Like a chef who only uses ingredients grown within 100 miles of her kitchen, a large part of [Mandy] Aftel’s pride and satisfaction is derived from the sacrifice that comes out of self-imposed constraints. That those constraints result in a limited but more exuberant lexicon is more than just a pleasant side effect; it’s arguably what Aftel’s business is all about — exposing the uninitiated to the world’s most precious products and talking about them.
— Read more at The World’s Most Dedicated All-Natural Perfumer at The New York Times. Hat tip to Julien!
Excited to read this this weekend!
It’s a really nice article, I think you’ll enjoy it.
Really interesting article. It mentions chefs who use only locally sourced ingredients and I wonder if there are any perfumers who do the same? Would that be possible, do you think…say, in Mandy Aftel’s case, to restrict yourself to Californian sourced oils/essences (I see her vanilla comes from North Africa). Maybe that would be too much of a constraint?
Gosh, I would think that would be a huge constraint! There aren’t enough producers.