House of Gozdawa: The Art of Nature

House of Gozdawa

It’s not often that you will see “Made in South Africa” on the bottle of a luxury fragrance. But then Cape Town-based Agata Karolina can lay claim to being one of South Africa’s few perfumers. Her niche fragrance company, House of Gozdawa, produces very limited quantities of extraits de parfums. All of these are made with high-quality natural ingredients.

For Agata, working with the cycles of nature is of utmost importance. This philosophy is carried through from the selection of her ingredients to the distillation process.

Agata Karolina of House of Gozdawa

WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY: Agata Karolina of House of Gozdawa.

Although I have not met Agata (yet), her deep and highly personal connection to her art of perfume is unmistakable. When she sent me samples of House of Gozdawa’s Confessions Collection, these came with a hand-written letter. “As with all things in nature, these scents take their time to reveal their full story. I hope you enjoy experiencing that which they have to tell,” she wrote to me.

Delivery from House of Gozdawa.

MR DELIVERY: House of Gozdawa personal touch.

There are six fragrances in the House of Gozdawa Confessions Collection: Marta, Andrea, Albert, Simo, Hel and Aga. What I like most about these scents is their unpretentious character. To my mind and nose, these fragrances could only come from Africa.

TRUE CONFESSIONS WITH AGATA KAROLINA OF HOUSE OF GOZDAWA

I asked Karolina Agata about her preference for natural materials, her artisanal approach and her Confessions Collection. 

House of Gozdawa

IT’S PERSONAL: Agata Karolina’s hand-written letter.

How did you get into perfumery?

Perfumery found me far in advance of me finding it. As a child I was always hypersensitive to spaces, smells and sounds and how they worked together. I enjoyed it as a personal pleasure. But for a very long time never considered it as a career. I was brought into the world of distilling, tinctures and natural oils through my mother and grandmother. These two women taught me everything I know and inspired a life deeply connected to nature.

“As a child I was always hypersensitive to spaces, smells and sounds and how they worked together.”

After working as a curator and project initiator in Europe, Asia and Africa, I finally decided to return to South Africa and pursue my passion for scent. I launched House of Gozdawa in 2015.

Samples from the House of Gozdawa Confessions Collection.

BOXES, LITTLE BOXES: Samples from the House of Gozdawa Confessions Collection.

Are all your perfumes 100% natural? Why are natural perfumes so appealing to you?

All House of Gozdawa scents use only 100% natural ingredients. No matter how many synthetics I have smelt, they have never been able to present me the depth a natural material carries. Essentially these ingredients are alive. They age and shift as they would in nature, continuously morphing into another phase of their existence. In connection with the skin these materials take on an even deeper depth.

House of Gozdawa Hel

HOUSE OF GOZDAWA HEL: With notes of grapefruit, tuberose and cajeput.

How do you ensure that your perfume-making process is also eco responsible?

The farms and suppliers I work with in Southern Africa and across the African continent all follow eco responsible and sustainable practices. All materials are ordered directly and for the batches we create, I personally blend and bottle all of them to ensure no wastage occurs. Respect for your materials is as essential to creating a globally responsible product as much as any certification.

House of Gozdawa Marta

HOUSE OF GOZDAWA MARTA: With notes of geranium, lemon, black pepper, carnation and wood.

As a South Africa-based perfumer, where do you source most of your materials from?

Most of my materials are sourced from the African continent. I do work with many materials from abroad, mostly those that are not yet available locally, or simply do not grow in our environments. Many of the ingredients we use are from wild harvest, which I do myself. These will be even more present in our new collections after the full extraction and ageing process is complete. One has to have a lot of patience when waiting a year or two for one ingredient to be ready.

House of Gozdawa Simo

HOUSE OF GOZDAWA SIMO TRAVEL VIAL: With notes of crushed lemon rind, orange blossom, cedar wood, atlas and vetiver.

For those who are more used to the conventions of mass market fragrances and who at first might not “get” your fragrances, what would you say to them?

I often compare niche or luxury scents to taste kitchens pushing the boundaries of taste or of highest quality wine-makers perfecting the art of flavour from a single grape varietal. If you are an individual of passion in these areas, then why not afford yourself the quality of such an experience in the olfactive?

“These ingredients are alive. They age and shift as they would in nature, continuously morphing into another phase of their existence.”

Agata Karolina of House of Gozdawa transforms raw materials into intimate experiences.

ARTISANAL APPROACH: Agata Karolina transforms raw materials into intimate experiences.

Chefs, winemakers and perfumers are some of our last genuine artisans. We take raw materials and manipulate them into deep and unexpected orchestrations for people to experience intimately.

