things such as bottle colour or shape. For fine fragrance, Caroline explains that the shortest time after getting her brief to having the final product was 6-8 month, so its a very long process.