Pitti Fragranze 2015: An Interview with Paolo Terenzi

by: Serguey Borisov

 

My first interview with Paolo Terenzi of the house of Tiziana Terenzi had a rather unexpected beginning. Paolo took out of his bag a handmade, personal vaporizer and put it on a table. The vaporizer, made of olive wood, was filled with Paolo’s own personal aromatic blend, which made a charming starting point for the interview.

 

Paolo Terenzi: I created this aromatic blend with tobacco leaves extract, spices and ginger, and added some propylene glycol base.  I made it for my own use only, but sometimes a friend requests it – Tiziana Terenzi did not launch it yet. You know, I`m a chemist by education and used to work in a lab.

 

Sergey Borisov: As you are a chemist by education, that should help you in your work as a perfumer.

 

Paolo Terenzi: Oh, but I have had many different types of education. During my high school years, I chose a scientific oriented school and biology/chemistry were my specializations. After that, I went to university with the goal to become a lawyer;  I chose Philosophy of Law, and I specialized on the German philosopher Hegel, who wrote  “Elements of the Philosophy of Right”. It's definitely a bit strange and unusual to combine a scientific education with philosophy and law. And, by the way, I am a musician as well; I play jazz guitar and played with famous musicians. And all those jazz improvisation skills helps me a lot when I make my Tiziana Terenzi fragrances, I love to improvise in my perfumes a lot!

 

Paolo and Tiziana Terenzi

 

Sergey Borisov: I wonder how philosophy could play a role, if any, in your fragrances?

 

Paolo Terenzi: From my point of view it`s very important. When you spray eau de parfum on your skin, it develops during the day. We could compare it to the dialectical stages of development by Hegel; the start accord is the thesis, then the heart accord, which is the antithesis, and the tension between those being resolved by means of the base notes, which is a synthesis. Or "Aufhebung", as Hegel used to name the term in German. It also works in the process of creating my perfumes. I start with a thesis, then make an opposite thesis, counterpointing to it (antithesis), and then I try to find some kind of solution. Then the solution becomes a new thesis and needs a new antithesis, to find the further synthesis. That`s the system of any development; it`s rolling from one thesis to another. When you walk – it`s the same: one leg is thesis, another leg is antithesis, and your movement is Aufhebung. And I always think of my journeys the same way. I have to be honest: I do not like perfumes that smell the same way all day. I like it when perfumes and wines and melodies develop with time. Everything is much more interesting when it evolves – if it is constant and unchanging, it`s just boring. 

 

Sergey Borisov: So perfection is boring? Like the straight lines of a cardiograph mean death?

 

Paolo Terenzi: You get the idea! Perfect things are boring. Every beautiful moment in life is not perfect, it always has some tension in it. You could be totally happy at a dinner with friends, but you're thinking about somebody who left, or you feel lonely as your loved one is far away; you could be sad but thinking about how great everything was yesterday. So life is full of these contrast situations.

 

Sergey Borisov: As my literature teacher used to say after Leo Tolstoy: “Stillness is meanness of soul”.  

 

Paolo and Tiziana Terenzi

 

Paolo Terenzi: Yes, and I`m looking for controversial things in my perfumes. One of the perfumes in my collection I created during the time when my father passed away. It was a very big loss for me and a very tragic moment in my life. The top notes of that fragrance are like a punch in the face. I was too shocked by the news. But after a few minutes, you can smell white flowers, magnolia and jasmine, coming out to sooth, since after the first shock I realized that the memory of my father will live in my heart forever, so he’ll always be with me. And the base notes of oud and bakhoor were made to show how I felt about being the oldest man in my family. They reflect the responsibility that falls to the head of the family. So, I tried to express all these controversial feelings in a strange fragrance, but with a positive message. Its top notes are far from seductive, they punch you, but at the same time they catch you and start you off at a journey through my world, so yes, that is what I'm looking for. OK, I can do other fragrances for other brands, private labels or custom perfumes – they can be different. 

 

Sergey Borisov: So you make the perfumes by yourself? Writing formulas? Mixing chemicals?

 

Paolo Terenzi: Yes, for sure. I am writing formulas since I have my own lab, and there’re two technicians working in it. We produce our own concentrates for aromatic candles and make it all in our factory. As for the perfumes, we send formulas to our partners in Leipzig, to one of the oldest company in the industry, Bell Flavors & Fragrances. They have great natural and synthetic perfume ingredients in stock, including the rarest components, as well as a big library with all the important perfume books. 

 

Sergey Borisov: I got to Florence in the same plane as your Russian partners from Rive Gauche, and they told me that your last Luna collection has been such a great success. Could we talk about it more and smell it?

 

Paolo Terenzi: Yes, I’m happy with the Luna collection. By the way, we’re presenting a new perfume in the White line. Initially it was four different Luna fragrances in white bottles named after stars. It was born out of my childhood memories, when my family and I used to go out on summer hikes. We sat around a campfire and looked into the flames, and then we stared into the sky, to millions of stars, and my grandfather showed us kids all the known constellations and talked about stars and planets: Andromeda, Draco, Cassiopea, Orion, Mars, etc.

 

 

Sergey Borisov: How old were you?