If this is not conviction enough, I encourage anyone to do a little experiment for themselves. Take a fresh juicy lemon and sprig of lavender. Scratch the surface of the lemon’s skin until the oil starts running out and spread it across the back of your hand. Crush the lavender between your fingers until the sticky oil finds its way onto your skin. Breathe these scents in deeply, smelling the oil on the surface of the lemon’s skin and then on your hand, paying attention to how the heat of your skin makes the scent react. Now take a deep smell of any conventional hand cream, bathroom spray or dish-washing liquid with the same ingredients. Which has more depth and quality?

Are you a natural or synthetic kind of person?

LAVENDER CRUSH: Are you a natural or synthetic kind of person?

My favourite from your Confessions Collection is Aga. Tell us more about that extrait de parfum.

I wanted to create a collection which I felt expressed something real and honest, rather than creating stories that had no context to the wearer. I decided to tell my own confession as the perfumer behind the brand. I chose six people in my life that over the years had influenced the person I had become, together creating the whole.

House of Gozdawa Aga

HOUSE OF GOZDAWA AGA: With notes of jasmine, rosemary, fynbos and dark fruits.

Aga, The Romantic, is the persona of the collection that was created to reference a part of myself at the time. Aga is my nickname. I often exist in the arena of the heart and at the time I was questioning a lot about what I valued, wanted in my life and my connections with others. This scent reflects my choice and definition of that part of myself. It was an unnerving process to open myself so deeply and honestly to strangers. But the reward, as you have experienced yourself, was worth letting go of the fear to be fully open.

“It was an unnerving process to open myself so deeply and honestly to strangers.”

The scent reflects spaces and moments which have moved this part of me the most in life. The ingredients – fynbos, jasmine, passionfruit, ravintsara – all capture the aspects and characteristics which I felt closest to. The fynbos is wild harvested and the tinctures are developed and distilled in house.

For more information and to order any House of Gozdawa fragrances, https://houseofgozdawa.com.

The Fragrance World of Mark Buxton

 

Givenchy Into The Blue. Jil Sander The Essentials Scent 79 Man. Le Labo Vetiver 46 Perfume Oil. Paco Rabanne Black XS for Her. Salvador Dali Laguna. Van Cleef & Arpels Collection Extraordinaire Cologne Noire. Versace V/S Homme… These are just some of the numerous fragrances that England-born nose Mark Buxton has created over the last 20+ years.

During that time, whether creating fragrances for big names or niche brands, Mark Buxton has become a highly sought-after nose for his idiosyncratic and imaginative style. Even when he’s pushing the boundaries of perfumery, simplicity is the ethos of his creations.

His collaboration with Comme des Garçons placed the avant-garde Japanese fashion company on the fragrance map. Comme des Garçons, Comme des Garçons 2, Comme des Garçons 2 Man and Comme des Garçons Series 3 Incense Ouarzazate are all considered modern classics.

MARK BUXTON CLASSIC: Comme des Garçons Original EDP, the creation that put the Japanese fashion company on the fragrance map.

Ever creative and pioneering, in 2008, Mark Buxton took the brave step of launching his own fragrance company, Mark Buxton Perfumes.

“I DON’T LIKE USING THE WORD ‘UNISEX’ – IT SOUNDS
SO SEXLESS.”

I asked Mark Buxton some questions about his approach to perfumery, his Comme des Garçons collaborations, his own line of fragrances and the future of perfumery. This is what he had to say…

What was the most important thing you learned at perfumery school? How to construct a fragrance and the importance of each ingredient.

You have a long list of top fragrances to your name. How do you ensure that each one is different? They are all for different brands and images, so you have to adapt yourself to their needs and styles.

Is there an equivalent of “perfumer’s block”? Have you ever had to deal with that? No, it doesn’t talk to me.

Looking back at the classic Comme des Garçons EDP, how do you feel about that fragrance now? Well, it’s been on the market for over 20 years, which is a good sign. Furthermore, I think the fragrance hasn’t lost its identity or originality. It’s become one of their big classics.

HOW GREAT THOU ART: My own fan-art tribute to Comme des Garçons Original EDP. Alas, the bottle is empty…

How’s your own fragrance line doing? Is it easier creating fragrances for your own range? I’m a very small company. The way the fragrances are performing is sufficient for me. You can always do more, but then the company has to grow with it. The fragrances are very different to all the other fragrances I have created. They are very personal for me – old memories, situations, people or accords I’ve scribbled down a long time ago in my famous scrapbook.

Your range is unisex. What was your thinking behind that? I don’t like using the word “unisex” – it sounds so sexless. They are fragrances anybody can wear. If you like a specific smell, wear it. What’s masculine or feminine in the perfume world anyway?

WHAT A FEELING: Emotional Drop / Emotional Rescue from Mark Buxton Perfumes.

