As you’ll know from my Galimard Perfume Factory & Museum post, last September we had a family holiday in the South of France, and on that trip, we booked a “make your own perfume” workshop with Galimard in Grasse.
Held in a separate but close-by building to the actual factory and museum (where the free tours are based), the workshop laboratory was located behind a small Galimard store featured in my Galimard Perfume Shops post.
The choice for our perfume workshop ended up being between the Galimard perfume house and the Fragonard one (love their perfumes too). Personally, since I was in charge of making this decision I went with the surprisingly less publicised Galimard; it’s cheaper (€55 per adult instead of €69), allowed an accompanying person for only €10 extra (not offered with Fragonard), lasted longer (2 hours instead of 1h30), offered in more languages (not a factor for me but might be for you) and you get a whole organ of 127 notes to yourself. You also got to customise your bottle and cap design for your final 100ml creation.
To begin with everyone got their own graduated cylinder and form to be filled in during the workshop at their designated organ, it was like I was right back in lab chemistry, always fill till the bottom of the meniscus guys!
Starting our composition off with the base layer for which 50ml was dedicated, we could select from the 127 notes of the organ (mostly accords in eau de toilette concentration not raw materials) that were colour coded by their layer rank (top notes, middle notes and base notes). The notes were further distinguished by their gender (typical female and male notes) but these gendered notes, contrary to their ranking position, could be mixed and matched as you pleased (my Dad enjoyed sniffing the male notes as my accompanying extra, I sniffed a few but didn’t like any of them).
Once you had picked out between 4-5 notes your Galimard expert (apprentice “noses” allocated to 5 or 6 other people in the workshop) calculated your ml percentage per note and then you just poured the amount suggested into the cylinder. This process was repeated for all 3 layers (top notes 25ml, middle notes 25ml and base notes 50ml).
Needless to say, my composition went quickly down the sugary sweet route and while I loved the scent I had created by the middle notes stage, the top notes choices were a bit limited for my liking (not enough fruity and sugary notes that could be used as top notes sadly) so I had to make do with the more floral smelling choices (to me anyway) for my top notes. This layer took me the longest to perfect, but we got there in the end, honestly those 2 hours fly by!
Curious as to what I picked? Head over to my “Make Your Own Perfume” with Galimard post to find out my final choices.
Once finished we got to pick our bottle shapes, nozzle colour (silver or gold) and lid, then came the naming of the perfume. Both my mum and I named them after ourselves (unoriginal I know) but I overheard one German workshop participant name hers L’Exigeante (French for hard-to-please) which made her group and expert laugh…brilliant!!!
Your perfume then gets numbered/labelled and entered into the Galimard database to be able to be recreated upon request (with worldwide delivery). Equipped with your new perfume and official certificate d’élève-parfumeur you now have to hard task of waiting an excruciating 2 weeks for your concoction to properly mature together before being able to use it. No…shaking the bottle doesn’t speed up the process and is obviously not recommended!
Very satisfied with my overall experience especially as my first workshop ever (let’s do lipsticks next!). Furthermore, whilst writing this post I came across another happy customer here (a writer for Fragrantica no less), who amongst two other perfume workshops in Grasse picked Galimard as his favourite, and he’s a connaisseur! ;)
Have you ever done a perfume workshop?
What notes do you think your perfect perfume would have? I knew vanilla and praline (Hello…? Chocolate!!!) were a guarantee for me.
What perfume has your favourite bottle design? I think Guerlain’s La Petite Robe Noire has to be mine. ;)
EDIT: During this time of COVID the Galimard staff have also taken all possible precautions for your safety; spacing out participants, disinfection of the organ and all equipment used between sessions plus plenty of sanitiser at your disposal as well as, of course, mask wearing assistants.
xxxemma