 

Paolo Terenzi: About 6 or 7 years old, right around the start of elementary school. I don`t like blotters, because even the best quality of paper changes the smell, especially when it`s an extrait of 180 ingredients. So we found a better solution – we made these beautiful feather fans. Here are our first four Luna perfumes – Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Ursa and Draco. The worldwide bestseller is flowery sweet and lactonic Cassiopeia. The craziest perfume is Draco – pear, jasmine, heliotrope. And my favorite perfume – Ursa – is about woods, vetiver, leather and white oud. It starts camphor-like with elemi, and then goes to a deep, woody, balsamic-smoky balance. The new Luna perfume is named Orion, after one of the most well-known stars. It`s a mix of citrus top notes (bergamot, grapefruit, orange) and aromatic herbs and spices, that leads to a woody base of cedar wood and sandalwood. 

 

 

Sergey Borisov: My favorite is also Ursa… It develops like a path from the cold stars to our Earth, from an ethereal accord to a woody, earthy accord.

 

Paolo Terenzi: Thank you! Another line we have, called Classic Collection, comes in black and golden bottles. Black, white and gold are the colors we use to tell the perfume collections apart. The Classic Collection perfumes in the golden bottles are more aerial, open, tender and angelic, whereas the perfumes in the black bottles are more concentrated and self-centered. Black & Gold does not mean bad & good souls, it stands for their characters, like open extraverts and closed introverts. The new 5th perfume which we are presenting here at Pitti Fragranze`15 in the black bottle is named Al Contrario. By its name, it recalls of "A Rebours", a novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans, but also it could be a name of a person, as Al sounds like it's short for Alessandro – like Al Capone. Look at the bottle – it has a bigger cap and a smaller flacon, just 50 ml instead of our usual 100 ml, as if the bottle is inverted. Vanilla, Malt, Sandalwood, Birch tar, Amber – a very sweet and at the same time smoky perfume. It`s a crazy perfume with a simple idea. As you know, all my perfumes are about journeys – different places in Italy, Turkey, Nepal, the African desert and so on. But wherever you go, you always have to come back home, and when you return, you bring back some new ideas, feelings, thoughts that have made you into a new person.Al Contrario is a perfume that makes me feel like I'm seeing and smelling the fireplace in my home, a cozy warm perfume. It`s a lovely feeling to be home again, wrapped in the love of the people that are closest to you after all that globetrotting. So when you come back, you feel that your own country, your own town and your own house are great! And it's also made for thinking about your travel experiences, a retrospective perfume.

 

 

Sergey Borisov: Oh, that`s a really nice idea, and a great smoky perfume!

 

Paolo Terenzi: And for the collection in the golden bottles we launched the perfume named Kirké. You know, during his journey, Ulysses met the witch woman Kirké, on her own island, and she was so attractive and sexual, and also a magician. There`s also a beautiful area south of Rome, which is a beautiful place to visit – there`s a sea, an island, the mount Circeo itself, forests; a very unique place which is now protected by the government as a National Park of Italy. I spent some time here and decided to make a perfume about it. One of the accords in this warm perfume is named Warm Sand. Just to remind you of its perfect beaches. The most evident notes are pear and woods. There`s also some citrus notes, heliotrope, pink grapefruit, fleur d`orange, lilac blossom.  

Sergey Borisov: So now you have 15 perfumes in your collection, with 3 new perfumes?

Paolo Terenzi: Well, we also have our Anniversary collection of limited editions. Now we are ready to present the limited editions of Chimaera-2016 and Casanova-2016. They have the very same formulas but are a bit different due to different components, which could change from one year to another – in Chimaera Millesime it`s a super rare Incense from Fethiye, Turkey, and some Agarwood oil. We produce only about 1000 bottles of each perfume, and the number is not constant. Because the supply amounts are very limited, and never the same, they could differ each year as well. I cannot predict the number of bottles till I get info about the supplies. And I also leave some bottles in my own stock to do some vertical testing each year. 

 

Sergey Borisov: That`s a good idea!

 

 

Paolo Terenzi: And that`s not the end of it! I`ll show you our newest Giardino Benessere collection, in which we used hi-tech technology developed in Russia! I got you interested now? The name, Giardino Benessere means Garden of Wellbeing. The collection offers perfumes for personal use and room sprays for your home, plus aromatic candles, body scrubs, shower gels, shampoos, body lotions, all radically different because of the niche approach. So many people nowadays start a niche perfume business, thinking that a high price is the best evidence of quality. So these are Eaux de Parfum for 80 euro, and you could mix together every fragrance you want, as all the fourteen editions are simple, but with lasting accords. Actually, we used the best natural wax people could actually eat and pure cotton in our candles, but we also used colloidal silver technology that came from Saint-Petersburg, for our candles (one of our chemists came from Saint-Petersburg and met an Italian guy, they got married and now she lives in Italy and works in my lab). And using this Soviet technology of colloidal silver, we make aromatic candles that purify the air by releasing silver ions to the air! Our candles humidify the air like a small plant and emit as little CO2 as a small bird. We worked on the whole project for 3 years but the mixing idea came to me about 10 years ago.

 

Sergey Borisov: Wonderful! Thank you very much, Paolo, for your time and interview!

Paolo Terenzi: Thank you!