Best-Kept-Secret Career: Creative Perfumer

By Marty Nemko

Posted: December 11, 2008

Snapshot: If you have a good nose, memory for fragrance, and aren't too scared by a few years of chemistry-laden courses, then creative perfumer might be up your alley. After all, you devise fragrances all day. The job does require great patience: It can take hundreds of tries to get the right note in a fragrance, and then consumer testers often send you back to the drawing board.

Getting there: If you want a prestigious position, attend one of the top perfumer schools. For example, Procter & Gamble's three-year program or the Grasse Institute of Perfumery and Givaudan in France, which is free for the five students it admits every 18 months. Then it's a matter of experience; it can take five to 10 years to become a full-fledged creative perfumer.

Learn more: Stakes and Professions in Perfumery

why??

who would want to be a "creative perfumer" anyway? what kind of job is this

bobo the monkey of MD @ Oct 05, 2009 08:13:36 AM

As perfumer i belief been a perfumer is Art but NYC i don't meet many perfumers that what make my life lonely.

Ibrahim Diallo. Through my island origins (in Mauritania south of moroco ), I have a passion for natural materials. Through my memory and my olfactive sense, I take particular care in recreating the fragrances of tiara flowers, of frangipani and white ginger...I compose as well with natural essences as I do with synthetic products. I have immense respect for the quality of natural materials. It's a love of the product, of the planet, an exercise in style that demands time, poetry and emotion. We can make beautiful things with references that are close to us while remaining faithful to one's inspiration. For example, when I use Ylang-Ylang in my compositions, I travel from the flower of Madagascar to my laboratory, and that journey makes me dream...

www.scentofnatures.com

I don't meet many perfumers here in New York city, that what make my life very lonely,

Ibrahim of NY @ Feb 11, 2009 00:41:28 AM

Perfumer salary range?

Perfumer salary range?

OYD of CA @ Dec 25, 2008 03:58:16 AM

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