Perfumery Knowledge Base

PERFUMERY KNOWLEDGE BASE

The companies and organisations below could offer you what you are looking for. Please note that we have only listed organisations whose services, products, or sessions we’ve had some first-hand experience with and that there may be other providers closer to your needs and location that you could benefit from looking into.
Also, please be aware that we have no commercial connection or referral service with any of the organisations or companies listed below, nor do we know what services they are currently offering, so it is up to you to make direct contact and take it from there.

PERFUMERY EXPERIENCES

If you are looking for an experience day where you could learn some principles of perfumery, experiment with raw materials and blending, and maybe test your aptitude (or just have a fun day out), try:

• The Experimental Perfume Club
• The Institute for Art and Olfaction
• Cotswold Perfumery

PERFUMERY ASSISTANCE

If you are looking for help with finishing formulas or making your own formulas compliant with regulations, try:

• Cotswold Perfumery
• The Perfumer’s Studio
• Perfumer’s Apprentice

If you would like to start a brand where ultimately you are the perfumer, but may need some help in the beginning with business side of things or natural cosmetic formulation, try:

• Karen Gilbert

PERFUMERY EDUCATION

If you would like to enter the fragrance trade as an employee for a large or even a small fragrance house, and are looking for foundational learning to help you land that role of an evaluator, perfumer, flavourist, cosmetic formulator, lab assistant, marketing professional and more, try:

• ISIPCA
• GRASSE INSTITUTE OF PERFUMERY
• École Supérieure du Parfum & de la Cosmétique

If you are a journalist, fragrance writer, olfactive artist, multidisciplinary artist, researcher and want to access a varied curriculum of scent education, you should keep an eye out for remote lectures presented by:

• The Institute for Art and Olfaction
• The British Society of Perfumers

PERFUMERY BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS

Some of these may be useful to you when studying and researching the topic of perfumery and fragrance. This is not an exhaustive list and aims to offer accessible and vetted content that anyone without prior knowledge could immediately get something out of:

• NEZ magazine
• The Scented Letter Magazine
• The Big Book of Perfume (NEZ)
• We Love Fragrances (NEZ)
• Nose Dive, Harold McGee (John Murray)
• The Essence – Discovering the World of Scent, Perfume & Fragrance (Gestlten)
• Perfume: A Century of Scents, Lizzie Ostrom (Hutchinson)
• Discovering Cosmetic Science, Barton, Eastham, Isom, McLaverty & Soong (Society of Cosmetic Scientists)

More advanced textbooks (if you plan to work as an employee in the trade or have an interest in studying fragrance chemistry and formulation with time in the lab and access to raw materials):

• Common Fragrance and Flavor Materials: Preparation, Properties and Uses, Horst Surburg, Johannes Panten (Wiley)
• Understanding Fragrance Chemistry, Charles Sell (Allured)
• Chemistry and the Sense of Smell, Charless Sell (Wiley)
• The Chemistry of Essential Oils, David G Williams (Micelle Press)
• Practical Analysis of Flavor and Fragrance Materials (Wiley)