Do you ever read reviews of the fragrances you have created? Sometimes, if they get sent or mailed to me. I don’t visit sites or seek interviews. I hardly go on Facebook and have no idea how all these blogs work. Perhaps I’m too old-fashioned or lazy.

What fragrances will we find in your home? I wear A Day In My Life and Emotional Drop [both from his own fragrance range]. I find Emotional Drop / Emotional Rescue is the best vetiver-influenced fragrance on the market.

Is niche the future for perfumery? Niche was the future for perfumery but it’s totally overflowed now. Everybody is bringing out a fragrance line and brands are copying each other. I think we are not far from moving on again, but where? That’s the big question. In any case we have to stay unique in concepts and creations, otherwise we lose our credibility.

VERITABLE VETIVER: A Day In My Life from Mark Buxton Perfumes.

What’s next for Mark Buxton? Well, I’m working on a few new concepts – let’s see what comes out of that. One thing is for sure, the MBP collection is complete with the eight fragrances.

Keen to read another interview? Click here for my interview with Bertrand Duchaufour.

Etat Libre d’Orange’s Etienne de Swardt (Mostly) Unfiltered

Since its launch in 2006, Etat Libre d’Orange has gained notoriety and a large international cult following with its provocative perfumes and tongue-in-cheek humour. With perfumes such as Putain des Palaces, Attaqeur le Soleil Marquis de Sade, Fat Electrician and Encens et Bubblegum, Etat Libre d’Orange has walked a fine line between shock value and scentsory awe.

ROYAL WHORE: Putain des Palaces.

The man behind this Paris-based niche perfumery, Etienne de Swardt, was born and raised in South Africa. The name “Etat Libre d’Orange” is a witty word play on the Orange Free State, the South African province where De Swardt lived during his formative years.

After working for big fragrance names like Givenchy and weary of the conventions and limitations of perfumery, De Swardt launched Oh My Dog! and Oh My Cat!, his fragrance range for pets, which humans could wear too. Cheeky bugger!

My first encounter (“experience” is too tame a word) with Etat Libre d’Orange was with Je Suis un Homme, launched in 2006. Although that bottle was emptied many years ago, I still remember it as a heady collision between citrus, spice, leather and cognac notes. Not the usual, for sure.

I wangled my South African background to get an email interview with De Swardt. For a change, I had to turn off my overly vigilant inner editor to retain the drama and flow of his manifesto-like answers. So mostly I have shortened and explained his answers where necessary for clarity.

BOTTLED MISCHIEF: The Etat Libre d’Orange collection.

After more than 10 years in the industry, has Etat Libre d’Orange achieved what you set out to do? The objective is still too confused to measure a pertinent achievement. Sabotage will be the final destination, with all our narcissism, scented exactions, calculated pathos and endorsements of rogue heroes and heroines blended on one magnificent fire. I would love a purifying fire at 69 Rue des Archives [the address of the Etat Libre d’Orange store in Paris] to consume a decade “à tout faire de travers [doing it our way]”.

You started out as an agent provocateur in the industry. Is that still your motivation? I was born a sophisticated Shakespearean impostor, lost in between South Africa and New Caledonia. I was shaped by womanity, materfamilias, gay but elusive multiple (step) fathers, literature, cloud soaring, instants in the wind and, of course, my own departed. Hence, I am fucking confused and disturbed. But thankfully I have all the codes of vanity, arrogance and narcissism, knowing all that will be gone with the wind, revenged by our finitude and hazardous biology, so I bow to Diogenes’s cynicism.

EXISTENTIAL AESTHETICS: You or Someone Like You.

Using your latest fragrance, You or Someone Like You, as an example, briefly talk us through your conceptualisation and creative process. Just a good name to ignite the process and federate the passions, and a good extra bonus of existentialism with my knowledgeable Chandler Burr [the acclaimed American author, journalist and perfume expert] on board. Chandler is a crusader of aesthetics on the road less travelled. Alive and kicking this is what we are, knowing the end is a Greek tragedy. In the meantime, let’s be dramatic, frivolous and genuine.

With its notes of blood, adrenaline, sperm and saliva, Secretions Magnifiques created a huge sensation when it was launched in 2006 and still upsets or delights people. Looking back now, what do you think of it? My beloved virus, my favourite crime scene, why did you betray me, trapping for so long our land of plenty in a swamp of miasma, saliva, sperm and other encoded fluids of duplication and reproduction. I was born in 1970, the year of the dog, and I sniff around not like a perfumer, but like a hound, hunting high and low body intimacies.

SCENTED FREAK: Fat Electrician.

