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Candour. My fragrance featuring my initials.

I am getting more and more obsessed with fragrances and perfumes as a medium of communication.

Fragrances, tastes and smells are a purely physical thing. They will stay beyond the realm of virtualization and datafication for some more time. You can't see that, taste that, grab that digitally.

I like invisible styles.

Discovering the Comme de Garçons Series 6 Synthetic line almost ten years ago, I began to understand that perfums can open up totally new realms. Here is what they are about:

In 2004, Comme des Garçons have again declared war to natural components and launched the next series of anti-perfumes, Series 6 Synthetic. The smells of a big city are captured in a transparent plastic bottle in which you can observe a garbage bag.

I liked that idea. Really aggressive. I used it a lot but then it was sold out everywhere.


Synthetic Series. Rediscovered at Corso Como Milano recently.

In 2011 I visited the facilities of the world's largest manufacturer of smells and tastes, Givaudan. They produce almost 1/3 of all non-natural tastes and smells that are around us. I hadn't known such a powerful company even exists. I went to spend some time with some of their perfume makers and learnt, that perfumes are mostly based on stories, narratives. Moreover, like a musical composition, they change over time, as certain notes disappear more quickly then others.

Perfumes are great for storytelling, because the molecules a fragrance consists of directly attack your nervous system and the information goes straight into your brain without getting rationalized. Ask around and you will find that most people dont even have the words to describe smells. They won't be able to rationally reflect upon the stories told by fragrances. Stories becoming emotions.

That's why a lot of stories of fragrances are based on memories. Perfum makers go travelling, they take their notes, mix it up and that's it. That's why a lot of perfumes are backward oriented.

Most younger guys eg. currently smell like trees. Woody forrest notes. Maybe they want to appear grounded. Maybe this is how retro culture smells. Even though I generally like trees I don't like people to smell like trees.

Being hooked on that Synthetic Series I am asking myself all the time what would be a perfume that talks about new realities then?

Recently I went to visit Switzerland's most famous vendor of perfumes Osswald Parfumerie Boutique at the expensive shopping area of Bahnhofstrasse in Zürich. For some hours the friendly and amazingly well informed owner Monsieur Abt and I were looking for some news. There are some fascinating visions around, like the one of a new Dubai ruled world named 2022 Generation. Unfortunatley it was too elegant for me. I am german. I like Technik.

But then we found the perfume Candour. First of all it's an untold story. It's doesn't pull you back into time and memories. It's sweet, appears synthetic, a little gay. (Blog Entry Describing the smell and ingredients) I imagined a world beyond gender. Really colourful. I started imagining surfaces that are as smooth as chrome surfaces but made of some genetically engineered plants or so. Future. It's political too in a sense. There are specific olfactoric notes for cultures. Asians, Europeans and Arabic people have their typical tastes. But Candour doesn't take part in that game. It's post-racial, post-cultural. It's full of love for everyone. Still it is annoying to a lot of people. So it's not FOR everyone. Using Candour you are not just one tree in a forrest.

Looking at the ingredients of that apparently synthetic smell I discovered that behind the façades it features a lot of herbs, flowers and spices and even Maiglöckchen. So my synthetic dream perfume is literally rooted in reality.

No one I asked could figure what Candour was about. It creates a new identity. People associate it with me as a person now. Therefore maybe YOU shouldn't buy it.