Hello folks,
So I’m back from Milan, having spent Saturday 1st April (April Fool’s Day, perfectly fitting) immersed in a black hangar with thousands of people sniffing perfumes. That was quite an experience. I can only say that by 2 pm I had an almighty headache that made it hard for me to concentrate, let alone smell anything. So my first comment would be: why organise it in such an airless pit? In terms of comparison to previous editions, well this being my first year at Esxence, I don’t really have a reference point. Some industry insiders murmur the fair is loosing steam. I could not tell you if that’s true, I was a bit surprised though to see that quite a few niche brands I would expect to find there were not. So that bears the question, which brands are attending and why? I think it’s fair to say that for a few “newish” brands, it is mainly an opportunity to find a local (Italian, or if the brand is based outside the EU, an EU-based) distributor. So if you are well established EU distributed brand and have no new scents coming out, maybe some brands skip it.
In terms of organisation if you are considering going next year, the first three days of the fair are for industry insiders only (so brands, distributors, agents, retailers, media etc. ) The last two days are open to the public, which is when I went. I could sense that a few of the people behind the brand counters were bored by this invasion of perfume sniffing public, and were trying to weed out useful contacts from others. I understand, it must be hell being stuck at those booths all day, but on the other hand being dismissive with customers doesn’t really help your brand I think. In any case before I highlight a few brands that I thought were worth talking to, a few numbers in order to put things into context.
For this 13th edition, there were according the the fair organisers, 298 brands present (of which 95 were Italian), coming from 30 different countries. Last year, reportedly a record 9,000 people attended the event, and while I don’t have numbers yet for this year’s edition that finished only a few hours ago, from what I could tell on Saturday, I assumed similar numbers were expected. The event was on two floors with brands on the entrance level ground floor and talks, conference and exhibit downstairs.
As expected, sustainability and “green beauty” was very much a buzz word at the fair, similarly to Cosmoprof/Cosmopack, the cosmetic packaging fair that took place two weeks prior in Bologna, where there was a whole section dedicated to “green beauty”. From what I could tell though, it’s still very much a word open to interpretation . There is first the concept of sustainability that can apply to both packaging and the juice inside the bootle, as well as the process required to produce the ingredients that are used to compose the scent. So who decides, and how, that a product is sustainable?
There is also the concept of natural perfume /natural ingredients or naturally derived ingredients, not the same thing it turns out. These words, especially “natural ingredients”, are used over and over by brands to differentiate their products, with some clearly engaged in green washing, with very seldom the required certification (which in truth is quite cumbersome and expensive) to back up their claims. Then there is the notion of “clean beauty”, which honestly is such nonsense that I won’t go into that (clean as opposed to dirty? as in polluting the planet? this actually doesn’t make sense to me…)
For more information on this, I will refer you the fantastic magazine called “Nez Magazine” that devoted an article recently on the topic.
Before highlighting a few brands that use natural ingredients as a claim, I wanted to mention the talk that was organised on this issue at Esxence, bringing together Melanie Verhille from Firmenich, Ana Luiza Magalhaes from SOMA_studiomilano (a consultancy) and Marta Siembaba, a marketing expert.
So as expected, big oil houses (composition house) like Firmenich are getting in front of the issue. It makes sense as they are the ones that have the greater access to natural ingredients’ producers and are also the ones creating and pushing synthetically derived molecules. Being in the driving seat in order to shape the debate that will be an essential part of the future of perfumery makes perfect sense. However, for my part, being a champion of artisan perfumers and of small artisanal companies, I can’t help but feel wary as the “big boys” seem to have taken the reins of that debate and seek, as explained during the talk, to create a shared framework to measure sustainability for all of the industry. In itself, it’s a good thing but no doubt the standards will suit them and possibly make it harder for the “smaller guys” to conform to this benchmark. Currently it’s the Wild Wild West, with pretty much anyone claiming what they want and little rules and checks as to what companies can claim. But going this way also makes me weary though. We shall see…
We can’t look at the future without knowing the past and another interesting presentation was from l’Osmothèque, the living perfume conservatory based in Versailles, storing around 5,500 perfumes formulas from a recent, and less recent past. They also claimed to have recreated “the parfum sacré” from an old recipe of Pliny the Elder in the 1st AD, which we were able to smell… fascinating. I’ve tracked down the “recipe” from Pliny’s text, and to be honest, I don’t know how they made heads or tail of any of it, since half the ingredients listed are completely unknown to me… The result anyhow is a cross between something Delphine Thierry would create, full of aromatic herbs, spices and balsams, and the smell you get from an old spice cabinet, with a predominant cinnamon. The Osmothèque reproduces old perfumes according to their original formula, using ingredients as close as possible to the ones used when the scent was first created. How do they manage to have all these ingredients (some lost, some banned, some no longer produced) is a mystery to me.
When asked, they also claim to struggle with the ever evolving IFRA regulations making it harder and harder to keep using natural materials. Although, diplomatically, Osmothèque’s President Thomas Fontaine seemed to indicate that the future would hold a comprise between both trends: an ever present regulatory legislation limiting naturals and the demand from customers for increased natural products.
Which leads me to tell you about the brands I talked to, finally…
Continue reading : Esxence 2023 – the lowdown on the yearly niche perfume Mecca (part 2)
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