What’s your favourite Etat Libre d’Orange fragrance? I love all my scented freaks equally. They all speak my very universal disorders. Etat Libre d’Orange is a land of plenty, inclusive of all neurotic but charming darkness. It’s where a Fat Electrician shall dance an eternal farandole with a powdery slut, a leathery Tom of Finland, an abject ylang-ylang Charogne, the synaesthesia of a Nijinsky dancing the faun in 1912 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the eternal feminine killer’s kiss blending jasmine at twilight with a seductive cigarette, a naive Justine lost in between vice and virtue, but deliciously perverted by a Luciferian Marquis of Sade. They are all for You or Someone Like You.

Has your definition of success changed since you launched Etat Libre d’Orange? Penitence is my lot in life, stoicism and cynicism my brothers in arms. I hope that all these existentialism-scented manoeuvres since 2006 will help me to buy a Jonker JS-1 Revelation sailplane, designed in Potchefstroom, South Africa, by two talented brothers. Soaring is a place where everything starts and ends, driven by humility.

SOARING IS EVERYTHING: De Swardt’s dream Jonker JS-1 sailplane.

What fragrance are you working on now? Vos Beaux Yeux Vont Pleurer, inspired by the poetry of Ray Bradbury and David Bowie (Martian Chronicles + Serious Moonlight), the curse of beauty of Rock Hudson, Edna “E” Mode [from The Incredibles], Roxy Music’s Love is the Drug and WD-40 Multi-Use products to keep our souls away from rusted parts. Disturbed, isn’t it?

What are your thoughts on the current state of the perfume industry? Mutation and survival of the fittest.

Are your fragrances distributed in South Africa? No, we are too “incompris” [misunderstood].

BODY INTIMACIES: Secretions Magnifiques.

Apart from its name, does South Africa inspire your fragrances at all? Etat Libre d’Orange is the best blend of 21st-century Voortrekker spirit and existentialism à la française. Tell the Ruperts [the wealthy South African family who founded Richemont] that I don’t want to sell my house to LVMH or L’Oréal. But I would be happy one day to dance the carmagnole in the Great Karoo around the camp fire with protective laager people, my family, Walt Whitman or Alan Paton – the same universal, drifting, contemplative saga of pain and beauty on the limitless borders of New Caledonia, Colorado or Kroonstad. I am the true son of a Free State farm boy with vast memories of Bothaville and meat pie…

Want to read another intriguing interview with one of the masters of modern niche perfumery? Check out my interview with Bertrand Duchaufour here.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH MASTER PERFUMER BERTRAND DUCHAUFOUR

Bertrand Duchaufour 470

MASTER NOSE: Bertrand Duchaufour

Born in Nancy, France, and trained in Grasse, the home of French perfumery, Bertrand Duchaufour is widely regarded as one of the masters of modern perfumery. In a career spanning over three decades, the highly sought-after nose has worked with some of the most prestigious names in the biz, including Acqua di Parma, L’Artisan Parfumeur, Comme des Garçons, Penhaligon’s, Eau d’Italie, Givenchy and Dior.

The creator of modern classics such as Comme des Garçons Series 3, Incense: Kyoto, L’Artisan Parfumeur Timbuktu, Penhaligon’s Sartorial and Amouage Jubilation XXV took time out of his busy schedule to talk about his creative process, success and current projects.

What fragrance are you wearing today? I don’t wear any fragrance. I try to keep the most distance possible with fragrances and scents. If I can work in a pure way of abstraction, I will do it.

What’s your guiding principle when you create a fragrance? To keep distance and to let time act as much as I do. I am driven by imagination, but that is always driven by an idea or an image. Conceptualisation is important. It’s impossible to have any input without it.

I never know. A success is always a surprise. There is no recipe.

Do you ever take trends into account in your creative process? No, never. I try to be completely free regarding that, even if I go wrong!

Is being a nose a gift or a skill? Both. It’s a gift as soon as we want to do something with it. It’s a skill as soon as we work hard and constantly to improve it.

How do you know when you have created a winner? I never know. A success is always a surprise. There is no recipe.

Nuit-de-Tubereuse-100ml-High-Res

SPECIAL PLACE: L’Artisan Parfumeur Nuit de Tubéreuse

You have created well over 100 fragrances. Is there any particular fragrance that has a special place in your heart? Yes, maybe two or three of them, such as the original Eau d’Italie and L’Artisan Parfumeur Nuit de Tubéreuse.

What projects are you working on at the moment? I am working on different fragrance collections for brands such as Phuong Dang and Pont des Arts. Those brands are unknown at the moment and I have developed global collections for them. It is very exciting! I continue to work for other brands like Enchanted Forest, Grandiflora, Neela Vermeire and many others in the same way.

6x4_PhuongDang_PackShot

PASSION PROJECT: Phuong Dang fragrances.

What smell is the most evocative for you? The smell of earth. It’s the biggest and deepest one!