DIANE VON FURSTENBERG with LINDA BIRD FRANCKE : A SIGNATURE LIFE : BOOK EXCERPT
about designing a perfume.
pages 104-105
"I want something that simply smells good, like cut fresh flowers, a scent you can inhale and almost swallow, like you can with the smell of a roasting chicken," I told people at the different companies, whose perfumers are called "noses."...
"I understood what I meant, but the chemists and noses did not. The poor account executives kept bringing in new notes in various combinations to our office, but they were always too heavy, too obvious, too reminiscent of another fragrance of another time.
"I tried words such as "alive," "Up," and "Open: and urged them to use only white flowers such as jasmine, honeysuckle, lilac, hyacinth, gardenia. But not gardenias in full flower; young, green gardenias has the lighter, fresher scent I was looking for. But nothing came of my efforts. After I had sniffed and worn and rejected a hundred or so samples, we were stalemated.
