The Ultimate Guide To Create Your Signature Perfume at Maison21G Workshop

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July 14, 2022

These are the 8 steps of creation you should go through in a Private Creation Atelier in our boutiques.

1. Define your scent personality.

We will start by defining your scent personality with a simple questionnaire, based on the famous Schwarz model. This will ask you about your most important values in life, your nationality (because your educational environment impacts your scent preferences), your age (as our scent preference evolves with age), your skin tone (as your melanin level influences the chemistry of perfume on your skin), your personal scent preferences, if you have any (including your wish for strength and olfactive families) and finally why you want to create this perfume (for seduction, elegance, outstanding, relaxation, energisation, freshness, etc).

‍2. Select your favourite ingredients.

After nailing down your scent personality that we will reveal to you, we have now a more holistic understanding of who you are and what makes you tick. This allows us to be more precise in recommending a selection of ingredients that can fit your natural taste (you have 4 different combinations recommended by the app to start with). We will explore this selection of ingredients we have narrowed down for you (between 12 and 15 max, as your olfactory senses can get overwhelmed very quickly) according to your scent personality. Very importantly, we will smell each individual ingredient one by one (we don’t start mixing yet!) and you will decide which ones you love the most and which ones leave you indifferent, or which you don’t like much at all. We only keep the ingredients you truly love at Maison and we never compromise on your natural preferences. It is very important to respect this first step and to smell each ingredient individually to define your scent DNA!

This sensory discovery session on single ingredients will allow you to understand which ingredients you love in perfumery; a fascinating and often novel process, as you rarely - if ever - have the occasion to understand what the ‘ready-made’ perfumes you buy are composed of, due to the fact there is very little transparency and truth in the existing perfumery model. At Maison, we are committed to helping you understand your true preferences of natural perfumery ingredients. We may also open to you some new olfactive areas you didn’t previously know, and which you will discover you have a natural inclination or passion for. We all have a lot of preconceived ideas in perfumery.

Not least because sometimes our nose is cheated by bad quality branded perfumes, which claim to include some natural ingredients they don’t contain, and which are replaced by chemical ingredients creating a false perception!

‍3. We organise your selection of favourite ingredients by top/heart/bottom notes to define the optimal structure for your bespoke perfume, and to ensure the perfect balance is achieved.

By organising your final selection of single ingredient in this way, we will be able ask you to keep one ingredient by category (top/heart/bottom) to create a very clear and modern structure for your perfume creation. We believe in simplicity and clarity when it comes to your composition. If you miss one category, especially a heart note, we will make sure to re-explore scents with you, ensuring the right fit for you from each category. This is because a perfume needs to be well-balanced in its structure with top, heart and bottom notes, to enable the right diffusion and duration. However, if you love freshness and citrus for instance and you only love top notes, we will not impede you to do this mix. But we will just advice you that your mix will last only 3 to 5 hours max as top notes are beautiful but very volatile. Same if you are only in love with bottom notes, you can combine them but your perfume will be very strong and long lasting but your diffusion in the air will be less impactful as the heavy molecule will stick to your beautiful skin.

At Maison, we are here to only advise you and you are the final scent designer, the creator of your unique perfume and there is no wrong mix/ creation as long as you love what you mix! The freedom to create is the most important to us and you have top haute couture ingredients so you cannot go wrong!

‍4. The act of creation: Infuse your essences yourself!

We will bring the 3 pure scent concentrates to you (a premier in the world of perfumery, as no other brand allows you direct access to pure perfume essences/concentrate - the ready-made perfume you buy are invariably already infused), along with the perfume base (mainly alcohol and long-lasting musk for technical purposes).

From here, you will be empowered to infuse your creation yourself, diluting your essences into alcohol, and carefully following the grammage recommended by our scent expert for your unique perfume creation. You will create an Eau de Parfum at 21% concentration, as we exclusively create Eau de Parfum at Maison 21G - you won’t find Eau de Toilette here!

The greater the concentration, the more long-lasting your perfume will be. Maison 21G offers the highest concentration in the perfume industry, as our unique model means we have cut all the intermediaries, allowing us to put more quality into your bottle. There’s no need to spend money on big factories, as with Maison 21G, perfume creation is in your hands. You can control the final dosage, as we give you a scale allowing you to measure how much concentrate you put in your perfume. We believe in total transparency, and total transparency is a key aspect of what our scent design community values.‍

5. Try your first trial on your skin, and adjust your unique recipe according to your unique skin chemistry.

Once your three ingredients are mixed, we will tightly close your bottle, shake it to combine and apply the perfume onto the skin of your wrist. This allows us to check your skin acceptance, and to see how your creation reacts with your unique skin chemistry. Should any particular note disturb you, or if you’ve found you’re missing some of the impact you desire from your favourite ingredients, we can review the quantities and add whatever is needed to fit your expectations.

Ultimately, you are the one who decides what fits you best; our expertise is there to guide you, advise you and to ensure you’re completely satisfied. Our desire is that you leave Maison 21G with a perfume that fits your skin like a dress “surmesure”.

6. Check the evolution of your perfume on your skin.

Truly bespoke and high quality perfume changes with time, as it reacts to your unique skin chemistry and creates something truly personalised. We will wait five minutes in order to check the evolution of your perfume on your skin, and if you are completely satisfied with the result, we will ask you to decide upon the name of your creation and to design your customised bottle.

7. Define your creation’s name and dream up your bottle design.

‍It’s time to give your creation its final flourish. We will proceed with the engraving of your unique perfume mix with your name and design, crafting a bottle to truly cherish. ‍

8. Save your unique formula in our system, as your perfume creation is unique at Maison 21G and you can refill your bottle any time.‍

Your unique formula will be saved in our system and linked to your personal data, ensuring your perfume is yours and yours alone. Nobody can have the same scent- that’s the nature of defining the scent of your soul! - and whenever you need to, you can come and refill your bottle with your personalised recipe.

Not only does this mean you will never run out of your signature scent, it’s also part of our commitment to sustainability. Together, we can create a better world for generations to come, and build a greener and more sustainable perfumery. We are proud to be the very first brand to propose refillable perfumes, and to recycle your bottle should you wish to change your perfume when returning to Maison 21G to try something new. What’s more, both the glass and zamack used in your creation are recyclable, so there’s no need to throw them away.