PERFUMES REFLECT ITALIAN CREATIVITY
A recent Italian Cultural Institute event had the very interesting topic of perfumes as the artistic heritage of Italian creativity. Held at the Italian Embassy on June 1, 2017, the speaker was the well-known perfumer Laura Bosetti Tonatto, who has created fragrances for Queen Elizabeth and the King of Saudi Arabia, as well as top design houses.
Without a doubt, nobody who listened to Laura’s talk will never look at perfume in the same way. 7 She told us that “the nose” is something she was born with which enabled her to distinguish scents, but she developed an interest in perfumes when she visited the souks in Cairo.
She showed us how the components of a perfume are broken down into the testa, cuore and fondo, although actually a perfume can be made from as few as two ingredients—rose and one other ingredient. She passed around perfume sticks as she described each perfume and demonstrated with slides.
Her fascinating talk helped the audience gain a real appreciation of what goes into the creating and making of a perfume. For example, she said the best (and most expensive) ingredient is the damascena rose which comes from Taef in Saudi Arabia and which costs $50,000 a kilo. She added that very good roses also come from Morocco and Bulgaria.
She told us she was invited to come to Saudi Arabia and develop a perfume and actually stayed at the royal palace in Medina. She said she found out you can tell if someone is close to the king if they wear special perfume. I guess that’s what you call a limited edition!! Explaining where she gets her inspiration, she said important works of art have inspired her perfumes, and she is thus able to transform artistic suggestions into fragrances.
As to where she gets her inspiration specifically, Laura said she is inspired by paintings (such as Botticelli’s Birth of Venus), films (such as Il Gattopardo) and even music. She used a Caravaggio painting to inspire her to create a perfume for the famous Hermitage State Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, for example. She told us that the Hermitage is so vast that if you stand in front of a painting for one minute, it would take 10 years to go through the whole museum. Incredible!! She also found inspiration in the Bible, and told us about the perfumes she created after reading passages in the Bible and using sandalwood and olive wood, ending up with a scent that resembled incense.
She noted that she sees connecting her perfumes to works of art in Italy as a way of highlighting the Italian culture, and she travels all over the world giving exhibits and talks on that connection. Pointing out the visceral feelings brought out by scents, she said that the chances are that we remember the scent our grandmothers and mothers wore, more so than their clothes. Laura even gave us some tips for applying perfume, such as on the ankles and wrists, near blood vessels, rather than on the neck, and she advised storing perfume away from heat and light to make it last a long time.
To get a good night’s sleep, she suggested putting two drops of perfume on the pillow. At the end of her talk, Laura answered questions from the audience and invited us to visit her profumeria in Rome. Her next project is a perfume to be called “Italia.”